Marketing

101

Before you startmarketing, builda strong strategy.

Before you can tackle a problem, youfirst need to have a plan about howyou're going to do it. Before you startraising awareness and increasing

engagement with your business, youneed to build a strategy and a planabout how you're going to do so.

Cultivate a strongaudience.

When building a brand and marketing abusiness, it's important to know whoyour audience is and what their needsare so you can work to address them.You also want to be engaging peoplewho fit your target demographic for themaximum impact of your marketing.

Interact with yourcustomers directly.

This is where the value of social mediaas a marketing tool cannot be

overstated. If all of your customers areusing it to interact with one another,you should be using it to interact withthem as well. Reply to reviews andcomments about your business, andkeep people interested in what you're

doing.

Humanize yourbusiness.

All-to-often it can be easy to see allbusinesses as the same corporate

entity. To combat this, you should startputting a face to your business, bywhich I mean you should start

personally interacting with customers,both loyal and potential, so they canlearn to associate a person, not a logo,

with your business.

Handle criticismwith grace.

Instead of griping about every complaint

someone has with your business, look at

each complaint as an opportunity to

better your business and help it to grow.

You should also never let a complaint go

unanswered; you never want your

customer to leave your business

dissatisfied, and an open complaint is an

opportunity to improve someone's

experience and change their mind.