The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Marketers

For a small business, time isn’t just money – it is something that’s always in short supply. That’s why smart marketers make it a priority to get maximum results out of their marketing efforts every day. You’ve got to make sure you’re paying attention to the right things, at the right times … and in the right proportions.

Are you tackling your critical marketing activities effectively? Take a look at these 7 habits of highly effective marketers and find out.

#1 -- Understanding Your Customer

To make the most of your marketing time, you must develop a solid understanding of why customers buy from you. The way to accomplish that is to put yourself in their shoes, get inside their heads, and most importantly, learn to speak their language. It isn’t enough for you to know why your products and services are valuable – you need to have a firm grasp of how demographics and behavioral marketing influences how customers perceive them.

#2 -- Researching Upcoming Trends

Effective marketers keep their eyes open at all times and develop the ability to spot upcoming trends so that they can position their business to ride the upcoming wave of public interest. By using trend research tools and keeping in contact with customers and industry sources, you can do the same. When you can get ahead of a trend, you can leverage the efforts of other media sources to build up a strong sense of need within your target market – and position your product to satisfy that need.

#3 -- Optimizing Your Website

Search engine traffic is quite possibly the next-best thing to word-of-mouth referrals, because search engines deliver “hungry” traffic from customers who are actively looking for something to fulfill their needs. To make the most of this, you need to ensure that you are regularly optimizing your site’s content for keywords related to your products and services, so that the right kind of traffic comes to you when they are in a buying state of mind. Creating new content regularly ensures that the search engines revisit your content often, checking it for improvements.

#4 -- Offering Compelling Copy

Years ago, all it took was a basic company website or a simple mailing to get people’s attention and make sales. These days, effective marketers must master the ability to write compelling sales letters, engaging content and sales copy that draws prospects in and transforms them into paying customers. If you don’t know how to write copy that taps into prospects’ trigger events and impresses them instantly, then time invested in improving your copywriting skills (or finding a good copywriter) is time well spent.

#5 -- Testing Your Methods

Struggling marketers “keep busy” with marketing activities but don’t take the time to track and analyze the return on investment they are getting from their strategies. Smart marketers, on the other hand, take a different approach – they gather results and data and determine what’s working (and what’s not) on a regular basis. They know that the time they spend discovering what’s most effective will pay off with far greater returns than just throwing promotions out and hoping for the best. Don’t let the excuse of being strapped for time keep you from doing something which will save you time (and make you more money) in the long run.

#6 -- Following Up Periodically

Most prospects don’t buy the first time they are exposed to a message, so savvy business owners make sure that there is a follow-up pipeline to keep periodic contact with potential prospects as well as existing customers. Whether you make that happen through a physical mailing list, email newsletter, or phone calls, keeping contact with people helps to build a relationship before, during and after the sale. People enjoy doing business with companies that understand and care about them, and a follow-up process can make sure that happens for every one of your valuable contacts.

#7 -- Up-Selling and Cross-Selling

When a prospect becomes a customer, their mind shifts to “buying mode” and they are predisposed to make additional purchases if they are offered at the same time. Marketing just doesn’t get more effective than this – and smart marketers find ways to offer opportunities at each sales point. This can be done by offering attractive “buy now” discounts on related products or simply offering upgrades at a reduced price if purchased immediately. You can even use these strategies after the sale, giving you a boost in revenue without having to do a significant amount of work.

Effective marketing is the key to helping your small business sales increase year after year while keeping new customer costs under control. Invest the time to improve your company’s standing in each of these seven marketing skill sets, and watch your bottom line improve in a way that will make you as happy as the customers you are serving.