Lori Kelman

No business — old or new — can thrive and grow without a clear marketing strategy. In essence, it provides a roadmap for how to reach your target audience with your product or service in the most cost-effective way. The essence of effective marketing is pretty basic: Create a need in the marketplace for the product or service you have to offer, and then fill that need.

Here’s how to start

Define your goals

Establish your mission

Identify your target audience

Envision your product niche

Assess your existing competition

Name your key differentiators

Determine a realistic marketing budget

Create your key messaging

Set timetables and benchmarks

To reach — and penetrate — your target audience cost-effectively, you need to draft a strategic marketing plan before launching your effort, keeping it fluid enough to incorporate revisions and updates while also including a contingency for the unexpected (supply shortages, price increases on materials, a lack of discretionary income, etc.).

Be everything you say you are

Effective marketing begins with the understanding that perception is reality. First impressions are lasting ones. Never misrepresent who or what you are, and be sure the image you create for yourself, your product, or your service is the one you intend to portray.

It’s almost impossible to backpedal and undo a first impression in the marketplace. Consumers and customers can’t unsee or unlearn what they’ve seen or learned, and more often than not what they initially associate with a brand will stick.

Be consistent

It’s critical that your key messaging be consistent with your mission. That messaging also needs to be reflected in the name of your business, any tagline you use, your business logo, your business card and your website. Everything “out there” that represents your product or service should be easily identifiable. Businesses that use flashy or complex logos to catch someone’s eye often fail because they are too confusing or stray from the mission of the business.

Keeping it simple, easy to recognize, easier to identify and totally reflective of what your product or service offering is the best way to ensure marketing success.

Be different than the rest

Developing a key differentiator in the marketplace will be your biggest challenge, especially in light of everything within such easy and immediate reach on the internet. But it’s your most critical step in orchestrating a failsafe marketing strategy.

Determining the special quality that makes what you have to offer unique — and playing off of that — is key.

Whatever your niche is, base everything around it. Every part of your strategy must be in sync to succeed. Feel free to collaborate with partners that can make your offering even sweeter. That will be a win-win.

Be willing to take risks

The roadblock that keeps most potentially successful ventures at bay is the fear of taking risks. Any millionaire will tell you they would — and could — never be where they are now if they hadn’t gone out on a limb more than once, risking everything they had, emotionally and financially.

When it comes to marketing, taking risks is an essential part of the ballgame. Sometimes it’s just about closing your eyes and giving it all you’ve got, even without a safety net in place. Blind faith can be a beautiful thing and can pave the road to unimaginable success.

Be patient

Don’t become your own worst enemy by setting unrealistic timetables and benchmarks to measure your marketing success. It takes time to get really entrenched in a market or within a specific target audience.

Develop marketing “verticals,” which are audiences that would likely be interested in your product or service offering that fall outside your primary target audience. Oftentimes reaching out to these audiences can develop a new (and sometimes even more profitable) niche market for your offering.

Celebrate small victories as your business grows, and learn to be flexible if success in one arena outshines where your initially thought you would succeed.

There is no shame in changing course or altering a strategy if you see something you weren’t expecting along the way.

Be persistent

It’s too easy to throw in the towel when the going gets tough. Every entrepreneur has thought of giving up countless times, but those that eventually “made it” eventually gave in to their original desire to succeed.

Tenacity is key in starting or growing any business. Tell yourself the things you would tell your child if they were in your position. Be your own biggest cheerleader.

There’s truly nothing that feels better than having stuck it out — hard as it was emotionally and financially — to make your own professional dream come true.