You might be making this journey harder than it needs to be.
When it comes down to it, marketing your business is just a 3-step process.
Work through these steps, and you can market your business successfully:
- You need to understand marketing tactics and strategies.
- You need to apply good design decisions to your marketing materials.
- You need to market your business consistently, week after week, month after month.
It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But you may still be confused by what you’ve learned, read and heard here and elsewhere.
You may have a little voice in the back of your head telling you that you “should” be doing a whole list of marketing tasks, or that you’ll never be able to handle this on your own.
Read on to see if the voices in your head are saying some of the things below. And find out how you can talk back to them!
“What if I don’t have a clue about marketing?”
You sort of know what marketing is.
marketing |ˈmärkitiNG| noun The action or business of promoting and selling products or services.
You have a sense that it’s something you should be doing. You know it’s important. But you’re not sure how to make it happen.
I’m here to tell you that marketing is just like anything else: it can be learned, and you’ll get better with practice.
If there’s one element to marketing that’s a little scary, it’s that every business is different. The marketing mix that works for me may not work for you.
But there are a finite number of tactics to try. There are easy ways to measure your results. And if you fit some time every week, your marketing tasks won’t overwhelm you. You may even find them fun!
“Why not hire someone to do it for me?”
Let me ask you this: do you have $10,000 lying around collecting dust? Because that’s what most agencies want as a minimal budget for one project.
By the time they pay their staff and vendors and account for their profits, $10,000 barely covers it.
Hiring an agency might seem like the easy route, but it’s not hands off. If you want the process to succeed, you’ll need to be involved.
The agency will want to know who your ideal customer is. They’ll want to have a detailed description of the benefits of your product or service. They’ll want to know how your offer is better than your competitor’s.
As the business owner, who better to fill them in than you?
If you’ve got the money and the time, hire an agency. If money is tight, and time’s at a premium, take the direct route and learn to effectively market your business yourself.
“What if I can’t draw a straight line, and don’t want to learn?”
You don’t have to be artistic to understand the principles of good design, and use them in your marketing materials.
And you should. After all, badly designed marketing materials are one of the fastest way to send your prospects running in the opposite direction.
And well-designed marketing materials are within your reach, once you know how design works.
Even if you end up hiring a designer down the road, you’ll have a better working relationship with that person if you understand the basics about how design works.
“What if I don’t even know where to start?”
You know you need to market your business, but you feel overwhelmed, and have no time.
How about 30 minutes. Do you have 30 minutes to spare?
If you do, I’d like to invite you to join me next week for a Brown Bag Webinar.
“Where Should I Start, and What Should I Do?”
Join me for a free Brown Bag Webinar on February 13 at 1 pm eastern. (Find your local time). In this fast-paced presentation, you’ll learn:
- How to discover your areas of marketing strength
- How to uncover opportunities for marketing growth
- What to do with this newfound knowledge so you can grow your business in the months ahead
Trying to do it all at once isn’t practical — it’s marketing the hard way. Learn how to make marketing easy by tackling the areas where you most need help. Add your name below to join me for this free 30-minute presentation.
If you can’t be there live, sign up anyway and I’ll send you a link to the recording.
Your business might be small, but your brand can be BIG. Targeted, well-designed marketing materials help your business look professional, communicate effectively, and sell more. 
I have noticed a lot of talking among fellow computer professionals on the topic of marketing. A number of people do not understand the simplicities of branding and the importance of consumer confidence. It is not enough to just blurt out to every blog, forum, or social site you can get to, there has to be a quality design to your presentation, and the content must be quality. The mixture of people beginning to be familiar with your brand and that being related to a feeling of confidence is one of the most important aspects of marketing yourself I think.