Business owners respond best when asked questions about their business within their objective method. Try the following questions as step-by-step approach to marketing that can be easily defined and executed.

1- What do you sell?

Knowing your products well and having a clear inventory of what you sell is pivotal to your success. Common problem with services companies is that they have a wide selection of services that can be sold and thus have difficulty in developing a marketing focus.

Even with broad based offerings, it is important to identify the category so that the business can be marketed in a specific way.

2- So what is the best way to market it?

For small and medium enterprises, identifying the best way to market their services is to benchmark their products with larger organizations and identify methods that are likely to give you results in your own business.

Benchmarking however cannot be the one thing to go by as you would need to correct all the marketing and promoting based on your own business needs.

Innovating marketing processes is what makes businesses grow in geometrical progress. Try to include innovation in your marketing, which your business can execute and afford.

It is also advisable to do test marketing for new ideas in order to get sample results so that it does not backfire on the business and you are able to fine-tune it before you go to market it in a larger scale.

3- Plan your marketing collateral

Rarely can marketing be completed without relevant printing. Whether digital or offset print, all marketing plans need to be incorporating some sort of relevant collateral and it pays off in the long run to spend time on developing designs.

It might also be a good idea to hire an external organization to design the collateral with a professional touch.

First impressions are the most effective so work at impressing your potential clients with high quality, substantial print collateral that speaks well about your organization and is better than what the competition puts out.

4- Marketing plan

Though marketing plan should technically be the very first thing to do while developing the business, it is also an ongoing effort within the organization.

Marketing plans can be designed and improved on every quarter with new market inputs and product innovation.

The benefit of a marketing plan are many…they put all the people on the same page in terms of marketing and company goals and help create the relevant milestones required to reach that goal. It is also well advised to revise the marketing plan every quarter.

5- Maintain a marketing cycle

Marketing might be confused with advertising. Advertising is part of marketing and in order to be more effective, there should be a continuous cycle that needs to be maintained with the intention to reap benefits of organized marketing. An inconsistent marketing cycle might be detrimental to the growth of the company as it is unable to harness the benefits of an ongoing process and engage audience with your marketing effort.

6- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Lastly, no marketing plans can be completed without KPIs. Ensure that you put some specific measurability inside the plan. Without KPIs, marketing plan does not produce concrete results.

All the best with your marketing plan!