Cleantech companies have a tremendous opportunity to increase traffic, leads and revenue by implementing an effective search engine optimization strategy. While many of the basic SEO principles can be found with base SEO searches, here are 5 outside of the box tips that will take your cleantech company’s SEO to another level:

1)      Use “exact” search in Google Keyword Tool to find realistic audience opportunities

Using tools like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool are helpful to giving you metrics on potential audience for targeted words and phrases. One important step to SEO research that many marketers make is the failure to click the “exact” box before you conduct your search. Here is the query for “smart grid implementation”:

Phrase            Competition    Global Monthly Searches        Approx CPC

Broad              Low                  720                                               $6.71

Exact               Medium           46                                                 $4.30

Granted, it would be great to rank #1 for all 720 global monthly searches. But in this day of tracking all traffic to conversion, the ones specifically typing in the exact phrase will be more likely to click on your ranked page. You should also use this research to help you determine which thought leadership topics are getting the most attention. Which leads us to…

2)      Leverage your blog as a vehicle for thought leadership

Blogs are fantastic communication platforms and should be used as a way to provide thought leadership. Featuring market research, trends that you’re seeing in cleantech or providing a thought piece to a recent piece of news are all fantastic ways to leverage a blog for search. Everyone knows that adding links into your blog is an important step to looking credible. What many forget to implement is notifying the websites that they’re linking to. Who knows? Maybe those websites will blog or link back to you. You should also do this same thing for editorial content. Getting great thought leadership on other sites that link back to your website not only increases your visibility with the website that published your editorial but also that very important link juice.

3)      Track if keywords are actually driving action (leads, revenue)

It’s great if you’re ranked on the first page for a specific keyword. But you will quickly find yourself in trouble if that traffic does not convert into the action you’re looking for. Solve this problem by having a strategy in place to track the paths of your visitors. You can use some basic functionality in Google Analytics or consider looking into marketing automation software platforms like Pardot, Eloqua, Hubspot, and Marketo.

4)      Find out your competitors’ key word rankings

Using sites like SEOMOZ will give you the visibility you need to see what key words and phrases your competitors are currently ranking for. This is critical information because knowing which websites are linking to your competitor’s webpages will give you the roadmap to increasing your rankings.

5)      Having a site that’s easily crawled/indexes is well known but often overlooked

SEO strategies have been around long enough that most people know how to optimize your web pages for search. If you don’t, consider checking out the Google SEO Blog. A common mistake companies tend to make is not signing up for Google Webmaster Tools. Not only is this a place for you to be able to submit your XML Sitemap (and a video XML Sitemap) but you can also find out which terms and keywords are ranking. Another important feature of Webmaster Tools is the ability to identify any crawling or indexing errors.  Fixing these errors will definitely increase your chances of getting ranked.

Conclusion

These five tips should give you a better chance of ranking the keywords that you’re targeting. If you’re finding that you still need some help with your SEO, then please contact us.

1) Have a clear understanding of your goals

As we’ve mentioned above, there are numerous variables that you can test with A/B testing. It is important to think through which variable tests will provide the lowest hanging fruit. It is these variables that you will want to begin implementing A/B testing.  As you identify which variables to test first, make sure you create realistic metrics for success. If you find that your baseline testing shows that your lead conversion ratio is 1%, don’t expect that after a few days of testing that your ratio will soon jump to 65%. There are some cases where these tests offer significant improvements. But it is a safer bet, to temper your expectations and work towards incremental improvements. If executed effectively, your testing will achieve the aggressive goals that you might want to achieve.

2) Test one variable at a time

Once you have identified what you are testing, make sure you only test one variable at a time. For example, if you are interested in testing an email campaign, consider performing tests on subject lines (these need to be juicy/sticky), website or landing page layout, or time of delivery in an email campaign. Because you will receive the data in real time, you will be able to get a focused output of results. Marketers too commonly try to test too much at once to save time. Make sure that this does not happen to you.

