Years ago the President of Razor Thin Media would find himself on the grid iron of a football field. As a defensive end his object was to sack the quarterback. One cold afternoon at football practice his coach posed the question, "What is the fastest way to get to the quarterback?" Answering his own question he said, "it is by a Razor Thin line!" Years later when searching for inspiration for the title of his company Cameron decided to fall back on those words of wisdom... the fastest way to succeed in marketing was still a Razor Thin line. And so Razor Thin Media was born.
*Razor Thin Media President Cameron Davis Crossing the Goal line for a touchdown!
This had us thinking... How else is marketing like sports?
The great Michael Jordan once said, "Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise."
This is not only accurate in sports but reigns true in the marketing world as well. Like preparing for a intense game, there are several measures a team must go through to be fully prepared to win the game and arise victorious. If this same mindset is applied to your marketing strategy you can begin to see how it will lift your business to new heights! Razor Thin Media has 3 key fundamentals that can help your business be victorious.
1. Understanding Your Business Goals & Competition
Let's take a football game for example. While preparing for every big football game a team will always take the time to study game film before rehearsing a game plan. For several hours coaches and players will study WHO THEY ARE, what plays worked last week, which ones weren't successful. After these coaches understand their abilities as a football team and what they want to achieve they can move forward to focusing on who their competition is that week. They will again take the time to study and understand how they can overcome their opponent and win the game.
This is the same thing in creating a strong marketing campaign. While sitting down with a marketing expert and your small business team you can identify what you offer to the marketplace, how your service or product fulfills demand, what sets you apart from the competition, and what opportunities there are to dominate your market.
Not until after you really understand who you are as a business and who you are competing against, can you really start to prepare and be ready for the big game.
2. Find Your Target Audience After hours of film study, the team is finally prepared to start to put together a game plan to uncover the highest level of opportunity to succeed. A large part of this strategy is identifying a matchup in the game that favors your team strategy, by leveraging this advantage you will have the greatest ability to raiser triumphant.
This is another huge fundamental component to a strong marketing program. By doing your due diligence and identifying exactly who it is in the marketplace that you desire to promote to, you will find individuals with the highest chance to sell your product. This will shape the rest of your marketing message and present a path of how you want to promote your brand.
Your target audience will be made up of people with specific demographic and psychographic characteristics that your target message caters to. The more detailed and specific you get, the easier it will be to create highly direct promotions that speak to the audience you want to target.
This will take research and time! Although on the surface, it may seem easy to identify your target audience, you will need to dig a little deeper to discover who is the perfect fit for your products and services. Through the use of social media analytics, website analytics, survey data, and analyzing your competition you can clearly achieve your goal of targeting the right audience.
Identifying and understanding your specific niche will allow you the ability to dominate your market.
3. Tell Your Story & Create Content
After days of film study, nutrition, practice, more film study, and more practice it is finally game time.
You know who you are as a team, you have identified your competition, what their strengths are, their habits and tendencies, and now it is time to execute and deliver the W.
In marketing terms, it is the time to promote your business story and create your content. After understanding your place in the market and identifying your target audience you will best understand the way in which to portray your story, and which marketing channels are going to be most successful in doing so.
Although, there are many ways to promote a small business, the ability to tell your company story reigns supreme. By incorporating a meaningful company message, that highlights your companies products and desires in a personal way will allow your audience to relate to you as a small business and be open to hearing your content.
That story can be told through many marketing tools. Even though there are multiple marketing channels, your target audience will dictate which one will yield the most traffic and conversions.
This kind of branding can be done through your logo, website, video & photography, social media platforms, and of course face to face interactions.
With your understanding of the type of audience you are selling to, and with the audience being warm to the type of brand that your company portray's, you can begin to create content that will drive your marketing message right through the goal line and in for the touchdown.
Razor Thin Media is Here to Help
As a business owner you can feel extremely overwhelmed by all that you need to get done in a day. By sticking to these marketing fundamentals you can continue to promote your brand in a way that leads to sales and higher return on investment.
With the amount of research it takes to have a successful marketing strategy we know that it can be time consuming. Need marketing help? Contact Razor Thin Media today and put our 25 years of experience to work for you today. Visit us at www.razorthinmedia.com or give us a call at 928.978.5077!
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