Basic marketing in less than 7 steps

Are you new to the marketing world? Do you understand your niche market and are you doing everything possible to reach them? If you don't know your market well, you will have a harder time meeting their expectations and marketing correctly to them. Here are some basic marketing steps you need to know in order to build your reputation:

1. Know your target audience - this is perhaps one of the most important marketing aspects. If you don't know your target audience, how will you be able to reach them effectively? You need to conduct market research studies in order to learn more about the likes and dislikes of your customers along with their buying patterns and preferences. Social media sites can help you collect some of the valuable information you need from your customers in order to develop better products and a solid marketing campaign. Other companies prefer to hire out their market research information but this can get quite expensive so it may be a better idea for you to focus on gathering it on your own.
2. Make it easy - in order to help your customers find out more about your company you need to make it easy for them to do so. You need to keep your domain name short and sweet and keep the company name easy to remember. Provide multiple avenues of communication for the customers so they can get in touch with you. Shorter names are easier to remember and they are also better for your company when you are developing a URL.
3. Quality website - another part of quality marketing comes down to your website. You need to try and make your website user friendly. It needs to be easy to navigate and it must include multiple things that will help the customers shopping experience. Avoid cluttering the website with ads and too much information as it is harder to navigate and its not as easy for your customers to find what they are seeking in a hurry.
4. Website optimization - your customers need to be able to reach your website in a hurry. Proper optimization of your website will help you to be able to get noticed in the search engines and it will increase your online presence so your customers can actually find you. Quality keywords added to your website can help to increase your online presence. Do not overuse the keywords though as it can lead to issues with the search engines and they may not list you in their directory.
5. Provide contact information on everything - your customers need to be able to find out how to get in touch with you. When they see advertisements in newspapers and magazine, they need to see a website or other contact information so they can call you and order the products. Contact information is vital and you need to include it as much as possible in order to keep in touch with your customers.
6. Attractive brochures and print marketing - when you send out a direct mail piece, it needs to be attractive to your customers in order to catch their attention. Focus on different ways in which you can design the brochures and other things to gain their attention and convince them to buy your products. Keep it clean and organized in order to make it visually appealing.
7. Customer service - part of marketing comes down to the way in which you treat your customers. Having strong customer service skills will go a long way in building customer relationships, especially ones that will convince customers to remain life-long customers that continue to buy your products.