Every good business should have a sound marketing plan. That involves a sturdy website, well-run social media channels and of course, the intention to get the name of your business out there and known. How can any business sell its great products or fantastic services without people knowing about them? What’s more, the smaller the business – the bigger the effect that marketing has. Why is that? Well people already know about Apple, Coca-Cola and Google – but they might not know about you. Marketing works and if your name isn’t known, it will be with solid marketing efforts.
Any good marketing plan will be built upon knowledge. Knowledge is easily gained on the internet due to the number of websites that exist to explain and educate. What’s more, a website you operate has the chance to gain knowledge for you through data. Every single visit to your website is recorded and gives you data based on a visit. In some cases, it can tell you where the visitor came from, what they did and where they went. If you can analyze this, it will show you where your business is popular and what is happening when someone visits your website. Generating leads can give you a lot more knowledge – name, age, profession and you can really start to break down the demographics of your audience base. This is key as you’ll know not just your target audience, but also the type of person that is visiting your website. That’s valuable stuff and the type of information that businesses are begging for. Knowledge as the foundation of a marketing plan isn’t just about that data though – it’s also about examining the industry and finding advice. For example, Spin Radio is a capital trade, marketing, and business management podcast, and this type of content helps break down the industry so you can use the tips along with the data gained to formulate a winning marketing plan.
Once you know who you are aiming your business at, it’s worth expanding on that knowledge. Marketers and researchers usually look to questionnaires and focus groups at this point to get the target market to voice their opinion. This turns that quantitative data in the form of numbers and analytics into qualitative date or quantity transforming into quality. From data, you’ll have a set of opinions. These opinions can become the force behind a product and transform the voice you use to market a product.
Building a marketing plan that wins really does rely on knowledge and that can’t be overstated. If you know your business, your competition, your market, your product and your audience – then you don’t really have an excuse for failure as you’ll be fully equipped with all the marketing weapons that you need to succeed. If you construct a marketing plan that has no solid foundation based on either knowledge, data or analysis, you’ll find it much harder to succeed with your marketing plan, which will resemble more of a shot in the dark than a plan!
