Marketing is the art of getting your business seen by your target market and making sure that it leaves the impression that leads them closer to the point of conversion. However, when business owners think about setting up a marketing strategy, their thoughts often go immediately and exclusively to advertising. The problem is that this can result in you missing some key tactics along the way.

Creating the Right Brand

First of all, let’s get to the basics of how customers see your business. This is best represented by your brand, which is not just your logo and aesthetic, it’s also the story that you tell. Creating a brand bible with help from a marketing team can help you create a message that’s consistent and convincing, and makes your business much more recognizable.

Sharpening Your Website

Your website is the home of your brand, online at the very least. It’s where customers will come when they want to find out more about you or your services. It’s also where you’re most likely to send them via your online advertisements in the first place. To that end, look at the means of taking your site to the next level. Writing top-level content, ensuring the navigation is easy and impactful, and that customers have a clear path to conversion is key.

Leading Your Customers Down the Right Path

How do you get customers to that site in the first place? Ads do work, but there are other strategies that can be even more effective in the long term. SEO is the practice of using search engines, making sure that your site is optimized so that people who are looking for your services and topics relevant to your business are led to your site. It might take a little investment to get it set up but, so long as you maintain it, it can continue working well into the future, whereas ads tend to work when you pay for them and not again after.

Maintaining Customer Success

Customer service and support are marketing. If that doesn’t make sense right now, just take a look at how it’s more cost-effective to get a customer to return for a repeat purchase than to win a new one. If you can help customers feel successful in their use of the business, it will lead to profits. It also creates more loyal customers.

Building a Community

Those loyal customers are most valuable when they can be shown off to the wider target market. One of the best ways to do that is to establish a community on social media, where happy customers act as positive social proof and spread good word of mouth about the business. You can incentivize this to some degree with referral programs and loyalty systems, too.

Advertising is, of course, an undoubtedly important and powerful part of most marketing strategies. However, it should be the end-all and be-all of said strategies. Take heed of the elements mentioned above and what they can do for your business.