Hopefully, this statement doesn’t come as a shock: Every business needs marketing. New businesses need to create awareness. Established businesses need to maintain their customer base and ward off competitors. Everyone in between needs to market themselves to gain position and share. While marketing efforts certainly look different for different industries, some near-universal principles can help guide marketers to craft plans that will help lead to successful results.

Determine Your Target Audience

Many businesses strategize backward. Your organization may well benefit from a reliable email marketing campaign or a broadcast advertising schedule. That’s all well and good, but the mistake many marketers make is putting the method before the message. In other words, they’re thinking about their media mix before they’re thinking about their audience.

You should start any marketing plan by gathering with key stakeholders and establishing specific goals. This starts by identifying who needs to see your marketing based on key demographic factors like age, gender, location, and income level. Consider creating brand personae to make them easier to visualize.

Differentiate Your Product

After determining who you need to reach with your marketing, craft your message by keying in on why your product or service matters to them. Have candid discussions about the value you need to demonstrate. Do you offer higher quality than your competitors? Do you offer a better price? Does your product have a feature that others don’t? 

Broadly, people are interested in saving time or money more than anything else. Convenience and value are great competitive advantages if you can spotlight them. Always keep your audience in mind, however. Older, affluent demographics will value quality over savings, for example. Marketing luxury brands versus discount ones require different approaches.

Choose the Appropriate Marketing Channels

You’ve established your audience and your value message. Now is the time to select the right platforms to deliver it! This should always be based more firmly on data and research than instinct or generalizations. If you work with an advertising agency or media buyer, they should be able to provide different analytics to help you see where you will get the best reach, frequency, and value. If you are working directly with local media outlets, challenge them to provide as much information as they can to show that it will be wise to invest your ad dollars with them.

When it comes to digital media, a lot of this information is readily available on the back-end if you educate yourself on where to find it. The ad interfaces of most SEO and social platforms can provide great insights on click-through rates, percentages of completely watched videos, and engagement. If you are buying PPC SEO ads, this information is accessible as well and can show you where your audience is coming from and going before and after interacting with your ad.

Always Deliver a Strong Call-to-Action

Salespeople are trained to close by always asking for the sale. Every piece of marketing material and advertising should also end with a strong call to action. Tell your viewers how to buy, where to go, or how to get more information, and then ask them to do it. In traditional advertising, this can take the form of repeating a phone number, website, or physical address.

In digital ads, the call-to-action is both more important and easier to convey. Including “click here” or “learn more” in digital banners is a great strategy. The power of digital lies in the fact that the sale can be made directly online, so encourage your audience to act right away.

Monitor Results to Measure Success

A well-thought-out marketing strategy doesn’t always guarantee results. Many factors can influence the success of a campaign, some of which are beyond your control. That’s why it’s crucial to set measurable goals and monitor your progress throughout the course of your marketing flight. This is easier than ever thanks to the analytics that are available.

Marketing is not an exact science, but these guidelines will give you a good foundation from which you can launch your next campaign.