Before I share the practices, it’s important to define Marketing. It has many definitions but I like this one. Marketing is everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers.

Here are some activities that involve marketing:

  • You have a website – You are marketing
  • You send out newsletters – You are marketing
  • You have a podcast – You are marketing
  • You run events – You are marketing
  • You Go Live on Instagram – You are marketing
  • You run adverts – You are marketing
  • Your staff picks up the phone ‘’This Ashley from Majestically Rare Events, how can I help you? She’s marketing
  • You give someone a branded pen, branded note pad a branded bag – you are marketing
  • You have a stand in a mall and give out your products – you are marketing

Do you know that what I’m doing right now is marketing? I am teaching you marketing tips. I’m sharing ideas to grow your business. Some of you may be wondering who is RiRi Okoye? Some of you may google me or you may go to my website at ririokoye.com to find out more about me. I am marketing.

Remember what I said before, ‘’Marketing is everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential and current customers’’.

So here are the Marketing practices that every business should do

Marketing Practice 1 Create A Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is a strategic document that you use to get a customer. Your marketing Plab will include a lot of P’s; Product, Pricing, Promotion, Place, Packaging, Positioning, People. If you have don’t have a marketing plan, you will be all over the place, doing everything and you not make a profit.

Your marketing plan should remain an ongoing process throughout the life cycle of your business and not a one-off document that gets filed in your draw.

Marketing Practice 2 – Conduct research

Simply ask your customers questions.

How can you improve your services or products if you don’t conduct research?

How can you know your customers’ deeper desire and pain if you don’t ask?

I run a business coaching service and before my clients joined they fill a detailed feedback form.

Here are some of the questions I asked:

What are you currently doing to market your business?

What are your 3 top issues relating to marketing your business right now?

What are your top 3 marketing goals for your business?

You must ask questions regularly. Don’t rely on assumptions. If possible speak face to face or pick up the phone or surveys. You can even run polls on IG. Recently I ran a poll and asked my audience. Do you love marketing 70% said yes and 30%No?

Marketing Practice 3 – Create A Marketing Campaign

A marketing campaign is all the marketing activities that the business will deliver for the year. This may include email marketing, live events, and webinars, social media, SEO campaigns. List all the activities you want to do and put a marketing cost for them.

Marketing Practice 4 – Sell The Benefits In All Your Marketing Messages

Your prospects want to know what’s in it for them. How can your product or service make a real difference to your customer’s life? How can it solve their pain? You know if you have a headache and go to the doctor he will prescribe you something like Panadol to get rid of your headache. It’s the same for your customers. You have to identify your customer’s pain and offer solutions through benefits.

Marketing Practice 5 Test And Keep Testing

Have you ever run Facebook ads that are just not working for you? Or maybe you placed a roll-up banner in a shop and nobody is calling you? And you keep running the same ads and getting the same results! Nothing! Crickets

Why not change the image and see what happens? Why not change the copy?

Why not change the location of the roller up banner in the shop?

That could just be the difference in making great sales. Please stop spending money on adverts that are just not working for you. Test and keep testing.

Here’s A Bonus Practice – Outsource Where Possible

As a business owner, you are supposed to spend your time on activities that will bring you the most revenue and sales. This may include identifying new clients, upselling or cross-selling to your currents clients, coming up with offers, creating sales funnels, giving presentations, following up, asking for referrals, and closing sales.

Marketing has to be your no1 business function. Unfortunately, many business owners spend their time on non-revenue generating activities like administrative work. This has to stop otherwise your business won’t grow. So where possible outsource. What can you outsource? You can outsource your admin work. You can hire a virtual assistant. You can hire a social media manager. You can hire an accountant etc.

Which marketing practices are you going to start doing today?

Visit me at ririokoye.com for a wide range of free resources, business courses and group coaching

Listen to my Radio Show Business Growth with RiRi on Inspiration FM 92.3 at 11.35 every Tuesday.

Follow me on  Instagram

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*
*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.