Marketing starts before you launch a product and never ends once the product is out. Marketing is how your website is designed, how you speak to your clients, how you respond to customer feedback, how you approach customer service and how every employee relates with customers and prospective clients and partners.
Every employee plays a part in communicating your brand story to the public. You are how you respond to everybody else. Marketing doesn’t mean you should break the bank… it just requires creativity. Get it right and you will attract loyal customers, get it wrong and nobody will even know you exist. These are 100 proven marketing ideas that have worked for successful businesses.
PRE-LAUNCH
1. Create a great product. No amount of marketing is going to make up for a poorly made product.
2. Focus. 50% of strategy is knowing when to say no.
3. Figure out the 10 journalists you want to have see your product before you launch.
4. Offer influencers early access to the product.
5. Create a press kit and keep its contents current-bloggers love it.
6. Give out teaser information about your product prior to launch.
7. Release a compelling promo video.
8. Everything starts with the story.
9. If you don’t have an interesting story, your blogs,videos and tweets will be ignored.
10. The marketing message should resonate with your target customer persona and call them to action.
11. Checkout Hacker News, Reddit, Convore, Startupli.st, AngelPad, CrunchBase, KillerStartups, StartupWizz etc.
12. Make a product that you yourself can’t stop using.
13. Launch is a process, not an event, stick with what works.
14. Too many things can go wrong if you bet everything on one award, one demo, or one event.
AFTER-LAUNCH
15. Focus on the processes that will get you real users.
16. Measure, measure, measure.
17. Find ways to bring your target market into the beta test.
18. Once your target market is in the beta test, communicate with them early and often.
19. Commit to creating timeless content.
20. Do not neglect your local media. Even more if your product/service is simple to understand.
21. Learn everything about the target market. The more you understand them, the easier it becomes to predict their behavior.
22. Understand your niche market, know where they are, go find them and introduce your product or story to them.
23. Business is personal. Make it Personal.
24. Try to outsmart your competition not outspend them.
25. Have a contest on your blog/Facebook/Twitter (giveaway something free to create awareness and gain interest)
26. You do not have to use every social media tool out there, find the ones that suit you and use them consistently.
27. Add value. Create a relationship.
28. Design tweets keeping in mind trending hashtags
29. Improve on the successful tactics, reduce or eliminate the unsuccessful and optimize your marketing strategy.
30. Don’t just start a blog. Share information consistently.
31. By all means, have a blog.
32. Adopt and learn from startups that have succeeded in your niche.
33. How about a customer advisory board to help you understand product problems better
34. Maintain an FAQ and address customer concerns.
35. If you’re hoping to send a piece of content viral, set aside some budget to launch it.
36. Respond to comments on reviews about your startup and address issues raised.
37. Communicating consistently with your fans.
38. There is no replacement for learning as you go.
39. Don’t ignore social comments.
40. Listen constantly to what’s being said about you and respond when you have to.
41. Build your network before you need them
42. Make your message memorable with a story that sticks.
43. Forget about you, your product or your company. Focus exclusively in creating a good and interesting story.
44. Be willing to experiment with a video that might not be consistent with your brand image.
45. Market to people who are in control of what they consume
46. Develop a contest that allows users submit their own video or content, which then is made available for others to see.
47. Free makes everyone happy. Share something for free.
48. Don’t be afraid to outsource, just be smart about it.
49. Creating content is only half the battle. Spend as much time as possible promoting your content
50. Pick something novel or unusual about your niche and write about it.
51. Connect with people emotionally – decisions are based on feelings
52. Content marketing shouldn’t take place only on your own site.
53. Develop content for the long tail.
54. Infographics and case studies are typically the most shareable form of content.
55. Produce content at each stage of your customer buying cycle.
56. Get more attention and you’ll get links.
57. For viral marketing to work, it must be completely painless and easy for your prospect or intermediary to pass it on.
58. Do something unexpected.
59. Your marketing goal should be linked to your business goals.
60. Add a link to your customer service emails that makes it easy to tweet
61. Create a very strong emotion. You need to have an opinion, to express an idea with commitment and dedication.
62. Do not try to make advertisements but connect with stories.
63. Don’t just write for engines, write for humans.
64. A good marketing strategy provides specific goals
65. Commit to smarter usage of images in your content.
66. Evaluate performance regularly – internally and externally
67. Anticipate customer’s needs and add before they ask
68. User-generated content is one of the best ways to scale your content marketing.
69. Forget neutral, trying to please everyone, supporting several target groups or any of the many ways to be unbiased.
70. A successful viral campaign comes down to three factors. Idea, Opportunity, Execution.
71. Listen more than you talk.
72. Your team is arguably one of your biggest marketing tools.
73. You can only focus on creating one sort of loyalty at a time, true?
74. Commit to smarter usage of images in your content.
75. Provide exceptionally great customer service.
76. Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
77. The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.
78. You have an excellent opportunity to use inbound marketing techniques to bring in new business through targeted LinkedIn communities.
SETH GODIN
Author of The Icarus Deception, Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, Small Is the New Big,The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?,Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? and Poke the Box and others.
79. The future belongs to people who can invent, implement, and sell the ideas–the free prizes–that become purple cows.-Seth Godin
80. Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
81. People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
82. You won’t get it right the first time. Your campaign will need to be reinvented, adjusted or scrapped. Count on it.
83. Companies must create remarkable products and services and let consumers do the marketing themselves to generate a buzz.
84. Tap into those ‘listeners,’ as they will always be interested in what you have to say.
85. Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
86. People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
90. Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
91. At some point, you’re either going to have to stick to your convictions or do what the market tells you. It’s hard to do both.
93. Anything that’s worth being talked about is ‘a remarkable idea,’ and remarkable ideas spread.
94. One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.
95. Companies can no longer rely on mass-media advertising to sell average products to average consumers.
96. Instead of ‘selling’ to a ‘hit and miss’ type of market, tapping into innovators and adapters would always be the right approach.
97. Be topical… write posts that need to be read right now.
98. Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention.
99. Instead of speed dating your way to interruption, instead of yelling at strangers all day trying to make a living, coordinating a tribe of 1,000 requires patience, consistency and a focus on long-term relationships and life time value.
100. Google never forgets.
Which specific marketing ideas have worked for your business, startup or project?
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