5 Essential Marketing Tips to Try This Year

I’ve been gathering marketing strategies for this business for the past six years. Here are the ones I return to the most:

Growth over everything… in the beginning

A lot of marketers are creators in disguise.

They’ll tell you to spend time on a logo or fancy website UI before you launch your product.

In actuality, when you first start out, getting customers and customer feedback trumps all.

A great product that sells is the best marketing. Good marketing multiplies sales. So if you have zero sales, it doesn’t matter how good your marketing is.

What’s the fastest way to get your first sale?
Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Marketing:

1. Social media marketing — keep people engaged with your brand
2. Personalized emails — build an email list to convert subscribers
3. Influencer marketing — leverage existing influencer reputation

A website that ranks #1 on Google gets way more clicks than a website that is #10. An article shared by Elon Musk brings in more website traffic than a hundred of your top blog posts combined. Leverage platforms and other people to get your brand seen.

Pick your social channels

Google has established itself as a trusted source for relevant and useful content. This is not by accident.

Why do some pages rank higher than others? It’s not all based on paid ads.

Search engine optimization is the key. Google SEO utilizes keywords to show relevancy, user metrics to measure usefulness, and backlinks to establish trust. Customers will find your products based on the effectiveness of these elements.

Social media allows you to gather an audience. Whether newcomers or stolen from other brands, all your favorite platforms offer recycled audiences who can eliminate you from their feeds with the click of a (unfollow) button.

Email is the only true audience you own. Build your following on social media, then vet and establish your customer base through email.

Build a brand and focus on positioning

Your long-term goal should be a brand people trust.

Time and consistency breed trust. Customers feel safer with a product and a brand that has been around for a while. That’s why you see “Established in 18XX” across product labels.

But not every brand has been operating for 100 years.
Social proof becomes the shortcut to trust.

Testimonials on your website, tags across your social media, and articles referencing your product are all ways to build trust in your community. You want people talking about your brand, in a positive way of course.

Branding is how you escape the competition. Customers become your voice. They can explain your brand better than you ever could because they use it.

Choosing the Right Content

Content is the most underrated key to business.

I’m not talking about budgeted commercials and paid advertising.

Daily social media posts, video tutorials, and relevant articles are all “free” tickets into your potential customer’s view. This is your way to engage with them in the places they visit most.

…pretty much anywhere online.

If they're on TikTok, focus on creating videos.
If they’re on Twitter, focus on effective copy.
If they’re on Instagram, focus on both.

Bring value to your people, wherever they are.

Your people = Customers

What content should you make?

Anything you can consistently create over a long period of time that educates, inspires, or entertains. Ideally, something that only you can create.

Your content must be easily created, digested, and shared.

Copy that hits a cord

What’s better than a picture that speaks a thousand words?

A sentence.

No matter how big social media gets, human beings operate through language. Our greatest ideas are shared through words.

Words are the easiest access into the hearts and minds of the people.

But before worrying about copywriting hacks, we must first have something interesting to say, then we can focus on how to say it.

The best marketing lives in real life.

Hostile hooks, aggressive headlines, and fabricated scarcity only work once. It is counterproductive to building a lasting brand that encourages loyal actions. Speak authentically to relevant problems and provide valuable solutions.