How To Market Your Business in a Noisy World

It’s a noisy world, your marketing resources and headcount are limited and in some case, you’re still defining who your customers are.

How Marketing is being Redefined in Real Time

• 50% or more of your customer engagement will be on smartphones in next 12 months #bemobile
• The “Google Effect” determines how consumers find you via smartphone, device or web search.
• Nothing is new forever: product life cycles are shorter and more compressed.
• We are seeing a shift to self educated buyers; this goes for consumer focused brands and B2B.
• Content is everywhere and anything: your brand voice gets heard via content creation and syndication.
• It’s a 6-8 second click of death competitive world. Image trumps content early in the sell cycle.
• Technology is embedded in every marketing activity. Tech savvy brands are winning in the marketplace.
• It’s an iterative virtual global economy and don’t be the frog in the water (metaphorically speaking).

Your Marketing Strategy In a few Lines

Easy to say, hard to execute (or we’d all be billionaires): dig deep and find your customer persona and build connections on the right social channel.

Be authentic: live your brand and own up to your typos, stumbles, falls and bad ideas. Course correct and move on. You’ll die standing still.

Grok less is more in your marketing: get to the point.

Live social in a proper way. Pay it forward and help people along the path. Be real when/where you can.

If you are Richard Branson you can selfie your ass off via social: if not, then don’t. Save that for your personal Instagram account. (We love him too)

Write compelling kick ass content that resonates with your customers. Start a blog.

Test and retest your marketing: the only formula we know for success.

You may not be the NY Times and have David Carr on staff, but you are a publisher of content and think like one.

Refine “growth hacking” to a science. Core elements: creativity, analytics/analysis: what’s working and what isn’t with social metrics to drive exposure.

Sex still sells; not be chauvinistic. Put some sizzle in your brand messaging. #pauliscool

Mix & match snackable content with long form & story. Creating great content necessitates solid strategy and curation.

Ignore big brand marketing strategy on social networks. You are a small business market like one.

Get on one channel where your customers live and dominate; don’t spread yours brand too thin.

Google .com bubble to understand some of challenges you are facing; it’s a market redux and don’t think it isn’t.

Build a 1.0 crude sales funnel from day one and improve it over time.

You are Geeks, Founders and Visionaries right? Product marketing & “marketing” trip up as many startups as the technology. Staff up accordingly.

Don’t over think it: customers will tell you what’s right and wrong.

How Social Marketing is being Redefined in Real Time

• 50% or more of your customer engagement will be on smartphones in next 12 months #bemobile
• The “Google Effect” determines how consumers find you via smartphone, device or web search.
• Nothing is new forever: product life cycles are shorter and more compressed.
• We are seeing a shift to self educated buyers; this goes for consumer focused brands and B2B.
• Content is everywhere and anything: your brand voice gets heard via content creation and syndication.
• It’s a 6-8 second click of death competitive world. Image trumps content early in the sell cycle.
• Technology is embedded in every marketing activity. Tech savvy brands are winning in the marketplace.
• It’s an iterative virtual global economy and don’t be the frog in the water.

Smartphone Only Content (read and go)

• Be a bold feminine brand: women rock the social web. #sorryamigos
• Marketing is tech immersed.
• Know image drives content.
• Social success requires strategy and patience; remember, time takes time.
• Be a brand lurker: track competitors: platforms, conversations, sophistication (do they know what they are doing?), who they are connected with, etc.
• Think and act like a publisher: content drives everything.
• Authenticity on the right platform equals engagement.
• Integrate speed with all marketing initiatives.
• Measure, analyze, rinse and repeat. #keytakeaway

Finally, don’t listen to everything marketers tell you. We are at times maybe one step ahead of you.

Originally published as Marketing Your Business in a Noisy World by Lee Traupel of Linked Media World. Lee is a Huff Post Contributor | Content Strategist| Design Decoder | ROI Herder | Mojo Maker | Techy Not Coder | UX/UI Romanticist | Just Delta Blues | Digital strategist – market honed digital navigator for brands big and small.