From Strategy to Success: Marketing Tips to Elevate Your Business

November 22, 2024

Summary: Here’s an easy-to-read 5,4,3,2,1 listicle to help business owners understand how effective marketing tactics can help grow your company and increase your sales.

In a competitive world, where every business is trying to stay afloat and get ahead, every business owner must be mindful of the budget and the bottomline.

There is a finite number of customers, and every company in your industry is vying for the same customers you are. What is going to convince a person or business to sign with you instead of someone else?

Differentiators in products? Maybe. A higher level of customer service? Probably. Honesty and transparency that prove your company can be trusted? Certainly.

But how do you communicate all of that with potential customers? Marketing.

Even though marketing is vital to the success of a company, many business owners aren’t completely sure what makes marketing effective or how to leverage marketing tactics to boost their brand.

That’s why we wrote this blog.

5 Things About Marketing Every Business Owner Should Know

1. Know your target audience. Understanding who your customers are and what they want is the foundation of any successful marketing strategy. Create buyer personas that represent your ideal customers, based on demographics, behaviors, and needs. How do you do this? Research. But research includes talking to your target audience. Don’t just assume you know what they want. Ask them. And listen to what they tell you. 
2. Consistency is key. Consistency in branding, messaging, and customer experience builds trust and recognition. Your logo, colors, tone of voice, and marketing channels should all reflect a cohesive image of your business to reinforce your brand identity and support your messaging. Indirect messaging is as important as direct messaging. We can say we care about circles, but if all we focus on or feature are squares, our intended message falls flat. 
3. Content is essential. Quality content that provides value to your audience drives engagement and builds relationships. Whether it’s blog posts, social media updates, or videos, focus on educating, entertaining, or solving problems for your audience. We know you need to make money. People don’t go into business to go broke. Businesses that thrive are those that make sales. But if you only focus on sales and sales-y messaging, you will lose your audience. They want to feel like they matter more to you than their money does. Value them as people instead of dollar signs, and they will value your products. 
4. Leverage data and analytics. While numbers don’t tell the whole story, it’s true that numbers don’t lie. So don’t ignore the data. Take time to track it, measure it, and analyze it. Use data to measure the success of your marketing efforts too. Track metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC), return on investment (ROI), and conversion rates to refine strategies and allocate resources effectively.
5. Customer experience drives loyalty. Great marketing isn’t just about acquiring new customers — retaining them is just as important. Provide an excellent customer experience that encourages repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals. This can be achieved through personalized marketing, excellent customer service, and a seamless user experience across all touchpoints.

4 Things Business Owners Tend to Misunderstand About Marketing

1. Marketing is just advertising. Many business owners think marketing is solely about advertising or running promotions. In reality, marketing encompasses much more, including market research, branding, customer engagement, product development, and positioning. Advertising is just one part of a broader marketing strategy.
2. Results should be immediate. Some business owners expect instant results from marketing efforts, especially digital campaigns. Effective marketing takes time to build brand awareness, establish trust, and nurture leads. Short-term campaigns can yield quick wins, but sustained success comes from long-term strategy and consistent efforts.
3. More traffic equals more sales. It’s easy to assume that more website traffic or social media followers automatically leads to increased sales. However, quality matters more than quantity. The focus should be on attracting qualified leads — people who are likely to convert into paying customers — rather than just driving generic traffic.
4. Anyone can handle marketing. Some business owners underestimate the complexity of marketing, believing that anyone in their company can handle it without specialized knowledge. In reality, effective marketing requires expertise in areas like consumer psychology, data analysis, content creation, SEO, and strategy. Underestimating the depth of experience and skill required for successful marketing can lead to missed opportunities and ineffective campaigns.

3 Things the Marketing Department Wishes They Could Tell Their Boss

1. Everything takes longer than you think it does. Your marketing team (or person) may not tell you this, but they probably want to, so we’ll say it instead: Marketing needs time to show results. Nothing worth doing happens overnight. Everything is a process. Building brand awareness, cultivating customer trust, and generating leads take time. Consistently pushing for immediate ROI can undermine long-term success. A strategic marketing plan needs room to breathe and evolve to deliver sustainable results.
2. Value quality over quantity in project tasking and budget allocation. Because everything takes time, and time is money, please loop in the marketing team during the ideation stage — not after big decisions that impact the entire company and its customers have already been made. Marketing wants to get it right the first time — for their own sense of accomplishment, to make their bosses happy, and for the good of the company. If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, you’re going to have to make even more time to fix it in the future. (And what a waste of money that will be.) Success isn’t always about spending more money but rather spending it wisely. Instead of allocating budget across multiple low-impact channels, it’s often more effective to focus on key strategies that align with the brand’s goals and target audience. Marketing teams need investment in quality content, tools, and talent to create campaigns that resonate.
3. Data-driven decisions matter. Marketing decisions based on intuition or personal preference can be risky. Even if you’re the boss and have the final say about everything, going with an idea that came to you like a lightning bolt from the blue should get the same treatment as other ideas. Talk to key stakeholders. Listen to the people needed to bring the idea to life and the people who the idea will impact. Don’t make a final decision before you see what the data shows. The marketing team often relies on data — like customer behavior, market trends, and campaign performance metrics — to guide decisions. Encouraging a data-driven approach rather than gut-feeling decisions ensures more effective, measurable outcomes.

2 Top-Performing Marketing Tactics for Most Businesses

1. Content Marketing, which includes blogs, videos, social media posts, and other valuable content, is highly effective for attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. By providing useful information and addressing the audience’s needs, businesses can build trust, showcase expertise, and establish a long-term relationship with potential customers.
2. Email Marketing remains one of the highest-ROI tactics for businesses. It allows for personalized communication, nurtures leads, and engages existing customers with tailored promotions, product updates, or newsletters. When done right, email marketing is a direct and cost-effective way to convert prospects into paying customers and retain them.

1 Famous Thing David Ogilvy Said

In 1963, David Ogilvy, a British advertising executive widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of advertising (move over, Don Draper; Ogilvy is the true “Father of Advertising,”), famously said, “The consumer isn’t a moron; she’s your wife.”

Today, we could replace the word “wife” with “husband,” “spouse,” “partner,” “S.O.,” or whatever, but the point remains. This statement reflects Ogilvy’s belief that advertisers should treat consumers with respect and intelligence, creating thoughtful and persuasive advertising rather than relying on gimmicks or condescension.

At Liquid Creative, we agree with Ogilvy. Using marketing best practices, we are primed to effectively deliver your company’s messaging to your target audience while treating you — our valued customer — with the honesty, respect, and excellent service you deserve. 

Our in-house team of subject matter experts are ready to put this handy 5,4,3,2,1 blog guide to work for you. With clients from a wide range of industries, our agency takes the time to get to know your company, research your competition, and create a marketing strategy and plan that will reach your target audience. 

If you want help boosting your brand and sales, contact us today to see what we can do for you.