Last week we began our look at the 10 Rules of Marketing by breaking down the first five rules 10 Rules For Marketing Part One: Preparation. They covered preparing yourself to effectively promote your business. 

This week, we will complete the ten rules that apply to implementing and managing your marketing efforts. 

Many of these rules touch on the mindset and patience needed to effectively manage your marketing campaigns. If you are impatient or not focused, it can be real easy for your marketing efforts to go astray. 

These rules will help you manage the day-to-day marketing of your business while keeping an eye on the big picture. 

Let’s get started. 

Promote with a Purpose

This rule is meant to help you stay focused on your marketing goals. In the first set of rules we mentioned the importance of a strategy, which is something we care deeply about. When you develop a marketing strategy you set goals that serve as milestones on your marketing journey. 

Promoting with a purpose means that your marketing efforts are working towards one of your goals. For example, if one of your goals is to increase your list of email subscribers, then some of your social media posts should be aimed at getting people to register for an email newsletter or to download a free resource in exchange for their email. 

If you are in doubt about something you are about to do, then ask yourself “What do I hope is the end result of this action?”. 

If this action won’t directly help you reach your goals, then you should probably reconsider taking that action. This will help you become a much more effective and efficient marketer. 

Do Your Homework

Next up is homework. By this we mean to occasionally take a moment to see what your competitors are doing. 

Ask the following:

• What services/products are they focusing on? 
• How are they promoting themselves in terms of marketing channels and marketing content? 
• Do they appear to be targeting the same audience?
• Do they run frequent promotions?

By asking and answering these questions you are getting an insight into the other options your target audience is seeing. This will give you ideas of what you should and should not do as you manage your marketing efforts. 

You might even discover an undeserved segment of the population that can open up a new stream of revenue. 

Analyze This, Analyze That, Analyze Everything

There is no such thing as “set-it-and-forget-it” in marketing. If you want to get the most out of your marketing investment, then you need to take time to evaluate what your efforts are producing. 

This means looking at data for your email marketing, website, and social media. 

You really want to understand two things:

• What is resonating with your audience? What forms of content or messaging is really getting them to engage and act? This will allow you to double down on those efforts so you can get better results.
• What is not resonating with your audience? You want to know what your audience does not seem to relate to and what does not motivate them to act. This will give you the opportunity to course correct an action or forego it so you can try something different. 

Reviewing your marketing efforts will give you a better understanding of what is and is not working. This will allow you to make necessary adjustments so you do not waste time, effort, or money. 

Market Long Enough to Measure

If you want to be able to evaluate your marketing efforts, you have to give your efforts time. While there is no universally accepted time frame dictating how long you must promote your business before you can properly evaluate the results, we like to say at least 6-8 weeks. 

This will allow enough time to see which of the actions you are taking are generating results and which aren’t producing the ROI you need. 

One exception to this rule is paid advertising. If you are not getting the results you need after a few days or a week, then feel free to stop the campaign to tweak it or go back to the drawing board. 

Get Professional Help

A marketer telling you to get professional help for your marketing sounds a little self-serving. And it would be if I were to tell you that Beacon Marketing is the only professional help you should seek. (You should at least give us a look, but there are other great options.)

The truth of the matter is that you can’t do it all by yourself. You probably use an accountant to help you with taxes or a lawyer for legal matters. We use outside help for graphic design work that we can’t do.

If something is either too time consuming or not within your skillset, then it might be best to look for outside solutions. Yes, it means spending money. But the money you spend will save you time and frustration, which will probably help you earn that money back. 

That is it for the 10 Rules for Marketing Part Two. Please check out part one here if you have not already done so. These rules will help you prepare, implement, and manage your marketing efforts so you get the most from the time, money, and effort you put into marketing your business.