3) Have a large enough sample size

Because we’re dealing with a statistical analysis, it is important to make sure that you have enough data to drive a decision. Companies that aren’t taking into account the sample size are opening themselves up to the opportunity that they are making decisions with too little data. For example, a company that is looking to test the effectiveness of their banner ad creative for a PPC campaign will need at least a hundred thousand impressions before they have enough data to see which creative makes sense. If you have a $1000 budget and your paying $10 per thousand impressions ($10 CPM) then you will have 100,000 impressions of data available for testing. If you have 2 banner ad creative options and you run them each 50% of the time, then you will have 50,000 impressions of which to make a decision. This is a much larger sample size to make an educated decision, compared to implementing a $100 budget and a $10 CPM ad rate.

4) Let the data do the talking

Many times companies will make assumptions about the effectiveness of their website and online promotions. When making recommendations for how to improve these campaigns, use the information that you’ve acquired from you’re A/B testing as evidence for why you are recommending what you are recommending. Usually, these results are all that you need to make specific route, quick and effective changes to your website or online campaign.

Whether your company has a large or small budget, it is imperative that you test any online objective that you implement. While your budget might dictate the extensiveness of your company’s A/B testing, the results that you will discover will become critical to improving your online and corporate marketing strategy.

1. Know your audience and objective. Is your webinar supposed to provide the Chief Customer Officer of a potential utility customer with a product demonstration of your software? Will your webinar provide useful research to a retailers marketing team about how tenants with triple net leases consume energy? What are you trying to communicate to your audience before you start your presentation? You need to know exactly what you want to get out of the people that you are targeting and have a well defined outline in place.
2. Have a focused agenda. When building your outline, make sure to leave room for highlighting the main takeaways. These events usually last 30 minutes to an hour. So your audience will only be able to remember a few main talking points. Remember, you want them to perform some kind of action at the end of your webinar. So, don’t cloud their mind with too much “stuff”. Stay focused!
3. Practice, practice, practice. Presenting a webinar is much different than presenting to a live audience. You will not receive the same kind of feedback / energy from a webinar audience as you will a live audience. Because this will be a new feeling, practice delivering the webinar presentation. Many people will write a script. Don’t get caught “reading”. Even though they can’t see you, your audience will quickly be able to tell if you’re reading or presenting.
4. Let your audience ask/tweet questions. Engaging your audience is critical. So let them tweet their questions to you. Not only does this give others the ability to say “Oh, I want to know the answer to that question too.” But it also increases your awareness online. You can make this really effective by creating your own hastag, like #energywebinar. Shoot, if you get enough people on your webinar, you just might start a trend. This strategy comes with one major caveat. If you’re going to ask for questions, make sure that you leave time to answer them. Nothing is more frustrating as an audience member than being told that there will be time for questions and then not have any time to because the presenter rambled for too long. Big no-no. If there are more questions than you have time for, then create a follow up, thank you email that includes all of the answers to what everyone asked. Your audience/potential customers will be very appreciative of this.
5. Give action items. The purpose of having a webinar platform is to have your audience perform an action. Make sure that your presentation is geared towards providing a road map to the action item(s) that you want your audience to take. You could offer a bunch of self-help strategies for a specific energy issue and then offer to speak with audience members, one on one, to answer any specific questions. Or you could tell them to call you if they are interested in signing up for your service. Don’t forget to promote the next webinar in your series!
6. Having guests is great! Having webinars with guests is an awesome way to show your collaboration reach within the energy sector. Your audience will love this because it makes the event less “salesy” if someone from another company agreed to participate. Some solid guest ideas include customers, vendors, someone from the media, authors, elected officials, and representatives from non-profits. Make sure that they’re personality and qualifications fit with the vibe that you’re looking. If you can’t find someone that’s not the right fit, then it’ll be much better to go at it solo.
7. Make the webinar available on demand. There will be a few people who really want to be online when your giving your presentation live. But, as you know, the work day can quickly get away from you. Have all of your webinars available on-demand right after you’ve given your presentation. This ensures that the no-shows won’t feel penalized for missing out.
8. Have a plan in place to follow up with anyone that signed up. You just gave a great presentation that was full of great content, a roap map to success and some solid action items. Now what? Follow up! There will be three types of people that you need a strategy for: no-shows, live audience and on-demand audience. It’s important that you figure out when and what you will do and say to each bucket of people and how they will fit into your sales cycle. Depending on your target audience, your follow up strategy could have a MAJOR impact on your overall revenue.
9. Repurpose your content. Are you proud of yourself for creating 30-60 minutes of killer content? You should. Now wow the rest of your team by figuring out other ways to utiltize the content that you just created. Can you use sound bites in a commercial or another presentation? Should the Q&A session be morphed into an online FAQ? Can you create white papers, articles or blog content out of your webinar? You’ve already done 80% of the work. The other 20% is  figuring out what other formats will best suit your business.

