Top FIVE Marketing Skills I've Learned Through My THREE Businesses!

As a child, I made YouTube videos to make my friends and family crack up. These videos ended up on my mother’s social media accounts, eventually leading to the eyes of a business owner in my hometown. This business owner loved the video and asked me to create one for her business for $100. I never forgot the amount of coffee that $100 bought me.

These videos began the love story between marketing and me. Over five years I created three different businesses, with marketing being a vital part of each. I created a marketing agency for a year in high school, a miniature golf course that had zero traffic - therefore needing excellent marketing if needing profit, and now a real estate agent needing marketing skills to get clients, and also sell clients homes.

This is a compilation of MY top five marketing lessons I learned running these businesses.

Story Telling

I hit a homerun at my baseball game yesterday.

OR.

Tension was high at the final championship game versus our rivals at the game yesterday. We were down by two, with one person on base. There were two outs, and I was up to bat. My hands were sweaty as I gripped my bat at home plate. The ball left the pitcher's hand, whizzing toward me, and I swung with all I had. With the crack of the bat, I put my head down and ran. I heard the cheers of the audience as I looked up to see my ball fly over the center field fence and the look of disappointment as I passed the first baseman. I won the game.

You can say a basic thing, in such a cooler way, to market a business, you can use this to your advantage. People like stories! This is why as a kid, I was hired by local businesses to make videos; they loved the stories I created and wanted one for their business! At my miniature golf course I made videos, too. When I made videos showing cool features our course had, my mom was the only like! Then made a “Chef Boyardee” inspired commercial where I hit a golf ball from my bedroom, the ball comedically rolls through town and stops right before the hole, not going in. This story of following the ball, although not showing much of my business, was more engaging to the customers than showing specs of the business.

Audience

Back in the mini golf days, I wanted everyone to come to my miniature golf course. That would be nice, however I was wasting a lot of time doing this. No matter how many dollars I spent, the 80 year old couple that kept seeing my ad for our mini golf tournament wasn’t coming!

Understanding WHO your main audience is and WHEN they should see your ads will make marketing that much more effective and efficient. If I spent $100 advertising to a general audience and then spent $100 advertising to couples in high school right after school ends, which campaign is going to result in more mini golf sales? It’s not the general audience!

Look at who buys your product and think about who will benefit most from your product. When you market, make everything you do about these people. What colors would they like? How do they talk? What can we add to the product to benefit them more?

Consistency

As the miniature golf owner, I was new to marketing. The logo on the website was different from the one on our social media. The font was never the same, the colors were off, and the way we spoke on the website was different than on social media. Even though people were getting the messages, which is all I thought was important, everything was sloppy. Even though the words themselves were great, the background spoke louder than the words I typed. The inconsistency screamed sloppy, lazy, and that we didn’t care. It seemed like we didn’t know what we were doing.

When a mentor pointed this out, I at first thought he was just nitpicky. But I fixed it regardless and you’d be surprised at the number of comments I received the following weeks! I heard, “Looks like you know what you’re doing now!” many times. More sophisticated crowds started coming in, and our social media began to get more followers.

Even if it doesn’t make a direct impact or physical impact, consistency WILL make a mental impact. Being consistent will get your brand identity into your customer’s head. You want them to think of your business in one way, not be confused and think of your business as sloppy. Consistency is clean and says the same message every time.

Psychology

This goes along with knowing your audience, but you need to know how people think. As a real estate agent, I advertise houses online . One time, I posted one of the nastiest homes I’ve ever gotten. Spiders were everywhere! To my surprise, this property got the most likes on my social media. I was, really confused.

I looked into it and wondered why more people were liking this post. My caption was funny and the pictures were taken by a new photographer who took artsy photos. It seems that people scrolling on social media just see the artsy pictures with the funny captions, and click like. They didn’t care that the contents of the actual house were bad!

This made me think about the psychology of my audience. Think about your audience from every angle. Who are they and why are they on social media? How do they act on social media? What do they want to see on social media? Make posts around that. Where does your crowd go to hang out? What makes them laugh? What would make them say wow? Get inside of your customer’s heads, and market your product based on that!

Attention

This is my favorite bit of advice and allows you to be creative and have fun. What is something you can do to bring attention toward your product? People are bombarded with messages and advertising, so you need to stand out. My approach is being creative and funny. For my miniature golf course, we went through parades and chipped candy from the road to the crowd with golf clubs. With real estate, instead of advertisements showing our services, my partner and I roast each other and make jokes. Make a big splash but also make it relevant to your business. Don’t go hitting candy with golf clubs at a parade if you're an insurance agency!

Overall

In the end, you need to find the right people and understand them. Understand what would make them click a link, pull out their wallet, or drive to your place. Find the right people, don’t be targeting people that will never even think about it, that is a waste of time. Standout, but standout in the right way. Don’t blend in and be just another business, but don’t go overboard!