It’s the question every marketing expert has heard: What’s the secret sauce?
Are you sitting down? Ready? Here it is: Marketing must be as essential to your daily business tasks as answering emails, paying bills, holding team meetings and prepping for customer pitches. Practice literally makes perfect. Creating a solid brand reputation that helps you attract customers comes only with a steady drumbeat of marketing efforts.
There isn’t a clever little shortcut that gets you off the hook. Marketing takes time, strategy, clarity, consistency, creativity, and commitment. Then it takes more of the same. That’s why most business leaders slide marketing onto a shadowy corner of their desk to gather dust; they don’t believe they have the time to craft the processes and strategies needed to effectively market their companies and firmly establish their brand identity.
The good news: It’s a New Year
New Year’s resolutions are all about improving, learning and stretching your limits. What better time to pull a plan together that helps guide you through a full year of solid, consistent, well-focused marketing? You don’t have to post videos every day or write 365 blogs. You do have to come up with a sustainable, steady drip of marketing to be effective.
Why?
A study by McKinsey & Company revealed that for American consumers, a consistent customer experience at every stage of the buyer’s cycle increases customer satisfaction, builds trust, and boosts loyalty. In a related article, the authors noted: “It may not seem sexy, but consistency is the secret ingredient to making customers happy.” (See, I told you so!)
Why does it matter? Brand Reputation is All That
Remember, awareness is a process. Your target audience—for us, both target audiences—may have to see or interact with our brand as many as 15 times before it starts sinking in that we know what we’re talking about when it comes to talent.
The challenge is getting to that 15th time so you can prove to them you’re credible, trustworthy, and the best option from all the others they’re considering.
How do you do that? All it takes is an Excel spreadsheet—don’t worry, we’ll share ours—and a little bit of brainstorming time. At ITBD, we approach marketing by establishing monthly themes, then building out topics that align under those themes. For example, January is about fresh starts and resolutions—so we discussed what MSPs need to do every month of the year to drive success, and planned blogs, webinars, and videos around those topics.
See, not so hard!
Consistent Marketing – Easy Tips for Getting Started
I know what you are thinking: I don’t have time for this! Here is the thing: You must make time. If you talk to any successful MSP, us included, they will tell you they see results when they market well. So here are my three keys to success:
- Take one afternoon to brainstorm themes and topics. Remember, you don’t have to write every blog or be brilliant about each topic. Leverage industry media and share their blogs, with your added tips or advice. Use your team to help with ideas and content. You have experts right there at your fingertips.
- Consistency isn’t the same as volume. You don’t have to create content every.single.day. If you can only manage two blogs a month, and one great video—that is fine. Just make sure you do THAT every single month.
- Be relevant and be authoritative. You are an expert at what you do. Showcase that knowledge to your customers and your peers by writing or recording valuable content. Share examples from your own business with the goal of helping others to make your blog stand out from all the fluff.
Want to learn more? Check out our archived webinar on building your brand reputation with consistent marketing. We’ll tell you how to get a copy of our marketing plan spreadsheet!
