18 Jul 5 Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business
You have a sound idea and you’re confident it can work, but don’t underestimate the value of effective marketing. Unfortunately, all of the elements that go into running our businesses sometimes makes us forget the hard work required to make potential customers walk through the door. The key to making your business, especially a new business, successful is a structured marketing approach and the right strategy. First off, you’ll need to know your target audience and the tools required to reach them. Here are some valuable tips on making your marketing effective, growing your business and expanding your reach.
1. Have a Plan
Have a plan for your marketing
When a general leads their troops into battle, they always have the outcome planned out. Even if it means retreating if need be, the plan is predictable. Have a plan for your marketing campaign. lay out every single step in the campaign, including dates content will be delivered and how you will interact with responding customers. Be prepared for anything, you can have an email campaign get zero responses or you can get inundated by questions, you need to know what to do in either situation.
We had a client who had mulled the idea of having their product sold online, but was always hesitant to go through with it. The product was selling out in brick and mortar stores and the logical next step would be to take it online and expand the retail reach. But, the client refused, his reason: his manufacturing end would not be able to handle a large uptick in sales. You may think that’s not all that bad of a problem to have, but he knew if the manufacturing end was distressed, the entire process would be hurt and his most faithful customers would have a negative experience. Instead, he focused his marketing on in-store sales, expanded his retail reach and increased sales without damaging his reputation. His plan was to target new customers, delivering quality service, without harming his production. He understood his demographic and limitations.
Put everything on paper and create a timeline. What do you expect to achieve with your campaign and then go through milestones you can rationally achieve. We all would love to have our revenue increase by 500% but a realistic approach would look at a more reasonable 7% increase in 90 days. The more down to earth you make your plan, the better and more sensible the results.
2. The What and How, not the Who
We spend a lot of time wondering who will purchase our product or service. The aggressive push for nailing down your target demographic has led to endless apps and business models that promise to reach the perfect audience. Knowing your demo is gold, but don’t forget your potential clients can evolve and change through time.
A food manufacturing client we acquired several years ago was insistent on their demo being 18-25 year old college students. We had no idea where they were getting this data, but we chose to go along with it. We created branding and an entire campaign pushing content to college students. The local university was submerged with ads, promo models handing out product and digital signage. The product never moved.
We sent out a crew to hand out samples at a sports event (the product was being pushed as a healthy snack) and everything changed from that point on. The booth set up to engage with foot traffic was slammed. Line 5 people deep at any given time. The crowd was made up of 28-45 year old mothers and their young children. The product was perfect for moms on the go. The kids loved it and the client’s marketing strategy took a giant step towards the right direction.
Our client was so focused on who they wanted to sell to, they forgot who the product actually benefited. The What and How of demographics. WHAT will this product do to make the client’s life better or solve a problem and HOW does it add value and benefit the user. The answer to these questions filters out your demographic and draws a clearer picture.
3. Email Marketing Done Right
Social Media drives traffic to your website.
I swear, email marketing works. There is no sign of email letting up in the near future, it’s a direct connection to your leads and clients, and you should utilize it.
Three reasons why email works. It delivers your branding directly to the user. You must influence a customer’s relationship with your brand at all times. Every step of the campaign should have a logo, tagline or some color palette reminding the user of your company. Also, it generates leads. Users with no interest in your product will unsubscribe and you can focus on a more reliable list. Lastly and most important is the customer engagement. There have been many times I choose to shoot off an email to a client I haven’t heard from in a while and within a couple days of sending the email, we receive information on a new project. Reminding people you are still around is sometimes the best way to market current clients.
We tend to make our client’s email campaign designs as aesthetically pleasing as possible. We spend time on overall design, branding and a functioning layout. But, an email campaign can be as simple all text with a logo on top or bottom, introducing a new service or wishing people a happy holiday. Yes, going big might be more effective, but don’t put off simplicity.What your email should always include is a link to your website. Getting people to engage and transfer to your online storefront is key to a successful email campaign.
4. Go Social – No Matter How Much You Hate It
I can’t begin to tell you how many of our clients do not have personal social media accounts or any interest to join. That’s fine. I don’t expect business owners to be involved, if anything, it’s a distraction from more important business duties. But your company must have online presence. Not just a Facebook page or an Instagram, but get your Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest up and running. People expect you to have that online footprint. If you don’t, you create doubt and confusion.
Why? Because social media is how you drive traffic to your website and ecommerce store. The goal is to scale your business quickly by using targeted Facebook advertising to drive traffic. Nobody will ever see your social media content unless you advertise it. Using the very easy to use built-in Facebook ad creator, you can target the exact kind of potential customers.
5. Track and Measure
Once you have your campaign running, it’s time to analyse the results. Almost every email campaign creator, social media marketing tool and website traffic tracker will give you a report on who your visitors are and how they engaged. Now, none of this information is valuable unless you have a predetermined benchmark for your campaign. If you see numbers meeting your goals, keep doing what works, but if things are flat or certain tools are not working, don’t hesitate to make adjustments and optimize your campaign. Always be willing to change your content to meet your objective.
Hopefully these ideas will move you in the right direction. Check back for more ideas on marketing and growing your business.