Refining your messaging or branding or goals is probably one of the defining New Year’s resolutions for any business. You don’t need to change entirely; you just need to redirect your focus and fine-tune. Well, if you’ve gathered analytics from last year then you already know what needs improvement in 2015. If not, start there. As I said in our Take Action post earlier this month: “The best action begins with reflection.”
5 Steps to Refining Your Marketing Message
Once you know to some degree what your company’s branding weak points are, it’s time to tweak things a little. Take a look at our 5 steps to refining your marketing message and use it as a blueprint for bolstering your message. You might have a good handle on some of these already, but most of them require continuous effort to get your prospects to the conversion phase.
- Know Thy Audience: As much as you know your own brand, you have to know and understand your audience. Stay up on their pain points because you’ll be shaping your message based on what you can offer these prospects.
- Develop Branding Design: The Internet changes at a fast pace. Programs, plugins, and fashions are all subject to rapid shifts, so make sure you stay on top of these. Be aware of your competitor’s website layouts, and, by extension, what’s popular in your industry. Ask people for their first impressions of your site and make sure it’s professional looking as well as easy-to-use. People have very limited patience for non-intuitive web designs.
- Re-look at Your Mission Statement: Does your mission statement not match your current understanding of your target audience? Changing your mission statement is not like changing your company name, but it might be worthy of a beginning-of-the-year press release. This is your chance to give people a fresh perspective, or just to remind them you’re out there ready to cater to their needs.
- Cultivate Your Social Media Voice: Arguably, social media is only powerful when it fits into your holistic inbound marketing strategy. Don’t get me wrong. When it is used to cultivate your branding characteristics, it can be a powerful marketing tool. Line it up with everything: web design, mission, voice, everything. You don’t need to be louder, you just need to be consistent. And keep in mind that it’s all to build true and lasting relationships that will drive people to your site and down the sales funnel.
- Focus on Continuity: Build your continuity on every platform you use. Continuity of voice, of mission, or customer service – when a prospect or customer interacts with your brand on Twitter, they should feel familiar with what they know about you from that email they received two weeks ago. Once you’ve developed your voice, use it. If you get tired of it, it’s likely that others will too, which is a good way of knowing it’s time to refine.
A Good Place To Start
We at Superior Business Solutions sincerely hope that this post is an effective launch pad that will help you THRIVE in 2015. And trust us, refining your marketing message is a perfect way to begin the year so that your company thrives too. Stay tuned throughout the year to hear our thoughts, hints, and reminders on how you can thrive in your personal and professional life this year. Cheers!
