Zig When They Zag

"How long will marketing take to start working?"

The truth is that marketing takes time to produce results because it's not a switch you flip on and off. It's more like an engine you have to get going up to speed slowly.

1. No One Knows Who You Are

As with person-to-person relationships, becoming familiar takes time. You wouldn't jump right into marriage on the first date. The same applies to developing a relationship with your audience before they become customers.

2. Your Customers Have Different Timelines

The typical customer journey looks like this:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision
• Delight

Marketing effectively meets people where they are in the customer journey and guides them to the next step at their own pace. Your marketing plan should address all the different stages of the customer journey and be flexible enough for someone to drop in and out as necessary.

3. Show Up In More Than One Place

Have you ever seen an ad online for a product and realize later that you have no idea how to find that company again? Businesses that don't effectively use their marketing to hold their audience's attention and turn them into qualified marketing lead end up losing customers.

Instead, a brand can better retain its audience's attention by showing up in front of them in many different places.

4. Brand Messaging and Visual Identity are Wrong

Poor functionality, lousy design, irrelevant messaging, and an outdated look in your website can distract your audience from considering your solution.

If a competitor's website looks and works ten times better than yours, customers will likely go back to the competitors when making a purchase decision.

5. You're Not Optimizing Your Marketing as it Runs

Unfortunately, many treat marketing as a 'set it and forget it' lever they can let run and revisit next year. However, to optimize your marketing (and marketing budget), it's vital to course-correct as you go.

The Bottom Line

The longer you take to start marketing, the longer it takes to start working. Don't waste any time. Get your company or brand in front of the right audience with the right message.

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

5 Marketing Things You Should Be Doing Right Now

Jessica and Kevin discuss the 5 Marketing Things You Should Be Doing Right Now. Why do them now? Remember the "Roaring Twenties?" Well, we're about to enter another "Roaring Twenties" in this century.

Here are the five marketing things you should be doing right now.

1. Talk to Your Customers

We've been asking our clients what they need now and what they think their business will need in the future. In addition to current clients, we also ask these same questions to people who would be ideal clients but don't work with us yet.

2. Focus on How You're Going to Reach Business Goals

Concentrate on taking steps towards your goals every day or risk being in the same position this time next year.

3. Get Your Website Working for You

Customers demand a fast, beautiful website, but your time is better spent elsewhere than maintaining a website.

Also, your website should speak to the customer's needs and desires and paint the picture of a better future for them. Customers visit your website because they have a problem to be solved.

4. Show Off Your Employees in Your Marketing

Communicate to your audience that your team is there to help make things better as we all adjust to the new normal.

5. Outmarket Your Competitors

Many businesses have permanently closed, leaving many customers without the solution they need. Let them know you're ready to serve them.

The Bottom Line

Get in front of your audience and talk to your customers. If you find talking to customers challenging, Hot Dog Marketing can handle it for you. We love talking to the customers of our clients.

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

Do you think marketing is just creating content?

Or do you think you need to know the solution before approaching an agency?

In this episode, Jessica Scanlon and Kevin Ring discuss the misconceptions many clients have when they start working with Hot Dog Marketing. Many times this means not knowing what a strategic marketing agency provides or incorrectly thinking they already know what they need.

Common Misconceptions:

I need to solve all of my marketing problems before coming to an agency.

Some business owners think they need to know the solution and then find someone to fulfill it for them. Instead, a great marketing agency (like Hot Dog Marketing) solves the problem for their clients and then builds and applies a strategy to address it.

A marketing agency can just take over managing and executing on my marketing efforts.

The truth is, it takes time to learn what those marketing efforts are and identify what works best to reach your business goals.

Hiring a marketing agency is just purchasing labor.

While that may be true at some companies, at Hot Dog Marketing we focus on providing value for clients. That often comes in the form of expert strategy that requires thinking, creativity, and revising.

Everything will move faster if I hire a whole marketing team than trying to do it on my own.

Building your business didn't happen overnight. Your marketing plans, executions, and results won't either. Many business owners are surprised (and don't believe it) when they hear that we have a marketing process.

Why?

Simply because they've never heard of a marketing process before. But it's this thoughtful, strategic approach that achieves the results clients want.

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

To work with us, visit www.hotdogmarketing.net

The Importance of Doing Things in Order

Why not jump into all the marketing services at the same time?

Is marketing strategy worth it?

In this episode, Jessica Scanlon and Kevin Ring discuss how important it is to do things in order when it comes to executing on marketing.

Focus on How You Deliver the Maximum Value

Jessica talks about the early days of Hot Dog Marketing when she began charging for the strategic aspect (instead of doing all that work for free!), she had some clients that would choose to skip the strategy and move straight into services.

This would always end up in poor performance in the client's marketing efforts and, predictably, disappointment.

Don't Market Without Planning

It's important to follow the steps and do them in order because marketing works best that way. It seems simple to jump right in with ads or another marketing service, but the outcomes will fall short of the business goals. Leading to either abandoning marketing, or having to pay even more to redo the services.

Bottom Line for Following the Marketing Steps

The main idea is that as a business leader, you don't want to miss any opportunities in acquiring customers because of a poor acquisition process.

A typical gap for small businesses is having a poor website. At Hot Dog Marketing, we often use the analogy of a website (and entire marketing plan) being like a house. For people to feel comfortable entering and walking through the house, they need to know what to expect. Have a marketing plan that walks people through the whole experience, one step at a time.

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

Having a customer-centric value proposition is critical to making a real impact with your audience.

In this episode, Jessica Scanlon and Kevin Ring discuss focusing your messaging on the customer's values, instead of your own. Kevin compares this to dating, you don't want to spend the entire time talking about yourself. Marketing is similar. Instead, as a small business owner, communicate the value you can provide to your customers.

Many small businesses believe they simply need to communicate how much experience they have and how good they are at what they do in front of more people. However, this self-focused messaging is ineffective.

When your marketing is aligned with the value you provide, your customers come to you primed to purchase and sales teams don't have to work as hard.

Identify the value you provide to your customers:

1. What is the one thing you do that makes you stand out from your competitors?
2. What is the perceived value that your customers experience?

Your customers won't see your product or service as a path to a better future without you painting the picture for them.
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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

To work with us, visit www.hotdogmarketing.net