A Few Good Rules To Remember When Marketing

1. Stay up to date

Marketing, and especially online marketing is a fast moving area. If you want to compete you need to stay up to date. Ideally you need to have your finger on the pulse and have an eye for what’s going to be the next trend, then apply this to your goals and marketing strategy.

2. Trust your instinct

There’s a lot of choice when it comes to online marketing. There are so many social media sites that there’s no way you you could pursue everything. Have a good knowledge of what’s out there and be analytical when choosing, but don’t forget to use your instinct too.

3. Integrity

Always act with integrity when it comes to your marketing. You may be tempted to do something that will help in the short term but acting with integrity is more likely to reap longterm rewards – your customers are people too and they deserve to be treated with respect.

4. Do your homework

Especially important if you’re considering costly offline advertising or exhibiting at events. Make sure you’ve done the appropriate research and at least considered the return on investment of pursuing the opportunity.

5. Competition is good

Competition encourages you to keep improving, it’s a good thing. Have a healthy knowledge of what your competitors are up to and aim to be better, different or ideally both.

6. Keep changing/developing

Your competition are probably trying to find ways to improve and develop what they offer. If you’re standing still you’re falling behind. Do a SWOT analysis and create a plan that will see your business improve over the next six months.

7. Be prepared to fail

Some strategies or promotions don’t work out. If you’re not failing on a semi-regular basis then you aren’t doing enough marketing. That said, you want to take all your failures and use the information to refine your future offers and marketing strategies.

8. Do lots of non business related stuff

Make sure that you’re having lots of experiences away from your business, that’s where inspiration lies. Just remember to have something on which to capture all the ideas when they hit!