The true consummate marketeer will know that to succeed, one needs to be implementing a 360 degree closed loop marketing that covers inbound, outbound, online, offline, PR, all social media channels, etc. All that is to be done simultaneously but the truth is:

All executives are time-strapped with only 24 hours in a day and having to worry about finances, operations, legal, HR - Marketing, while important, is only one aspect of running a business. So this blog is to share, in my humble opinion and in less than 500 words (about 2 minutes of reading), how to spread out the marketing aspect into more bite-sized pieces.

1st and foremost, before even embarking on telling anyone about your business, you gotta get the brand right. This will include, but not limited to, branding, artwork, web content, and social media setup. First impressions matter and they stick - so the first touch point between your customer and your brand needs to be spot on.

Get a logo done right (you can start with a freelancer with a good portfolio) and decide on your corporate colours (maybe even a branding guide). Add onto that by determining the identity (tone of voice and personality) for the website / social media pages content. This is of course simplifying the intense and time-consuming process - hence, get this done first while setting up the other parts of your business.

2nd, before kickstarting marketing, you need to track, review your efforts and tweak it to work better on the next campaign. Marketing is a constant process of trial and error, you need to know which channels drive the most traction, leads, and sales. Then plough more efforts into them to deliver more results. A great CRM tool for this is Hubspot.

3rd, creating good content and starting outreach. Good content is anything that your prospective customers would be keen to consume. It can be advertisement, short explainer videos, press releases of major announcements, blog posts, infographics, memes, etc. For maximum reach, share them through your own channels (website / social media / blog) and leverage on others to do the same (media / influencers / ads).

4th and lastly, after engaging the crowd, it is time to close. Online, it would mean having sufficient Call-To-Actions in everything. End a blog with a link for interested parties to find out more about your product/service or to consume more content or to go offline. Offline activities (events / conferences / speaking slots / networking) are great avenues for sales people to close deals, after all, if your customers showed up in person - there is no doubt they are keen.

With this breakdown, hopefully you can breathe a little easier when it comes to planning the marketing of your business. To take my own advice from part 4, if you are in need of further clarity on how you should allocate your efforts / resources, do feel free to contact us, leave us a comment below, or check out our Facebook page.