Yesterday I attended an interesting seminar by Drew Williams, coauthor of "Feed the Startup Beast", put on by the Small Business Centre here in Belleville. There were a few interesting things I learned. A lot of it was surface level information about marketing your business, but there was a bit of a diversity in the businesses and people that were present so I could appreciate that. I did walk away from the seminar having learned a few things though.

1- LISTEN to your customers. They are your greatest tools! They know what is working, or not working, for you because they have dealt with you and they know worked best on them. 

2- FOCUS your resources. Your website is the centre of your marketing universe. But for it to be most affective you need to ensure that the message you are sending is consistent. Ensure you are promoting the same thing across all your marketing platforms, and make sure that what you are selling is what you actually want to be selling. (Ex. don't say you have the cheapest soap in town if you want your customers to choose you because you're quality, Canadian made.)

3- PURSUE your best practices. With any marketing tactic you are trying, experiment on a smaller target market (ex. 100) and see how the results pan out. Then look at the research and analytics according to what you have completed and decide if you would like to add more to your audience or if it's even worth your time. 

Marketing can be overwhelming, as we have discussed in other blogs before. But if you take the time to test it, listen to your audience, and see what is working for you, it can be quite effective. So why not give it a try?