Growing a business doesn’t happen overnight. You’ll not only need to offer a sought-after product or service, but you must research the best target market, develop a strong price point, and create an attractive brand.
Despite taking all the above steps to perfectly position your brand and provide the best possible product for your customers, it’s your marketing plan (or lack of one) that could stand in the way of your company’s success.
If you would like to grow your brand awareness, customer base, and sales, check out these tips for developing a powerful marketing strategy.
Perform Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis is essential before you embark on a marketing strategy. By studying rivals competing for the same demographic, you could identify where they are going right, the tactics they are getting wrong, and how they could be disappointing their customers.
By understanding their marketing methods, you could gain a competitive advantage by developing a new and unique campaign or executing a better strategy.
Learn About Your Customers
In today’s modern world, you don’t need to make assumptions when attempting to identify and understand your ideal customer base. Big data is helping companies of every size to gain an in-depth knowledge of their customers. They can then use the gathered information to time a marketing strategy or to launch a product or service.
If your guesswork is letting your brand down and resulting in a small return on a marketing campaign, it might be time to make more informed decisions by using the power of data.
Any business dedicated to refining their marketing campaigns and growing their annual sales shouldn’t overlook business analytics. It can provide a variety of benefits to an organization, as they can identify how different demographics will respond to different advertising tactics. They also can use data to learn how various forms of marketing tactics will generate clicks and boost product sales, as it can provide an insight into the likes of PPC advertising, banner ads, email newsletters, and more.
For this reason, you should invest in a business analytics program for you or a member of your talented team. It could help your company to solve business challenges, make better decisions, and find opportunities using large amounts of data. The online course will allow your employee to work around their current work schedule while providing them with everything they need to help you find success.
Identify Your USP
Once you have thoroughly researched your direct competitors and demographic, you must identify what value you can provide your target audience. Your company’s unique selling proposition (USP) should outline the benefits of your business, products, and services in comparison to the competition, which could encourage potential customers to choose your brand over your rivals.
For example, if you can solve a problem for your customers that your competitors can’t, you must promote how your goods and services can improve their quality of life. While finding a USP can be difficult, you mustn’t overlook this step, as it is integral to set your business apart from its rivals and to give your customers a reason to place an order.
Decide How to Reach Your Target Market
In addition to defining your USP and target market, you must decide on how you will reach your target market.
There are a variety of methods you can use to promote your brand, goods, and services, such as:
- Digital marketing
- Public relations
- Sales promotions
- Marketing materials
- Direct sales
- Print advertising
- TV and radio advertising
Rather than embarking on all of the above tactics, focus your efforts on executing three to five of the above methods well. Bear your demographic in mind when developing a campaign, which could help you to create the correct tone of voice, visuals, and message.
Focus on One Social Media Channel at a Time
You would have to be foolish to overlook social media when developing a killer marketing strategy. After all, there are reportedly 3.2 billion active social media users on different platforms who are connecting with their followers, consuming news, and engaging with various brands.
While you might be eager to develop a strong presence on every popular platform, you must not spread yourself too thin when attempting to develop a strong marketing strategy. Instead, you must focus on mastering one social media network at a time.
It is a smart decision to identify the most popular platforms with your target audience, which can increase your reach, engagement, and traffic to your website. You also must think carefully about the best options for your company’s goals. For example, if you’re targeting older adults, Facebook is the best network to use, as 41% of its users are reportedly 65 years or older.
If, however, you’re looking to increase your brand recognition and aren’t focused on growing sales, Twitter is ideal. It is believed to be great for marketing but bad for providing brands with a return on their investment.
Don’t Overlook Email Marketing
Email marketing is becoming one of the biggest and best marketing tactics for customer engagement, brand loyalty, and greater sales. According to recent statistics, email marketing campaigns are a whopping 40 times more effective at attracting customers compared to Facebook and Twitter combined.
If you have yet to build an email list, get started as soon as possible. Once you have many subscribers on your database, you must take the time to produce and send compelling emails to their inbox.
You could increase your email click-through rate by:
- Featuring an attention-grabbing subject line
- Providing exclusive deals and offers
- Personalizing emails to match your subscribers’ needs and interests
- Publishing informative and entertaining copy
There are also many email marketing platforms to help you to send aesthetically pleasing, segmented emails into your subscribers’ inboxes.
A Strategic Content Marketing Strategy
If you haven’t incorporated content marketing into a strategy, you’re making a huge mistake. It can reportedly generate more than three times as many leads as outbound marketing. Plus, it costs an incredible 62% less. Starting a blog is essential if you want to drive traffic to your website and establish your company as a thought leader.
