marketing strategy Archives - Paragon Marketing Group

In business, there isn’t any advice we could offer that would discourage being consistent. But what about marketing consistency?

See, when most people hear the word “consistency,” they think of repeating the same things over and over again. And while repetition plays a role, there’s a whole lot more to it.

How to Build Marketing Consistency into Your Business

You’ve probably read a lot about the importance of brand consistency, and why it’s so important for your business to maintain it. And that’s true — brand consistency is important! But how do you build marketing consistency into your business?

Building consistency into your business marketing is key to your marketing success.

1. Implement General Consistency in Your Business First

Before you can bring marketing consistency into your business, it’s important to understand how being consistent in general business tasks will set you up for success in your marketing.

There are several definitions for the word “consistency,” but our favorite is probably an “agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole.”

Consistency brings harmony of parts. Ultimately, consistency brings a wholeness to whatever you’re doing.

Think of consistency in the same way you’d maintain your vehicle. When you buy a car, it’s an investment. You don’t just buy it but never take care of it. You get oil changes, you wash your car, you change its tires. And these aren’t just one-time tasks. You do it multiple times throughout the year on a consistent basis, once every 2,000 miles, or quarterly.

The same goes for your business. You don’t just start a business and perform each task one time. Employees will receive regular paychecks. You’ll ensure your business information is secure every day. You’ll even lock your door every time you leave — not just the first time.

So if you’ve established general consistency practices in your business, you understand how important those processes are. Because without them, your employees won’t get paid, your confidential information won’t be secure, and your office will be open for anyone to stop in and take whatever they want.

It stands to reason that your marketing should also be consistent.

2. Understand How Consistency Will Benefit Your Marketing

You know it’s important to be consistent in a general sense. But how can consistency specifically benefit your marketing?

Consistency builds predictable results (You know what’s coming when you’re consistent.)
Consistency leads to greater financial returns (The easier you make it for clients, the more likely they’ll spend money.)
Consistency helps in the long-term (Better to focus on the big picture by staying consistent rather than just put out short-term fires.)
Consistency clears up confusion (Your message will be clear to your customers when you’re consistent with how you put it out there.)
Consistency builds trust with your customers (Your business information and your message should be the same across platforms.)

And those benefits just scratch the surface. The power of consistency in your marketing can enable you to accomplish far more with it than without it. But understanding that consistency is beneficial isn’t enough. You also have to put in the work.

3. Build Consistency into Your Marketing

Consistency is all about developing processes and following through with them. You can’t just hope that you’ll always be consistent.

Consider including these ideas when incorporating consistency into your marketing:

Make a long-term plan.

Planning for the next hour or day isn’t enough. If you want to repeat the benefits of long-term success, then you need to figure out how consistency will play a long-term role in your marketing. Ask yourself:

In what ways have I already built consistency into my business? Can I apply those methods to other aspects of my marketing/business?
What areas can I start adding consistency with little effort, and which areas are going to require a longer planning period to build consistency into them?
How can I keep myself (and coworkers/employees) accountable in staying consistent with new procedures?

Cross-post consistently.

Keep your calls-to-action (CTAs) clear across all marketing channels. Don’t give 8 or 10 CTAs on your website or your direct mailer. Your customers won’t know what to do, and they’ll probably end up doing nothing.

When it comes to your digital channels, such as your website or social media sites, or even your Google profile, keep your information consistent. For example, don’t have one phone number on your Google profile, another one on your website, and a third one on your Facebook page.

Incorporate consistency behind the scenes.

The work you put in behind the scenes may take a lot of effort, but the important thing is that it be simple for the customer on the front end.

For example, let’s say you want to run a social media marketing campaign that starts with a giveaway and ends with five people winning prizes. How can you build consistency into this social media marketing campaign?

Creating a social media schedule and posting consistently will help your followers know when your posts will go live.
Curating a list of highly-followed and relevant hashtags and incorporating them into every social post on appropriate platforms consistently will reach more people
Developing a process to consistently test all tagged accounts, links that will be clicked, and words to be spell-checked before publishing posts will provide a much better user experience and provide professional credibility for your business.

Notice the common theme? Consistency.

Ultimately, building consistency into your marketing is no easy task. It takes a lot of work. But understanding why it’s so important for not just your marketing, but also your business as a whole can really help you become more consistent in your marketing.

At Paragon Marketing Group, we understand that many small businesses don’t have the time or the resources to apply a large-scale strategy, which is why we love sharing that marketing load, or even taking it completely off your plate. If you’re looking for advice or help regarding your marketing strategy, we’d love to help you.

You can contact us by visiting our website at paragonmarketinggroup.com or call us at 262-443-9092.

