When you first launch your business, it can be difficult to determine which types of marketing to focus on.
There are so many options!
And they ALL seem appealing and relevant in different ways! With all those vehicles for promoting your business online, how do you determine which one to start with?
Here’s how to plan your marketing efforts in the right order.
Strategic Marketing Plans Have a Logical Build
While it’s true that any marketing is better than no marketing—especially in those crucial early days—it’s also true that a solid marketing plan has logical steps.
If you don’t create your business elements in the correct order, you may have trouble gaining momentum or retaining traffic.
Ideally, they should all build on each other. Without that build, it’s tough to get traction.
So! I’ve written up this handy dandy guide to planning your marketing rollout so you can determine an order for your marketing efforts, and stick to it.
Following this plan will help you build your business by executing your marketing efforts in an order that makes sense, instead of trying to do everything at once. (Or getting sidetracked by shiny-object syndrome. No judgment; we’ve all been there!)
Let’s dig in, shall we?
Start Your Marketing Efforts With Web & List-building
Although it’s possible to focus most of your energies on other social media, I still believe that every entrepreneur should have a good, old-fashioned website.
If you want to have a blog—and you should—you need somewhere for it to live.
If you want to sell products and create landing pages, it’s easier to build one centralized place for people to shop.
Create a home for your business, and begin your marketing journey by building a robust, easy-to-navigate website.
Next up, build a lead magnet that tempts people to subscribe to your list AND start blogging on the regular.
These two components of your marketing plan actually go hand-in-hand, but I would highly recommend creating your lead magnet first and THEN your blog posts.
Here’s why: Your lead magnet is the main piece of content that’s going to convert people onto your list. Once it’s done, you want to use your blog posts to tell people this phenomenal lead magnet exists, and promote the heck out of it.
Once both are up and running, your SEO will gain momentum, your list will begin growing, and your marketing build will be off to a fantastic start!
Now, and Only Now, Move to Social media!
You likely know that social media is a great way to bring traffic to your site and grow your list. It’s also a fabulous way to promote your content, products, and services, so now that you’ve got your business home base and lead magnet done, focus your efforts here.
However, don’t feel like you need to tackle all available social media.
Do some research to find out which platforms your ideal clients are using, and build your presence there. (Even if they’re using Facebook and you vastly prefer Instagram. You need to go where your people are!)
And don’t forget that when social media management gets overwhelming, some of it can be outsourced or automated.
Finally, Rev Up Your Email Marketing Efforts
Email marketing is a crucial component to any online business, and usually the very last touchpoint before the sale. That’s why email marketing comes last on this list … but it’s certainly not least!
In fact, this medium remains one of the most effective for reaching customers, building loyalty, and sealing deals. There’s a ton of guidance out there about how to do email marketing the right way, but I’ll point you to my simple guide: The 3 Tools I Use to Grow My Email List.
That’s really all you need to get started, I swear.
I hope this marketing plan makes sense to all of you, since it may be tempting to begin with whichever step appeals to you the most.
But I promise you that following this strategy in this order will help you maximize your marketing efforts and minimize downtime while you figure out what’s next.
Building each piece of your marketing system in this logical order creates a solid foundation for your business. And THAT allows you to drive traffic to your website, gather emails for your marketing list, and ultimately, convert customers!
xoxo
Melissa
PS. Not sure what you should outsource in your business? Click here to take my free quiz to find out the #1 task that you need to outsource.