The most important takeaway from this blog post is that any webinar, whether it’s a series or a stand alone presentation, should not only provide tremendous value for the audience but leave them impressed and interested in wanting more from your business. If you need help developing and managing your webinar strategy, be sure to contact us now!

1.       Use Recycled Paper

Paper kills trees – or something like that. You’ve probably heard it a thousand times how thousands of trees are cut down yearly just so businesses can provide flyers to random strangers on the street. So what better way to go green marketing than to use recycled paper for all your marketing materials like your pamphlets and flyers? And don’t forget to indicate in your marketing literature that you’re using recycled paper.

2.       Don’t Use Paper At All

There are ways that you can skip using paper for your business marketing and it’s a good idea (not to mention cost-effective) to do so every time you can. For example, rather than handing out paper newsletters, you can simply email your newsletters to your clients and to your prospective customers by using an email marketing service. Not only do you save money and paper by doing this, you will also gain additional insights on how your newsletter is performing marketing-wise. Are people actually reading your digital newsletter? How many people opened the emailed newsletter? What links did they click? These are information that you won’t easily get when you take the traditional route.

3.       Buy Stuff Locally

The less gas you use, the better for the environment. If you can, buy all of your marketing stuff from nearby locations. Walk or bike to the store if you can and leave the car at the office – that’s going to be better for the environment and for your health. If you’re ordering bulk, then find a supplier that’s as near as you as possible so you can minimize shipping costs and limit the carbon footprint that you leave in the environment.

4.       Encourage Green Behavior from Your Customers

If you’re doing your marketing right, you’re probably reaching a lot of people. You can use that same reach to provide incentives to customers who show some love to the environment. Perhaps discount coupons can entice your customers to adopt trees or participate in community cleanup events.

5.       And Your Co-Workers

Your co-workers can also help out in taking care of the environment (and helping out your marketing as well) by using re-usable promotional coffee mugs, reusable shopping bags, reusable water bottles, etc. By bringing these items around with them, they’re helping out with marketing as well.

6.       Hold Meetings Online

Holding your marketing meetings remotely is also another great way to care for the environment, limit your team’s gas consumption, and utilize everyone’s time wisely. Rather than making everyone in your 30-man marketing team travel back to the office or commute to a common meeting place, why not meet online instead?

7.       Don’t Forget The Little Things

There are a lot more that you can do to make your business marketing greener and more sustainable. Even if they turn out to be little things or adjustments with seemingly little environmental benefits, these little things all add up in the end so don’t ignore them. An example is using shredded scrap paper as packing materials when shipping breakable marketing materials like mugs etc. There are some adjustments that your business marketing can make; do so and there’s a good chance your business will save money as well as helping out the environment.