To enjoy blogging success, you must focus on quality over quantity. For example, one 1,500+ word insightful article will provide more value than five 500-word unhelpful posts. You also must optimize content with keywords to increase your ranking in the search engines, which can drive much traffic to your site. Plus, you must promote your content across your social media profiles and embark on link building tactics to increase your site’s presence in Google.
Every blog post you publish must be helpful, informative, and entertaining. You also must avoid continually publishing self-serving copy, which could lead to minimal engagement. Follow the rule of thumb of attempting to educate your readers over selling them a product. They’ll be more likely to read an article from start to finish, engage with your products and services, and share your content with their friends and followers.
Embark on Market Research
Again, you must remove the guesswork when developing a powerful marketing campaign. To surpass your competitors in the search engines, gain many social media followers, and encourage many people to buy your goods and services, you must gather feedback from your target demographic.
For example, you could ask your web visitors, customers, and subscribers to complete a survey, which should ask them various questions about your marketing efforts. You can then use their impartial feedback to tweak your company’s future campaigns, eliminate weaknesses, and build on its strengths.
Segment your audience to identify who receives a survey and their answers, as various ages, genders, and regions might perceive your marketing campaigns differently.
Aim to Retain Your Customers
Many companies are so focused on developing engaging social media strategies and email marketing campaigns that they overlook customer retention. Yet, it is believed there is a 60% to 70% probability of selling to an existing customer when promoting your goods and services. There is also a 5% to 20% probability of a new customer buying from your brand.
If you are committed to amplifying your sales and enjoying longevity in your industry, you must develop campaigns to encourage existing customers to buy from your brand time and again.
There are many ways you can maintain their interest and loyalty throughout the years, as you could:
- Identify the point where you could lose your customers and create tactics to win them back.
- Provide your customers with a reason to buy from your brand – launch a customer referral program, loyalty scheme, or exclusive discounts and deals.
- Deliver exceptional customer service every time – quickly respond to their emails, answer their calls, and resolve their problems.
Again, you can use big data to identify drop-off points, customer dissatisfaction, and their wants and needs. If you can pinpoint where you’re going right or wrong, you can enjoy repeat custom and prevent loyal customers from turning to your competitors.
Encourage Word of Mouth Marketing
Word of mouth marketing doesn’t have to cost your business anything, and it could help you to secure many loyal customers throughout the years. Yet, a poor customer experience, bad product, or inadequate service could prevent your customers from spreading the word about your brand.
To develop a positive reputation, you must aim to provide the best product, service, and customer experience. Even if a customer is unhappy, you shouldn’t hesitate to apologize for the issue and aim to resolve their problem as soon as possible. If you maintain a professional, friendly, and helpful attitude, it could encourage your customers to buy from your business again and recommend your brand to their family, friends, colleagues, or clients.
You also encourage word of mouth marketing by asking your new customers to recommend you to their loved ones or business associates. For example, you could ask them to share an offer, product page, or article on your website.
Embrace New Marketing Activities
Once you have mastered the above tactics, you might believe you don’t need to focus your attention on other marketing opportunities, but this could be a big mistake. While you might be busy reviewing analytics, thinking up engaging Facebook campaigns and tweaking your email newsletters, you can’t afford to become complacent.
New platforms and marketing tactics will emerge each year, and they shouldn’t be ignored. By doing so, you could allow your competitors to get to grips with a social network or tool that’s growing in popularity, which could help them to gain an industry advantage. The world of marketing is ever-changing, which is why you must keep your ear to the ground about new tactics and shouldn’t be afraid to embrace new activities.
Regularly Revisit Your Marketing Strategy
No marketing campaign is perfect. Even if a strategy is helping you to reach your target customers, generate substantial web traffic, and grow your annual sales, it might not be long until your tactics stop working.
After all, social media networks could experience a drop in popularity, your customers’ wants and needs might change, or Google could update its algorithm. Rather than scratching your head about a dip in organic traffic, click-through rates, or sales, you must regularly revisit your marketing strategy.
For example, you could generate a social media report to compare your campaigns by month, which could help you to identify if a social strategy is causing people to unfollow your profile. If your email open rates are declining, it could be a sign you need to improve your subject headline or change both their date and time.
Many social media platforms and digital marketing tools allow users to review a campaign’s metrics, which can provide an insight into its success or failure. By monitoring your performance each day, you could quickly adjust future campaigns to focus on reaching your goals, such as growing your web traffic, follower count, or sales.
Conclusion
Crafting a strong marketing campaign is the opposite of easy. You’ll not only need an in-depth understanding of your customers, but you must master various tactics, such as content marketing, social media, email marketing, and customer retention.
While the above tactics can take a great deal of effort, perseverance, and investment, it could lead to greater annual sales, a stronger reputation across an industry, and long-term growth.