Awareness First. Then Conversion.
Marketing is often a game of patience. Results do not come overnight and you might will trip and slip on the way to success, especially if your organization is in its infancy or in a repositioning stage.
Before you can expect to “sell” your product or service, your target audience must:
Know about it
See it at least a half-dozen times
Understand how it solves a problem or creates awareness of a problem they didn’t previously know they had
See why it’s different from others in the space
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
In order to be a good marketer you must:
Know yourself - What is your mission and values? What is the perception of your organization and its products/services? Are there negative perceptions that you have to first dispel before you do anything else? Have differentiated key messages that are steeped in data.
Know your competitors - Where are they digitally, in print, and in person? How does their engagement compare to yours (notice that I didn’t say following, that’s a vanity metric)? How “out there” are they–do they speak at conferences, network at events, have a presence on industry blogs and podcasts?
Create a worthwhile marketing experience - This doesn’t mean “be everywhere all of the time.” Your audience will likely not demand it, and I don’t recommend doing it. Be where your audience is. Serve them the content that they need and that will help them.
Analyze what works (keep doing that) and doesn’t work (stop that) - Run a recurring analytics report (e.g. monthly, quarterly, every six months) on your web, social media, and email trends. Don’t spend money where you aren’t seeing resonance.
Once you see that the awareness is there and you are prompting engagement, can you then expect conversions in the names of inquiries, form fills, sales, etc.
