First thing you need to do is think about why are you marketing?

What are you trying to tell people? And are you doing it for the right reasons?

3 things that your marketing should do.

One, it should talk to your audience, speak clearly to your target audience in their language, the right message, at the right time. Talking to everyone is talking to no one.

If you had a baby store and you were sending messages out to teenagers, I bet their parents would be a bit worried.

Or a vegetarian restaurant, sending out to meat eaters. They’re not going to be overly interested or even a coffee club, sending out to avid tea people. Or a tea supplier, sending out to people that only drink coffee. As you can see, not everybody will need your product.

You need to talk to your audience and be specific about who your audience really is. The second thing you need to do is add value, solve their problem. Do you know what their problem is? What does your specific product or service help people do? What is their pain point that you are going to ease? And stop thinking about marketing as selling. What does your product do? How does it solve their problem?

In my other business, CATCO Enterprises, which is a digital marketing agency, we solve people’s problems about the lack of customers.

• They don’t know who their customers are
• They don’t know how to talk to them
• Or where they might hang out.

Thirdly, if it’s appropriate, you need to entertain your audience. Tell them a story about your brand, an emotional story that they can buy into or connect in some way, because emotions sell. Fluffy cats for the sake of fluffy cats is a waste of time and money, unless you happen to be a vet, or a pet store, or something related to cats. Comedy can work really well as well, but just be careful, in this current climate that you don’t overdo it.

You can make your marketing work by:

• Being consistent, especially on social media. You see it over and over and over people blast you for a day or two, and then you don’t hear from them again for a week or more. Now, there’s lots of different scheduling tools and I’ve done quite a few podcast episodes, especially with Facebook, on how you can schedule out your post. So yes, you can set them all up on one day, but make sure it’s drip-fed over the week, the fortnight or the month.
• Be engaging. The social media algorithms love engagement. So if you’re putting out content that people will comment on, ask questions, want to know more, that’s engagement. Even if it’s just something funny, you just need people to come back and engage with it.
• Have a conversation. On social media, they want you to be social, they want you to be having a conversation. So make sure that you are asking your customers and potential customers questions. Talk with your customers, not at them, Julie Broad said. And how true is that? People don’t wanna be lectured to or talked over or made to look silly. So talk with them, have that conversation because people like to do business with people they know, like, and trust.

Listen to Small Business Talk Episode 64 – Marketing Your Business In The Covid-19 Climate for all the details