22 years of Marketing in 5 minutes

In this newsletter, I am about to share my marketing go-to guide that has helped me in selling, upselling and most importantly, cement a prominent place in the world of social media.

Marketing is the most valuable skill you can acquire; it can change the trajectory of your life. It's the activity of promoting and selling your products and services. You could have the best product or service, and you've spent a year perfecting your brand image, perhaps logo, and website user interfaces, but if you do not market it, you won't get customers. Marketing is the backbone of any business.

Many aspiring startups typically burn out a year later, not because of ideological differences between co-founders or dis-alignment in operations strategy. They dry out because they run out of finances. Marketing brings in sales, and that is why I am always pushy in my every third post on social media about learning this skill and giving it a try.

The most important recommendation I can offer is to avoid postponing the launch of your business in pursuit of a perfect moment.

No time is perfect, launch with an MVP (minimum viable product) and fine-tweak your product/service based on customers' remarks. This is how I scaled up sales for Hostinger in Pakistan, BeingGuru, Workchest, and our most popular online training program LearnEasy.

The formula for my marketing has always been simple while making a powerful emotional appeal to my customers.

• In the world of the internet, the market is on the internet and therefore you need to use the internet for marketing and outreach
• Look for a compelling problem, a burning issue
• Create an offer around desires
• Flip features of your products/services into benefits for customers
• Creating scarcity
• Offering discount
• CTA (Call to Action)

When you talk about the initial formats that yield good ROI, I choose videos over any other tool. It not only allows you to convey a message effectively but Google also loves videos formats and is indexing them faster. Get on YouTube and push your content regularly.

You give yourself a fair chance of getting ranked for your business-related keywords. In your video, you should always give a call to action so people are compelled to click.

Once clicked, I always prefer a customized landing page.

So imagine, you have a product, say "winter clothes". Creating a short video with a call to action to a landing page and that landing page exclusively talking about the particular product mentioned in the video with reviews is always a winner in a long run.

Rest is just the process, rinse and repeat.

Give it a try.

If you don't...

Your competitor will - for sure!

Good luck,

Hisham Sarwar