Here are the steps you should take to conduct an effective brand audit for your energy company:

1. Conduct Secondary Research

The first step in your brand audit is collecting all available and necessary information from your secondary sources.  The information available from secondary sources can be company history, brands and product lines, financial performance and sales history, competition (direct and indirect), advertising, competitive strengths and weaknesses, etc. Finding this kind of information about energy companies is not too hard to find. Your clients can provide you with information regarding their business, marketing, and PR plans; annual reports; information about key executives; press kit; etc. and provide you feedback about how your product(s) or service(s) are helping them with their issues related to energy.

2. Find out what the ‘company’ thinks about the brand

Company Brands in the energy industry are supported first and foremost by their own team. That’s why it’s very important to determine what the brand looks like from the “inside.” You can accomplish this by interviewing  executives, managers, employees, the people at sales, etc. This is the best time to find out more about the company, their products, the core focus of the company, the brand’s differentiation and identity, as well as the consumers and the competition. Is everyone on the same page about where the industry is going? Does your team feel that your brand effectively conveys the solutions that you offer to the energy sector?

There’s a lot of information that you can get from the inside, information that you can use to gain a better understanding of the product and how the company as a whole and the different areas of the company are reaching their goals in support of the product.

3. What’s the view from the outside?

After getting a feel of what the deal is inside the company, it’s time to find out what those outside your company are saying about your brand. Surveys done on current and prospective customers regarding brand awareness, preference, usage, and loyalty can speak volumes about how your brand is actually doing in the market. Is your brand going head to head with the competition? What are your consumer demographics and how is your brand targeting these? Are you current users thinking of switching over to the other brands? This is where you find out.

4. Put it in writing

The last step in your audit is developing a written summary of your findings. You should also involve overviews of the following:

• The Environment

Provide a written review of the industry trends, the challenges regulations are posing on the brand, and the sustainability and health of the market environment?

• The Category

Give an overview of the brand’s category and assess the customer awareness, preference and usage in the said category.

• The Brand

Write an assessment of how the brand is doing in terms of development and market penetration. You should also include a written assessment of how the brand is attracting consumers and just what benefits it is providing consumers.

• The Consumer

State what the consumer wants and needs as well as their buying habits, loyalties, and motivations.

• The Competition

This is where you give a rundown of what indirect and direct competition the brand has; their share of the market; and their strengths and weaknesses.

Once a comprehensive audit is complete, companies will now have a clearer focus and vision. They will also be able to strengthen and capitalize on their brands’ competitive advantages. The company will also get a deeper understanding of their customer as well as develop better communication with internal and external audiences. From here on in, if the companies listen to the audit findings, they will have a tighter approach on how they market and provide their brands to the public and their energy usage.

Here are the things you need to consider to make a solid marketing strategy blueprint.

Short Term to Long Term Goals

Your marketing plan needs goals; from short term to long term. For small energy companies, a plan that covers one year can help greatly in achieving marketing goals, especially if your company is working in a part of the energy sector that is growing and less predictable. You can also add medium term to long term goals after you finish with your short term goals. All of your goals will help you track performance and determine your marketing and branding success levels. As your building your marketing plan, think about how your initiatives will generate high quality leads, lowers your sales cycle or increases awareness for your company and brand. With set goals in place, you will be able to better determine the success of your marketing performance.

Let Your Plan Simmer

Don’t be in a hurry to finish your marketing plan. Since it is vital to your business’s success, you should give yourself a couple of months to finish writing the plan. After all, there are a lot of things that you need to consider and research when planning. From identifying the target market, to determining the advertising budget, it is very important that you cover all the bases. Plus, there are many stakeholders who will be responsible for helping you implement your plan. So, it’s important that you get the appropriate buy in from everyone before you start executing. Which leads us to our next point.

Get Important Feedback  

Your marketing plan will affect the whole company. That being the case, it’s very important that you show your marketing plan to the different departments of your company and get their feedback. Aside from the marketing department, make it a point to visit the other departments as well – manufacturing, sales, personnel, supply and so on. You might be surprised at the valuable feedback that they might give. They can provide you with realistic input on how to achieve your goals or even point out opportunities you might have overlooked.

