Marketing Asset: How to Become Your Company’s Greatest Marketer

Whether you run your own business or work for someone else’s, there’s one way you can add to your personal development and improve your business’s standing at the same time. You can become a walking, talking marketing asset.

From taking the lead in your industry and becoming a voice that others follow, to mastering marketing trends and trades, there’s plenty you can do to stand out and make a difference. If you run your own SME or start-up, having this kind of influence and skill set can work wonders for how well your business does. Or, if you’re in a full-time position, having these kinds of skills and reputation will make you indispensable.

Become a voice of wisdom

If you’ve got a question or are stuck with a problem in your sector, there’s probably a particular blog or book that you turn to. In every industry, there are bloggers held in high regard for their useful content and ground-breaking ideas. If you want to give your company’s marketing a boost, turning into one of these wise individuals is a great way to go about it.

You can start simply, by blogging or vlogging, and slowly scale it up as your popularity grows. This might be more of a team effort. If you can combine and use your entire business’s knowledge base, then you’ll have more scope to help people, and the ability to create more content. Being a ‘voice of wisdom’ doesn’t just stop at blogging and vlogging: your opportunities for exposure are endless. You can host events; talk at conferences; even launch new products.

Marketing asset … become an influencer

In a similar vein, you could grow this into becoming a social media influencer. This will mean you can take control of online networks, and use your position to both boost your business and help your partners. Your community won’t just give back business benefits through sales.

It’ll help you gain more insight into your target audience, and help you find new topics to discuss and new problems to solve. The community can also help you answer problems that as a business you might not be able to solve. Plus, as an influencer, you’ll be on the pulse of all the new, exciting trends taking on your sector.

Become an expert

If you can stay on top of recent marketing trends and learn new skills, you’ll become a valuable asset in any professional network. Go to conferences and network; learn as much as you can. This might even take the form of picking up new trades such as copywriting, design, or video editing. If you can master one or two of these practices, you’ll be able to help your business out in more ways than just strategizing and planning.

There are many different strands to marketing than just being good at Twitter or knowing how to send emails. Try exploring different and unusual methods to help give your campaigns more gravitas. Plus, if you can excel at delivering campaigns in a new and experimental way, you’ll quickly be able to make a name for yourself.

Bottom line

Marketing is often confused with promotion, but it’s more than that.  As Peter Drucker put it, “the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”  In truth, marketing is about insights more than anything else.

Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your clients?

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to innovate your social media strategy?

Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

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What Marketers Need to Know about Personalization Strategies 

Innovation in Marketing … the Birchbox Subscription Model