Common Sense Marketing employs research, the knowledge of current media, and the ability to use it with flair.
Headspace. When I start thinking about promoting a business or cause, I tend to create a thought pattern while pulling together all the different marketing elements that I have come to rely on over the years. Taking on a project means that one often immerses oneself in the subject matter and before you know it, ideas just get triggered. If you keep your eyes and ears open once you have learned what to look for, even just handing a writer or SEO Specialist a list of great key search words is a huge start so keep that pad and pen handy.
Focus. It’s always challenging to find a new angle, but it is so important to have an original idea regarding promotion. Focusing on the simple truth about something or its very best qualities often inspires more interesting ways to share the message. Coming up with great ideas for boosting sales, phrases for copy, images to be used, etc. is one of the ways to constantly save on advertising costs. Bounce ideas off family and friends for feedback and be ready to grab great ideas from their reactions. Ask them if your copy is easy to understand.
Common sense. This is often as simple as: ‘What would move you to buy something or use a product, or service?’ If it works for you, it most likely will work for others. You can add whatever you want to the package but what I want to know first from advertising is: Does it insult my intelligence or meet me on a level of truth and tell you what you need to know so in the end, I get the best value for my dollar. Then you can make it clever, funny, arty, or use whatever themes you are using to dress up the message.
Resources. One of the basic things I encourage clients to do is create several folders for various groups of photos. The images should be renamed with titles that include key search words or the name of the company in some form. What good does it do to put up a frame online named #C00870079? If the photograph is large, keep the original, copy it, and resize and crop the copy to save upload time for your website pages. Having a wealth of photos to choose from when marketing is gold when it comes to populating most media. Try to obtain photos that tell the story of your business in action, social events, staff, etc. This is a resource that goes a long way!
Market Research is key to success with anything and helps to arrive at the truth so much faster. To link the consumer, customer, and public to the marketing campaign, it is well worth the effort to gather resources in whatever way you can, read about demographic studies, compare and learn from other’s mistakes and successes, etc. See what’s working and not working in the industry to help establish long-term and short-term goals to work toward with carefully plotted steps. This is where being realistic pays off.
Step inside the shoes of your audience. If you’re building a branding and marketing campaign, think like the critical customer out for the best they can get, and judge each element from that point of view. Applying a good filter will end up cutting down on a lot of ineffectual effort.
Key search words and phrasing are everything for Common Sense Marketing. In the time of SEO. Adjectives, nouns, and verbs are selected with great care for Search Engine Optimization, and whole sentences are constructed to accommodate key search phrases. Programs are built to access how your web page scores by effective use of the number of characters, key search words, meta description, etc. As soon as I meet a client, I start jotting down pertinent words, phrases, descriptions, and definitions that can help me do my job as a writer and marketer.
Free Resources make marketing anyone’s game. You don’t have to have a lot of money for print or online ads anymore if you are inventive. It is all there at the touch of our fingertips. Take advantage of the many free tools available to boost your presence. Social Marketing is a must these days. If you don’t have social pages and content, you are considered behind the times on many levels. It can be a fine line to walk as far as deciding on the best and most appropriate material to share on Facebook, Google+, etc., especially for a business. You don’t want to divulge too much, yet still, want beneficial images imparted. Personal Facebook accounts must be treated as a part of a scrutineer’s material to judge as well. This business of online profiles can be a blessing and can also be a way to undo good efforts if not practiced with care and foresight. This applies heavily to re-posting content as there is often a commercial aspect linked to many good posts you want to share. Understand what you are saying to everyone and exactly what you are sending people to when you share content.
Common Sense Marketing can be fun, especially once you start to see the fruits of your efforts. Get attuned to the many opportunities to self-promote or prepare marketing tools for professionals to use on your behalf. Nobody knows your business quite the way you do, so apply your best common sense and see just how much you can contribute to your marketing campaign before you even hire a professional marketer to round out your projects.