Keeping up with the latest Marketing Trends
Let’s take a few minutes to review current marketing trends. Here is some great info from a survey recently conducted by Constant Contact in collaboration with the American Chamber of Commerce Executives, SCORE, and the Association of Small Business Development Centers. Nearly 7,000 small business respondents were contacted for this study.
Clearly, many of us are in a position where we need to make some changes to the old strategies. The vast array of tools and media available today can be overwhelming. How is a small business owner to keep up with all of these great ever-changing technologies and prioritize? How do you know if your marketing dollars are generating the best return on investment?
A couple of key tips to help you maximize your resources…
1. A fully integrated Marketing Plan is a must. This should be a key component of your business plan, and should address opportunities and trends.
2. Prioritize based on where your customers are…and where they are making their buying decisions. This answer will be different for each business, and it is important for you to know this about your business. A lot of marketing dollars are being wasted right now — because there is a mismatch between where the business is marketing and where the customer is spending their time.
3. Don’t go it alone. Get help. You can spend countless hours researching and implementing these technologies — and still not do a great job. “Stick to what you do best and let others do the rest”
4. Don’t try to do everything at one time. Implement your plan in stages, and understand the resources (both human and dollar) required along the way.
5. Measure your results and fine tune as needed. This is a time to ignore your gut instinct. There are many tools to help you measure and identify your successes and failures. Make sure you have implemented the appropriate analytics so that you can better understand how your programs are working.
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