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As a business owner, you will spend a lot of time marketing and trying to find an efficient way to market your company. There are so many ways to do this, it can be hard to know which ones work and which ones don’t. Some people use them with success while others fail miserably.
There is one major reason why most companies fail when it comes to in-market strategies- they focus too much on what works for someone else, not what works for their product or service.
So how does that help you? It doesn’t! At least, not very much. You must understand the fundamentals of marketing if you want to see results from your efforts, and I have some great news – you can learn those basics anywhere, at any time.
What we are going to talk about today is a little topic called marketing blocks. Let me give you a quick example.
You are reading this article right now because you wanted to learn more about marketing. You read my catchy bullet point and decided to look into it more.
That is a good start, but it isn’t enough. You need to go beyond just knowing the ingredient list, you need to apply the ingredients properly.
Just like learning how to bake a cake requires you to know the recipe first, understanding marketing blocks starts with knowledge of the field.
A few examples can help make this clear- direct sales, advertising, social media, giveaways, etc. All of these types of marketing strategies are designed to create interest in your product or service.
Direct sales mean offering and selling products directly from you or someone else. For example, if you know how to sew well, then you could start your own clothing business that sells fashion dresses and shirts.
Advertising is telling people about your company or product by putting their messages up around the world for all to see. This is typically done through billboards, TV commercials, magazine advertisements, and/or online ads.
Social media is creating an environment where individuals and companies can connect and communicate. Companies use it to promote their services and get new clients, while individuals use it to stay connected with friends and family.
Giveaways are when businesses give away free things to attract attention and increase purchases.
As we mentioned before, one of the biggest hurdles that most marketers face is creating enough content. With the availability of free tools to create content online, producing low-cost, high quality content has become much easier.
But while it’s easy to produce large amounts of raw content, putting all that content together into something meaningful can be the next hurdle.
That’s where your marketing blocks come in. A marketing block is an area of your business that you manage yourself or outsource. It could be social media, advertising, PR, website design, etc.
By breaking down these areas into smaller pieces, you give yourself more control over how things are run and what happens under the hood. This saves you time by no longer having to oversee everything yourself!
And for investors, this is important because they want to see that you have solid internal controls in place so that you don’t need too much outside investment.
As we mentioned before, marketing blocks are not limited to creating your own YouTube channel or having a flashy Facebook page. These can be anything from buying advertising space on other sites to directly promoting their products or services through social media or blogs.
The first step in developing your business’s marketing strategy is figuring out who your target market is!
You will want to know what types of people use these resources, how much money they make, and if there are any trends that show which brands they prefer. This information is very important as you start brainstorming ways to promote your business!
There are many ways to find this info. You can do some research and testing yourself, or you can hire someone to help you get the answers you need.
A few years ago, there was no such thing as digital marketing. You had maybe one or two channels that you used to promote your business- mostly social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Nowadays, however, it is impossible to stay in the game! It seems like every major website has their own platform with all sorts of tools and features to help grow their brand.
This is totally okay though! It is not a bad thing at all! In fact, it is great for business owners because they now have resources to take advantage of to spread their message and increase exposure.
What I mean by that is, instead of trying to compete with these large corporations, why not find ways to work WITH them? Find ways to use their services to promote your company.
There are so many opportunities out there for you to create relationships and do some good old fashioned advertising.
Finding out who your target audience is can be tricky, but it’s an important first step in marketing. Who you are targeting will determine what kind of messages you use to promote your product or service.
For example, if your products are for young people, then using slang or jokes that they would understand goes a lot farther than saying something in business jargon that only few will know.
You must identify who your ideal customer is before starting to market. This will help ensure that your message fits their needs, and thus, effects the final result of your campaign.
It also helps determine how much budget to allocate towards advertising. If your advertisements don’t match your intended audience, you may need to reevaluate your messaging or strategies.
A few months ago, I shared my tips for marketing to new groups of people. Since then, you’ve probably noticed that some of those tips include testing different messages or strategies to see what works for you.
In this article, I’d like to talk about another way to test your messaging. This one is important to do before investing too much time in something that doesn’t work.
I refer to it as “marketing blocks.” It was an effective tool used by companies with limited resources just like yours.
By creating marketing blocks, you can spend your energy focusing only on the messages that are working and not having to worry about which ones aren’t. That saves you mental bandwidth that you could be using to grow your business even more!
What are marketing blocks?
A marketing block is when you stop producing content that isn’t performing well and instead, start ignoring it completely. You keep putting all of your effort into only promoting the messages that are bringing you results while leaving the others for later.
This concept was first discussed in depth in a paper called Why Product Launch Days Should Be Met With Resistance By Niall Darby (the author) and David Norton back in 2007. They referred to it as launch blocking.
Since then, there have been lots of other names for this tactic including launch diversion, burn-off period, graveyard campaign, death march, etc.
