Week 16 Part A: Developing Your Marketing Strategy

 

To develop my marketing strategy, it will take time because there are so many tools available for online marketing. I think the main goal would be to look for a suite of tools that would allow me to integrate results without having to spend a lot of effort. For small businesses, they are focused on running and managing their business, so Marketing is probably done after-hours which makes it a long day for business owners. They may be able to use an outside agency to help them based on budget, but if not, as in my case, we need to go as cheap as possible. From a cost perspective to start, I would create a Website and use Social Media platforms along with Zoho free version, MailChimp, Hootsuite, and Google Analytics.

`Hootsuite social media management tools allow you to schedule and manage posts across multiple social media platforms. They provide a centralized dashboard for monitoring and engaging with your audience, saving time and effort in managing your social media presence.

Mailchimp or Constant Contact: email marketing is a powerful tool for nurturing customer relationships. Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp or Constant Contact enable you to create and automate email campaigns, segment your audience, and track email performance. Constant Contact can also be used to create websites and online stores, so that might be a good option as I market this small business.

Google Analytics: Implementing Google Analytics on your website can provide valuable insights into user behavior, traffic sources, and conversion tracking. It helps you understand how users interact with your website and measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. This is really important for a business; you need to know how well people interact with you and what works versus what does not work. For a business selling queen bees, I would like to see how well the social media and Website drive traffic to sales.

Creating business on Social Media platforms has been what I have enjoyed the most along with AI tools to generate images to post and drive interest. Learning how to use the analytical data tools to understand the value to companies for Marketing, and ROI, based on advertising spend was also important. I also enjoyed learning some AI tools to help me along the business journey. I do believe I’ve learned tools that will some additional practice, I can really help market a business based on what I’ve learned. is very good for you, so you know how to run one in the future.

I believe that a business needs 4-12 hours a week to effectively market the business and keep content fresh. I think that might increase if customer images are needed or they have heavy social media or business reviews that require a response. Really, it depends on the size of the business, larger corporations require dedicated full-time teams, but small businesses, again, probably 4-12 hours a week. I’m sure you can spend an endless amount of time marketing a business but it’s probably just best to find your best ROI based on your available time.