Sync Your Marketing Strategy with the Business Plan

Your energy company’s business plan is all about your business – what you are and what you do; your business goals; and your strategies. In short, your business plan is the master plan of your whole company. Whenever you find your marketing plan going beyond your business plan, you need to backtrack and change your marketing plan. Keep in mind that both plans should be in sync. Your marketing plan should always support your business plan.

Implement and Revisit Your Marketing Plan

After careful planning, research and double-checking, you will end up with a marketing plan that can range from half a dozen pages long to one that’s hundreds of sheets thick. Place your marketing plan nearby where you can refer to it quarterly or monthly. That way you can track your progress and make the necessary adjustments – either to your marketing plan or to your actual marketing and branding decisions.

1.       Make sure your product is perfect

Whatever your product is, you need to make sure it’s perfect before you go to the market – or at least as perfect as you can get your product to be. Being a great product isn’t enough to make a great product successful. You need to refine your product or service so that you can continue to produce or provide a constant supply to your future clients. You also need to make sure that you can produce it cheaply as well. You don’t want the cost of production and other overhead expenses to overwhelm you either. More and more energy start-ups are choosing to manufacture their products in the U.S.. There’s definitely great value in saying that your product is “Made In America” and your marketing campaign will want to tout this.

2.       Settle the money issues

If all goes well – and that’s how you want it to go – you’re going to be handling a lot of money from your investors. So make sure all of the money issues and concerns are settled as early as possible. Energy companies traditionally require a lot of capital to get going because of how much infrastructure has to be built before you can product a product or plant (Ex: manufacturing plants, prototypes etc.). And if you’re an energy software start-up, you’re going to need lots of dollars for fantastic developers and lots of server space. With this in mind, make sure that your money partners are strategic and leverage their brands to help you with your marketing initiatives. Future investors, partners and clients, will want to know that you’re funded and by whom.

To solve all of your “money problems,” you only need to look online for the solutions. Already there are a lot of useful online systems and tool that can help you invoice, collect, track funds, etc. There is also a lot of great information and advice that you can get online regarding legal and financial issues.

3.       Build your customer base

Okay, so this step is pretty straightforward. Start increasing your fan base by doing the simplest thing that you can do: sell your product or service to people. Customers – actual paying customers – are the bread and butter of your business. You can forget all about posters and snazzy logos and you can still run a pretty good business from anywhere if you have a healthy initial customer base. Many start-up energy companies have to go through pilot projects with customers before they can close these opportunities. Tout these pilot projects to potential customers and use the data that you collect from your products performance to hone in your messaging.

4.       Aim for 200%

If you’re really serious about growing your business, you need to think about doubling your business, over and over again. Make plans to double your sales, operations, services and cash flow. Determine the steps and changes that you need to grow these areas of your business by 200%. Your energy start-up might be relatively new, but with a plan in place you’re already gearing up your business for growth.

These steps might seem simple, but that’s the point. Keep things simple, especially since you’re probably just starting and getting the hang of things. That way you can focus on the core basics.  And when you focus, the chances of your start-up succeeding increases.

Let your business friends help
To solve the main socio-ecological problems that come with your products, you’re going to need some assistance. Working with your suppliers, retailers, consumers, and even scientists, can help you come up with new ways to make your products sustainable and in helping you further sell your product and services. They can also offer valuable advice and spot some socio-ecological problems that you might have overlooked.

Be a trustworthy business
When you solve the main socio-ecological problems that your products or services make, consumers begin to trust you more. To increase the credibility of sustainability brands further, link up with reliable and trustworthy partners. You can also utilize independent, third-party labels to increase your credibility with consumers some more. The more credibility you surround yourself with, the more credible your brand becomes.

