The Marketing Marketplace

The word “marketing” encapsulates so many ideas and modalities that the average business leader isn’t sure where to start. Once a decent website is live (with all the bells and whistles) and business cards are printed, how do you get the word out? In business, just like in life, there are your friends/acquaintances and then there are strangers. These two groups can respectively be called your inner circle and your outer circle. To be successful in the business world, you need to reach and satisfy both groups.

Your Inner Circle

What’s easy about working your inner circle is that you already know all the people. You don’t need to worry about generating new leads or finding new contacts in the big, blue ocean of potential buyers out there. Marketing to your inner circle basically means keeping in touch. You can do this by setting up email marketing campaigns to send out weekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletters to your professional network. In these newsletters, you can provide updates regarding your goods or services, always including a link to your website and company contact information. Newsletters provide a great opportunity to share upcoming specials, holiday wishes, and news relevant to your industry. They are not offensive if sent sporadically and with the option to unsubscribe, you can feel like each contact actually enjoys–or at least doesn’t mind–receiving your newsletter.

Your Outer Circle

Reaching contacts in your outer circle is more difficult because you don’t know who they are and necessarily the best way to reach them. Digital marketing includes writing search engine optimized (SEO) copy for your website and blog, social media management (think LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter), and taking out paid advertisements on google and other sites, to name a few aspects. Google is always updating its software’s algorithm (it recently added something called RankBrain) to produce the most relevant and authentic search results possible. With sufficient online marketing tactics, any business, big or small, can be in the limelight.

Tap into your inner and outer circles to make the most of the marketing marketplace.