Want to learn more about this topic? Check out our podcast, the Main Street Marketing Podcast, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your audio platform of choice.

Don't rely on marketing luck to help your business.

Luck is a big theme for the month of March. Most of us think of four-leaf clovers, leprechauns, pots of gold, rainbows, and of course, St. Patrick’s Day. But what about luck in the context of marketing? How does luck play a role in your marketing, and why is it not enough to help you be successful . . . ?

**How to Not Rely on Marketing Luck**

Let’s face it, all of us know someone who is super lucky. And when it comes to marketing, sometimes it’s easy to hope luck will be enough of a marketing strategy to get your brand out there.

But if you’re reading this, then you probably already know what we’re going to say: luck isn’t a marketing strategy. So as a business owner, what can you do with your marketing that doesn’t rely on just dumb luck?

Here are three things you can start doing right now:

1. Accept that Luck Will Play Only a Small Role in Your Marketing

Now while luck isn’t a marketing strategy, it can and will impact your business.

Everyone has a story about a social media post that went viral, or how your dream client walked through your doors, or how an unlikely partnership turned out to be the best thing for your business.

Luck will always play a role in your business, albeit an inconsistent one. The important thing to remember here is that luck is out of your control. You can hope and want it all day, but that doesn’t mean your marketing will always work because you hope it will.

2. Develop the Marketing Strategies You Can Control

Now that we’ve established that luck plays a small role in your marketing, it’s important to understand that luck is out of your control. And if you can’t control luck, then you have to figure out what marketing strategies you can control:

Marketing Channels

In other words, where do you want to market your products or services? You can’t get lucky with an Instagram marketing campaign if you aren’t posting to Instagram. You can’t find new clients through direct mail if you aren’t mailing pieces out to your desired area. Your website won’t keep visitors on the page if it isn’t responsive or optimized for mobile users.

Marketing Dollars

How much of your budget are you willing to dedicate just to marketing? This is a question we find many business owners not wanting to think about. As a small business owner, you might have 132 different things vying for your attention at all times. Marketing is an easy thing to fall to the bottom of the to-do list. And when this happens, relying on luck for your marketing to be successful while not budgeting any dollars towards it won’t cut it.

Marketing Experts

Do you outsource to a marketing agency, or do you try to do it all yourself? This can get really overwhelming for any business owner with his or her hands full. But perhaps there are certain “blind spots” you have when it comes to marketing. Maybe the idea of social media marketing really overwhelms you. Maybe shooting your own marketing videos is something you just don’t have the experience in.

3. Prepare for New Marketing Opportunities

All of us have probably heard a variation of the famous quote by the Roman philosopher, Seneca:

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

No matter what your take on that quote is, the underlying message is that in order to actively and purposefully get “lucky,” you have to prepare.

So rather than resort to hoping for lucky circumstances or wishful thinking, here are a few ways you can prepare for new opportunities:

Determine Your Marketing Channels

You know you can’t be successful with marketing channels if you’re not actively using them. So you have to decide which marketing channels you want to use, and then the hard part: you have to start executing.

A good way to determine which channels to start with is to ask yourself which channels are going to best serve your business, attract your desired clients, or engage your customers.

Not sure how to figure this out? Consult with a marketing agency like Paragon Marketing Group. Our staff specializes in understanding nearly any type of business. You name it, we’ve probably seen it, heard of it, or worked with a company in that industry.

Determine Your Marketing Budget

Relying on luck isn’t an option for your marketing budget.

But if you’re leery of budgeting a portion of your funds to marketing, don’t let that stop you from marketing altogether. Even if it’s small, determine the amount you’re willing to spend on marketing ahead of time, and stick to that amount, even if you don’t see immediate results.

We recommend choosing an amount you can confidently put towards marketing each month. Remember: if you never spend a dollar marketing your business, you’re losing out on several dollars you could be making.

Determine Your Marketing Plan of Execution

For some business owners, this might be as simple as setting aside an hour each day to dedicate to marketing. For others, one hour a day might be impossible.

Or even if you have the time, you might not know where to start. This is really common! This is the point at which you decide whether you want to do your marketing in-house, by yourself, or outsource to an agency of experts.

Whether you’re looking to completely hand over your marketing to an agency, or you feel comfortable managing certain aspects of it, you can decide how you’re going to market your business.

It’s important to see luck for what it is: an inconsistent, unreliable tool that, without thoughtful and careful preparation, is just that: luck, and nothing else.

Think of luck as that friend who will show up at random times and be the life of the party for one night. But then when you’re at a point in your life where you need someone to lean on, that friend is nowhere to be found.

If you want your marketing to be effective, get prepared. Make a plan. Talk to experts in the field. Because at the end of the day, a marketing plan is only worthwhile if you’re going to put it in action.