Becoming more and more complicated every day, marketing can be very overwhelming—especially nowadays wherein there are many options to choose and tools to use. Nevertheless, a lot of basic marketing principles still apply today. And more often than not, some marketing professionals and business owners tend to overlook the fundamental methods that made a difference between successful campaigns versus ineffective ones.

To help boost your marketing efforts, here are the top ten tried and tested marketing tips:

1. Understand your target market – As marketing campaigns should be geared towards your niche market, you must carefully study your customer to become an expert in your business. Marketing campaigns succeed because marketers know and understand their audience well. They not only fulfil their needs and wants, but they also create demand. Using proper market segmentation, recognizing your target market as can help creating an accurately targeted and profitable campaign.

2. Watch out your competitors – Aside from studying your target market, you should also study your competitors. It’s almost impossible to successfully promote your business unless you know what you’re up against. You need to determine what your competitors’ prices, guarantees, promotions, so that you can make your offer the most attractive and valuable to potential customers.

3. Concentrate on the offer – A marketing offer is the catalyst of marketing promotions that generates results. As a matter of fact, market testing has demonstrated that the offer is the most important factor for conversion. Concentrate on what you can offer to the market if you want to succeed.

4. Test the water – Don’t carry out any marketing campaign without running some tests. One of the most commonly used is a split test, which enables you to simultaneously assess two versions of your marketing material—whether it is a brochure, web page, email, etc. Split testing and other forms of testing can verify if your audience understands the message you are trying to convey, and can ultimately improve performance.

5. Work with others – Creative concepts usually stem from collaborating with other creative folks. So don’t feel obligated that you solely need to come up with out-of-the-box ideas. You may begin with an idea, but an open communication with other creative individuals will exponentially help generating fresh and interesting ideas. Involve your employees, which certainly have valuable insights to share about your customers.

6. Don’t always stress on the price – A lot of marketers fall short because they solely sell on affordability. Emphasizing the price can often lead to bargain war, low profitability, and even bankruptcy. Instead, concentrate on the benefits and your unique selling point (USP) that the price factor becomes virtually trivial.

7. Universal response – Take into consideration the entire user experience before launching a campaign. Check to see if your prospects are having a consistent user experience—whether you use email, website offer, etc. If they are, then your marketing campaigns certainly stand above 98% of your competitors.

8. After sales support – Marketing and networking with your niche market is an ongoing process. And being a professional marketer, it’s your responsibility to get to know and build relationships with your market segment—before and after making a sale. Consider sending informative emails or managing a blog to keep an interactive means of keeping in touch with prospects and customers.

9. Capitalize on integrated marketing – Using a single marketing technique won’t really drive you to success. It’s great to produce majority of your sales leads via PPC marketing if you must, but think about what will happen if that runs out. You need to have multiple marketing methods in place to constantly achieve your business goals.

10. Experience is still the best teacher – It’s a cliché for a reason—because it’s true and proven. You may hire all the best marketers in the planet, but you still have to do the hard work. And nothing beats the actual experience, which can definitely make you a better and more successful marketer in the long run.