Are you looking for the silver bullet in marketing? The one thing that will send your sales through the roof? You are not alone! I hate to disappoint but the reality is a silver bullet rarely appears. But it could. Imagine how good it would feel to find a new method that returned a really good bang for your buck.
There is one sure way to find it and that is to try something new in your marketing. We all know the importance of innovation in keeping a business competitive. The essence of innovation is trying something new and that can be in all areas of your business. Marketing efficiency and effectiveness come from improving your success rate over time by monitoring and measuring results. As long as you do this when trying new things, you are heading in the right direction.
The principles of marketing don’t change despite new methods. When trying new things, always remember to keep to these core marketing principles i.e. to have something that people want, at a price they are prepared to pay and available in the way they want to buy it. Trying different ways of promoting your product or service or reaching your target market is essential to ongoing business improvement.
Here are some tips:
1. When trying something new, do it alongside the method that’s already working.
2. Consider the new marketing an experiment not a substitution.
3. Trial the new method and test the effectiveness before committing large amount of resources to it.
4. Always put aside some money in the budget for new strategy.
5. Consider re-trying something you have done in the past and give it a new twist
Often the longer you are in business, the more reluctant you are to change what is working. But this is not always helpful for improvement. Marketing methods are changing all the time particularly in the online space and one of the best ways to learn and explore these methods is to try them. You never know you may just find the rare silver bullet!
Ailsa Page, Small Business Marketing Expert and Director, AP Marketing Works