Make sure sustainable doesn’t mean unusable
You want to make sure that the socio-ecological traits of your product or service actually benefits the consumers. Don’t let your focus on providing sustainable products end up in creating a product or providing a service that doesn’t benefit consumers at all. Imagine making an environmentally friendly soap, which sadly – because it’s “too environment friendly” – can’t wash properly. To make sure that customers continue to trust you, give them products that provide both the inherent benefits of socio-ecological attributes and other consumer benefits such as functionality, a good design and durability.

Listen to what consumers have to say
With the advent of social media, it’s become easier for businesses to connect with consumers, and vice versa. Taking into consideration what your customers have to say about the sustainability of your products and services, and inviting them to participate in a discussion regarding the same strengthens the relationship between you and your consumers. Also, it’s a great way for business to learn new things or find out something that you might have missed.

Keep at it – and then some more
Keeping at it isn’t enough. You also need to remind your consumers regularly through ads, online communication, personal selling and promotions. Also, it’s not only your products which should provide customers, directly or indirectly with socio-ecological benefits – the whole production process and behavior of the company should reflect their sustainability branding. When consumers buy your products they are purchasing not only the item or the service but the company’s holistic approach to sustainability.

Let the big boss in on it too
Sustainability branding isn’t just the work of PR managers and sustainability officers. It also requires the commitment of the big boys on the top floor. This kind of participation and immersion on the part of CEOs and top-level managers shows just how serious the company – and everyone in it – is to provide customers with socio-ecological benefits through products and services.

Keep at it – indefinitely
Proper sustainability is continuous. Sustainability branding isn’t simply a seasonal campaign. It should grow with the brand over time. A brand shouldn’t be seen changing sustainability focus too often or even backing out on its promises. As mentioned above, brands should also refrain from focusing on too many non-related socio-ecological endeavors. Each effort must contribute to the whole socio-ecological marketing to achieve an effective and continuing sustainability brand.

Unless you already dominate and existing market segment, focusing on a general market is not good idea. You end up wasting a lot of time and effort (not to mention money) focusing your attentions on a general market who happens to be generally uninterested in your product or services. When you focus on a specific target market however, you
single out the group of consumers who are prepared to purchase your goods and services. Not only do you increase the chances of making sales, you also cut down on your marketing overhead and save time, effort and money.

How to Define Your Target Market

Look at your current customers

Understanding your current customers, the who’s and the why’s, can help a lot in determining the next steps that you will take. Knowing who buys your products and why they do it can help you determine other people who might like your product or service as well. Your current customers don’t just bring in repeat sales, they also provide a wealth of  information helpful in defining your target market.

Check out the competition

Find out what your competition is doing right and what they might be overlooking. Check out your competition to find out who they are targeting, who are their current customers, and how their business is faring. Once you determine their target market, steer clear of that target market and find a niche of your own.

Inspect your product

Take some time to inspect your product or service. List down the features of your product or service. Next to these features, list the benefits, and the benefits of those benefits that clients can gain from them. Next, make a list of people who might enjoy having the benefits that you have listed. Those are the people who will be interested in buying your product.

Decide on client demographics to target

The general market is very heterogeneous, but it is when you go into the details that your business will succeed. Aside from knowing who needs your product, it’s also very important to determine who who will take out their wallets and make the purchase. Use Age, Location, Gender, Income level, Education level, Marital or family status,  Occupation, Ethnic background factors to target your potential customers.

Find out how your customers think

Getting inside the heads of your customers can also help you define your target market. Why did they purchase your product/service? When will they use it? How do they feel owning the product? How did they hear about your business? Even a simple online poll can help you gather information about the more personal traits of your customers. By understanding how your customers think, you can easily locate other potential customers who think just like them.

Double check your decisions

Once you’ve decided on a target market, it’s time to evaluate and study your decision. Are there enough potential clients in the niche that you’ve found? Will the target market need and benefit from your products/services? Have you broken down your target into too small a size? By reviewing your decisions, you give yourself another chance to weed out some errors and add some more information.

