LEVEL ONE MARKETING

What comes to mind when I say the word marketing? You may think of advertising. The TV series Mad Men might come to mind. When I said advertising, did your brain take you to more traditional forms like newspaper, television, and radio. Maybe you thought about magazine ads or billboards. Maybe marketing to you means social media. Marketing is a very broad topic and in 2022 has many different meanings. The truth is that marketing is all of these and so much more. Marketing is an experience. Marketing is an action. The dictionary defines marketing as “the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.” This can be overwhelming, especially if you are a small business, so let’s break this down.

Before you know what to say or where to say it, you need to define your potential customers or clients, who your competition is and what you do that makes your business unique. Simon Sinek in his book, “Know Your Why” talks about how successful and sustainable companies know their why. Not what they do or how they do it, but why they do what they do. By knowing your why, you can make an emotional connection with your potential customers and help them to understand why they need your product or service and why they should do business with your company. Our Why at Golden Pear Voice and Image is to help your business grow. What we do is offer marketing solutions. How we do it is through on hold messages, customized radio stations, marketing and branding consulting, social media management and podcast production. We offer these solutions to help you tell people what you do and why they should do business with you, which in turn will help you grow your business. We want to help you. Now it’s time for some homework: Take time to answer these questions:

Why did you start your business?

Who is your competition?

What do you do that your competition does not do or what do you do better?

What makes you unique?

What does your business do?

How does your business do what you do?

What is your business why?

List all the marketing you did in the past year, paid or unpaid (organic)

Now that you’ve taken the time to answer these questions, you are prepared to move to the next phase of marketing and branding, which is who are your customers/clients, where do you find them and how do you reach them.

You can’t just say yes to everyone that comes in your business or calls you on the phone and tells you that their marketing solution is the one for you. Once you know the answers to the questions above, then you can start to formulate a plan to get the word out. Create a focus group and you ask them the same questions you asked yourself and see if your answers match or if they are far apart. You must lay the foundation before you can build the house, right? You can’t just open your doors and expect people to come pushing through them, especially not in today’s business climate. If you’re a small busines owner, you’re doing it all and that is exhausting. That’s where we can help. We walk through this process with you. You don’t have to navigate the sea of marketing and branding alone. Pair up with The Golden Pear to determine the best marketing and branding solutions for your business.

‍