FOCUS ON
Marketing+Tech
Rethinking your marketing strategies means you will have to level up but within your own means.
If you are a business owner that works towards an understanding of your own brand’s marketing, taking time to communicate to your specific niche by utilizing the marketing tools and resources available to you, you will be able to stay relevant to your audience and prospects by not skipping a beat online, in the event of pandemic, catastrophe, family illness, losing a loved one or worse.
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Taking a global approach to determine how you want to communicate with your audience on a year-round basis. Break up your year into quarters, as 4 quarterly segments and then decide on how often you are going to communicate with your client base or prospects through email and social media marketing.
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A good rule of thumb is plan your approach about 2 weeks in advance, prior to the next month's start, and decide how many times you plan to post, blog or email. I typically allocate only one day a month (around an 8-hour day's worth) to prepare my content based upon the bullet points below.
Let’s do some brainstorming!
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What season is your industry in?
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What upcoming holidays, promotions, freebies do you want to push in front of your client base this quarter?
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What colors pop this month/quarter among your current branding and product lines?
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What can you then automate through your technology applications that you are already paying for?
START by creating a marketing calendar that allows for you to tap into your audiences interests, along with aligning this to your own interests, then commit to it and have some fun! Be consistent with what you have developed and budget your time - see Strategy 1.
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Building these habits into your daily routine will help with consistency:
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Automation: What can you then automate through your technology? By using email campaigns, social media post schedulers among other apps will help you advertise by scheduling these in advance.
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Technology: Are you using resources within apps you already pay for? There are other tools through Square or Mailchimp too, to use for engagement.
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Bank of Images: Do you have backup content? Having enough stock photography of your clients, product pictures, and any other imagery is important so you can implement these into your marketing campaigns, even if your studio space is not open. Keep the lines of communication open and continue to inspire now and during any catastrophe or while taking time off.
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Bank of Content: Do you have backup copy? If a pandemic hits, you can pull from your content library to write, post, share videos on what is trending and sometimes get paid for the classroom. Don't forget that styling your messages is so important and can set you apart from the competition.
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Website: Are you comfortable with your website? I think being able to log into your site to manage your pages, text, blogs, add images and more, is so powerful when you control it. You can eventually hire a designer for the creation and/or hire team member(s), employee(s) to do this for you. Having some comprehension helps when it comes to timelines and creating projects.
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Clients: Are you engaging with your clients? If you have a habit of communication built and a presence your clients are used, THEN a catastrophe affects your world, you can control your destiny of getting online and still marketing to your audience; either through images, videos, posts and/or continuing to sell products or workshops virtually.