Best Practices for Localized Marketing Success Marketing is a focus of almost every type of business. Because marketing is multi-faceted, subjective, and broad, many people try to train marketing to their team members in specific ways. While it’s important to take the initiative to train your people in any subject, getting the most out of training is key because any time you spend training takes people out of the field. When it comes to marketing training, you can’t afford to get it wrong. When they’re in training, salespeople are losing valuable time when they could be calling on clients, so training must add value to their skillset in order for it to be worthwhile. For this reason, partnering with a business coach is a worthwhile investment into marketing training to ensure it’s useful for trainees. In the sections to follow, I will cover a few areas where I have seen marketing training sessions go awry and how I avoid these in my training. Narrow Focus There are many disciplines within marketing, and a common mistake is to focus on just one or a few areas and neglect other proven marketing tactics. In today’s connected world, many companies focus all their efforts into SEO, social media, or other digital marketing efforts. While this is a noble cause, there are many different ways to reach your customers and nothing should be neglected. Not Applying Company Goals Conversely, some people go into marketing training with too broad of a focus. I am not necessarily referring to a broad marketing focus, but rather the idea of focusing on marketing as an abstract topic and not applying different marketing efforts directly to a business’s specific needs. When training with a company, I always try to apply the topics we’re covering directly to their business in order to help the training have a direct impact on the company and its efforts. Misidentifying Your Target Market Each company has an ideal customer. When you’re planning your marketing efforts, you want to imagine where this customer works, shops, commutes, and how they’re entertained so you can try to advertise to their needs. From a training perspective, taking the time to identify your customer base and strategize on the best ways to reach them is valuable, and this should be done with expert insight. When I work with marketing trainees, identifying our focus areas is a major priority and something which yields great results. Neglecting Local Trends One of the reasons I only offer my business training services in the Bay Area is because I believe in the power of local markets and my knowledge of the area helps local businesses succeed. Marketing is no different, and there are tactics which work here and wouldn’t be as successful elsewhere. By staying plugged into your area, you can find the right marketing strategies to move your business forward. If you feel expert marketing training could help your sales team thrive, I would love to explain more about my services. To learn more, give me a call today.