Effective Marketing Strategies

There are many marketing strategies. Every month there is another launch about a new, fancy, tricked out strategy that is guaranteed to get results. Strategies are not rare.

What is rare are effective marketing strategies.

With so many options in internet marketing, what are the most effective, most efficient strategies? What marketing strategies will generate 80% results with 20% effort?

These are the strategies to focus on.

When creating your marketing plan, you must understand the needs of your business. Video marketing is good but may not suit your business. Article marketing is an excellent choice, but it may not be best for you. Social media works well in some cases and not in others.

What is common to all businesses, however, is the need to choose tools that leverage your efforts to create maximum results with minimum effort. Whatever your marketing plan, choose strategies that are effective and efficient.

There are many online marketing strategies but the ones I recommend are the ones which get the most results for the least effort. Owners of large businesses accomplish this by hiring employees to do work while the business owner focuses on strategy. But small businesses do not have this luxury.

Instead, micro businesses can leverage time and energy by choosing tools which multiply their efforts. The right tools can magnify your productivity as if you had employees doing the work.

Here is an example of how a solo entrepreneur can the produce the same results as an entire marketing team.

1. Start with a Wordpress blog as a hub. Wordpress is easy to use, and free. Search engines love blogs and index them quickly.
   
2. Use Market Samurai to find profitable keywords so that your marketing is based on the most efficient words for building traffic.
3. Use Synnd to get indexed fast and generate social proof. Synnd is a service that forms a community of users to provide links, likes and comments--all automatically. Set up a campaign in an hour and reap the rewards of your work for days.
   
4. Use Unique Article Wizard to generate and distribute quality content all over the internet automatically. Unique Article Wizard is like having a team of writers creating content and building back links all day long.
   
5. Use Oprius for automated follow-up and relationship building with your readers and clients. Write personalized emails once and your business will continue to build relationships indefinitely.
   

With this collection of tools, your efforts are magnified into a complete and effective marketing strategy.

What makes an effective marketing strategy?

• Research - You must start with research. Know who your target market is, what they think and what they need. Don't waste time solving problems your target market doesn't have.
  
• Media - Use the right communication tools for the right market. Article marketing, social media, video--all of them work in the right circumstance. Find out how to reach your target market most effectively.
  
• Winnable - Can you compete in your market? How much effort will it take?
  
• Attainable - If you can compete in your market, how long will it take?
  
• Price - How much will your market pay?

When you have the answers to all these questions, you are ready to put together an effective marketing strategy.

I have coached many businesses on their marketing strategy--from small "bring in a few extra bucks" micro businesses to multi-million dollar businesses, from solo entrepreneurs to businesses with employees, from service oriented businesses to product oriented to affiliate commission oriented.

There is one core principle that is common to the marketing strategy of all these businesses, under all circumstances.

Your marketing strategy must be implementable.

I know this seems simplistic.

The most common cause of a marketing plan not working is not doing it.

Make sure that your marketing strategy is do-able. If you don't implement it and generate cash flow, you won't be in business long enough to improve it.

Make sure your marketing plan is in alignment with all your business resources. If it's too hard, you won't do it. If it's too expensive, you won't do it. If it's too time consuming, you won't do it.

The right marketing tools can make your marketing plan manageable. Use your tools. The only way your marketing plan will work is if you do it.