You’re awesome at what you do. But here’s the unfortunate truth. It doesn’t matter how great you are at what you do if nobody knows who you are. The formula for success? Offer the one-two punch of great marketing followed by excellent service that follows through your marketing’s promises.
Marketing is a key part of any business, but too many companies simply go through the motions of marketing without taking the time to optimize their performance.
With the data we have available to us in 2020, we have every opportunity to finetune our marketing down to the smallest detail, but often we fail to capitalize on it. If you’re looking to improve your marketing performance, especially through social media, then here are a number of different areas where you can look at improving.
SMART marketing is focusing your efforts on the right channels. The “right” channels for you may vary slightly depending on your target audience, product, and branding. Here are effective channels that may be right for you.
Create an Effective Social Media Plan
If your business is not currently winning on social media, it’s time to change that. If you haven’t set up a plan yet, the good news is that it’s never too late to get started. Here are some of the tips that’ll help you do exactly that, so use them to your company’s advantage.
Use Images and Video Creatively – One of the most important things your business needs to understand about using social media is visuals. Visuals connect and they land with people faster. All studies show that people are more likely to engage with social media posts where there are different sources of media involved.
Show a Personality – Showing your brand has some sort of personality is a big asset. People don’t engage with boring and uninteresting accounts on social media. And just because your brand isn’t a person, that doesn’t mean it can’t have a personality. Find a consistent voice for your brand and then stick to it. It’s something that’ll really help when trying to engage people.
Listen and Interact, Rather Than Just Promoting – How you use social media is vital. People don’t want to read or engage with that kind of content. And that’s why no successful brand uses social media in that way. Instead, you need to listen and interact, not just promote.
Find Ways to Share Links Easily – Sharing links on social media is one of the key things you want your readers to do. After all, you want to direct traffic to your site where people can buy products or services. You can use a Scannable code in many instances to make this easier. The more links you share, the more people will click them, especially when done in an engaging way.
Learn About Targeting the Right Kinds of Customers – Social media platforms have systems in place for targeting people. Facebook in particular offers very specific and in-depth targeting mechanics. When you’re looking to sell online, ensuring the right people see your posts is key. And that’s why you’ll want to make the most of these targeting options. Learn about how to use them and how to get your promoted posts in front of the right people. It’ll pay off big time.
Get Insights from the People that Matter
There are many different stakeholders in your marketing strategy, and lots of different insights you can glean from these people. Modern technology makes it extremely easy to get peoples’ opinions on your marketing, and you can use this to finetune your strategies.
Perhaps the most important people in this equation are the people you’re advertising to. Ask them about your marketing efforts and use questionnaires to find out how you’re performing. Asking simple questions such as “have you seen an advert for our company in the past week?” to people you know have been targeted by an ad can give you great insight into your performance.
Get Insights from the People that Matter
There are many different stakeholders in your marketing strategy, and lots of different insights you can glean from these people. Modern technology makes it extremely easy to get peoples’ opinions on your marketing, and you can use this to finetune your strategies.
Perhaps the most important people in this equation are the people you’re advertising to. Ask them about your marketing efforts and use questionnaires to find out how you’re performing. Asking simple questions such as “have you seen an advert for our company in the past week?” to people you know have been targeted by an ad can give you great insight into your performance.
Know Which Metrics Matter
When you have access to so much data, the big difficulty can be figuring out which bits actually matter. To derive insights that can help you improve the performance of your marketing, you need to be able to separate the metrics that matter from the ones that don’t.
A good way to turn the data you generate into metrics that can help you create actionable insights, is through high-quality marketing analytics software. This software can help you see how you’re performing across different platforms in real-time, giving you a good idea of what’s going on with your marketing.
PPC / Google Ads
It’s understandable that some small businesses may be hesitant to invest in paid ads. Paid ads can give you a quick boost in brand awareness. They are highly targeted ensuring that your message is only heard by the people for whom it’s intended. That’s much more efficient than the “spray and pray” tactics of the past.
However, while paid ads can generate momentum, it can quickly dissipate. This is why it’s so important to follow up with more organic digital marketing channels to capitalize on the surge of interest.
Content Marketing
As far as organic marketing channels go, content marketing is considered to be one of the most effective. Generating your content benefits your business’ marketing efforts in a number of ways. When you create blog posts, videos, infographics, white papers, etc. it goes a long way toward generating value in your brand.
- It helps to establish your knowledge, expertise, and authority
- It builds trust in your brand and the people behind your business
- It generates social sharing and promotes brand awareness
- It also helps to boost your Search Engine Optimization, giving you an edge over your competitors
However, before you start generating content you need a clear and coherent content strategy. Your content should always be considered from the audience’s perspective. How will it bring them value? How will it help them address a common pain point? What will it do to make their lives easier?
Useful, consistent and high quality content is one of the most reliable ways to generate highly motivated leads.
Over-the-Top (OTT) Platforms
If you’re targeting a younger market, you probably already know that advertising on cable TV isn’t as effective as before. For today’s content-hungry and cord-cutting consumers, OTT platforms are where it’s at.
Over the Top (OTT) services refer to any type of video or streaming media that provides viewers access to movies or TV shows by sending the media directly through the internet. Some of the most popular OTT providers include Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu.
Many services are considering making the change to a “freemium” model to remain profitable. And this raises a lot of potential for OTT advertising. Streaming services are here to stay, and with them comes a new potential channel that’s brimming with potential.
What’s more, the nature of OTT services allows for the possibility of highly targeted and ultra-relevant ads which could be way more effective than traditional TV advertising.
Word of Mouth
In an era where digital takes up so much of the marketing conversation, we mustn’t neglect the importance of Word of Mouth. WoM is arguably more important than ever, especially in an era where people have never been more interconnected via social channels.
Of course, a big part of generating good WoM is ensuring that you’re operating at a consistently high standard and delighting customers. But in the digital age, social proof is also an extremely important part of generating WoM.
This is why you should incentivize customers to leave reviews for you on Google, Yelp, Trustpilot and other relevant platforms. Consumers take what brands say about themselves with a big pinch of salt. But they trust the word of other consumers.
Personalized Voucher Campaigns
When we think of marketing, the temptation is always to focus on converting new customers. However, retaining an existing customer costs at least 5 times less. Every email address on your database is a way of printing money.
Invest in email software to help maximize open and click-through rates. This can help keep your customers loyal!
These tips are great ways to boost your business marketing so you can grow your business!