Once you’ve defined your target market, it will be much easier for you to execute your marketing plan. And with a more defined target market, you’ll be saving time, energy and effort and enjoy a successful business at the same time.

1. Put marketing at the top of your to-do list.
When a customer or client purchases your product or service, it’s because they are sold on your product or service. Whether they’ve heard it from a friend or seen an advertisement, the main reason why customers buy your product is because of effective marketing strategies. You will need to focus on marketing, if you want your business to succeed. In fact, from the Product Development Stage, to Pricing, to effective Positioning, and lastly to Promotion, effective marketing can mean sales, so pay close attention to your marketing strategy.

2. Target Your Target Market.
Zooming in on your target market means clearly defining your intended audience. Who are the people who buy from you? Who are your competitors targeting? Who else are most likely to buy from you and what are their personality types? Which of your current customers should you exclude? And what benefit does your product or services provide and why do you think customers will buy from you? By targeting your target market, you will be able to reach more customers and enjoy more sales. Remember to keep the eye on the prize and stay focused. Too many times businesses implement marketing programs that don’t cater to their target market. This is a no-no.

3. The customer is always right. So address their concerns quickly.
The phrase the customer is always right has never been more true than it is with today, especially with the advent of social media. Before, businesses could care less what their customers were feeling. Now that customers can voice their concerns in real time over the different social media and customer review sites, making sure that the perceived wants and needs of customers are fulfilled are suddenly in the top of every business’s list. Not all customers are always right though, and handling that one irritating individual who keeps trolling your business’s landing page is also part of a good marketing strategy. To protect yourself from all customer feedback, make sure that you your customer service experience is over-the-top exceptional. Having a social media response plan is key to handling customer concerns or poor product or service reviews. And follow up. Customers want to know that you care and handled their issue quickly. If you effectively convey this to them, then you will be on your way to fostering strong evangelists.

4. Don’t Forget Your Existing Customers
In the bid to win over more customers, sometimes companies forget to value the wealth that they already have: their existing customers. For many businesses, existing (repeat) customers make up the bulk of your clients and sales. Aside from that, they also provide you with a wealth of information: they can frequently provide you with excellent feedback; they are free advertisements on legs; they keep your business happily in the black. Sure, getting new clients and customers is important, but don’t forget those who helped you keep your business running. Plus, it’s cheaper to keep a good client happy than to try and acquire a new one.

5. Advertising and marketing are two different animals
Contrary to what most entrepreneurs believe, advertising is not marketing. Advertising is merely one part of the whole marketing process. Almost everyone mistakes the two as being one and the same and it’s hurting their business. When you mistakenly believe that simply placing advertisements constitutes a working marketing strategy, then that’s effectively saying that you can send a lousy product flying off the shelves with just ads to back them up. Marketing starts from the first moments of the Product Development Stage and only ever ends when your business closes shop indefinitely (which, shouldn’t happen when you do marketing right). So make sure that you are keeping things in perspective when you’re looking at your advertising strategy against your overall marketing goals. This holistic perspective will save you precious time and money.

6. Create a distinct and memorable brand
You want to be able to set yourself apart from your competitors. Imagine a shelf full of similar products from different brands. What makes you pick one from the other? Do you remember comparing them before buying what you considered to be the better product? What were the reasons why you ultimately went with the winner? Was it the product quality, packaging, brand value, delivery, price or convenience? Like you, other customers compare as well. Make sure to give them compelling reasons to choose your product or service over others.

7. Aim for the Heart
The buying process is a very emotional process. While most companies tend to focus on one side of the fence (service/product price, advertising), a good marketing campaign never leaves out what the clients feel when buying or enjoying your products or services. Do the customers feel satisfied with buying your products? Do they actually feel good using your products? It’s critical to have your marketing strategy address this emotional process.