Focusing Your Marketing Efforts

Quite simply, marketing or promoting your product or service can feel like an overwhelming task, but the main cause of overwhelm is usually rooted in doing too much with too little capacity.

In 2008, a writer called Kevin Kelly wrote an essay titled “1000 True Fans” [1]. It created a buzz across the entrepreneurial world with its basic message being: if you can get 1000 people to spend $100 on your product or service each year, you’re off to a very good start. Business thought leaders like Tim Ferriss and Seth Godin perpetuated this message, reminding business owners (alongside artists, musicians, and other creative individuals) that when you’re focused on generating true fans who love what you do, you’ll be putting yourself in a good position.

The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make when starting out in terms of marketing a product or service, is casting the net too wide. This happens in an attempt to catch as many fish as possible, but often (as the analogy goes) means that the majority of (usually smaller) fish fall through the gaps.

In terms of how we’ll reach them, let’s start with some critical areas of your marketing that you should nail first and foremost, before complicating things or spreading yourself and your resources too thin.

• Have a clear brand and story: As we’ve talked about this week already, you need to have a clear visual identity that is reinforced with a well-articulated story, including your mission, vision, and what you do/sell.
• Have an effective online presence: It seems obvious, but having a website that is well thought out and takes customers (or fans as Kelly described them) on a clear customer journey from discovery to purchase, is critical in the age of technology. Even if your business is primarily in-person or bricks and mortar, you need to have a digital shop front to back this up.
• Set up dedicated social media profiles: How are you being represented on social media? Have you identified which platforms are most relevant to your audience? If you’re targeting young families, perhaps YouTube is the right platform. If your ideal customer is a teenager, then TikTok might be key. Define a clear strategy for brand awareness and customer acquisition.
• Paid ad strategy: If you have a budget for it, investing in paid customer acquisition is extremely powerful in a world driven by data and where more than half of the world’s population is online. Considering your paid ad strategy early on will help you to gain traction and fine-tune your audience through real and dynamic insights.
• Partnerships: As we will see in the next activity, in the wellness industry partnerships are incredibly powerful as a way of collaboration with complimentary brands or individuals to reach a wider audience.

This is a solid starting point in terms of relevant tactics. Your business plan should already have included core thinking about budgets, resources, objectives, and target markets, as well as a clear understanding of where and how you’re positioning yourself relative to competitors.

Based on what you’ve learnt about goal setting, you’re also going to want to have some clear SMART goals attached to your marketing plans to keep you focused. For example, in year 1 do you want to get to 2% brand awareness in your target market? Perhaps you want to acquire 50 repeat customers. Remember SMART goals are: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. You can’t do everything in year 1 of your business, so decide which marketing tools are going to be your primary focus and prove to yourself that they’re adding real value as quickly as possible.

What do you think?

Can you share any wellness brands that you resonate with because of the brand story behind them?

Also, how do they make you feel and how do you know when your values are aligned with a brand?

References

[1] Kevin Kelly (2008) 1,000 True Fans [Online]. Available at: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ (Accessed 20 March 2021).