Growing a business entails an array of strategies. They range from discovering a niche and defining the target audience to finding profitable products or services. However, the most crucial strategy in growing your business should be geared towards finding your customers. This is where marketing strategy comes in.
Some business owners fret over the idea of marketing. They consider it as a costly venture that does not spur business growth quickly. This is far from the truth. There are many inexpensive ways to promote your business, such as direct mail marketing and low-budget digital marketing strategies. This article outlines four viable marketing tactics to transform your business.
Social Media Marketing
More than 88% of marketers in the US are using social media today. This shows you the importance of social media in marketing. You can drive revenue and traffic with the “Big Five” social media sites – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. There are four reasons why social media is doing magic for marketers:
· Encourages conversations and humanizes your brand
· It is an effective and inexpensive way to market to a broad audience
· Offers companies marketplace insights by providing essential metrics
Facebook Marketing
Facebook provides an enormous social effect on a company in terms of brand awareness, reputation, and customer relationships. It’s not only due to the considerable following, but also the attention is given to Facebook. Research shows that most adults spend many hours glued on social networks. Therefore, Facebook marketing is a worthwhile investment.
Tips for growing your business with Facebook:
· Create a Facebook business page
· Optimize your Facebook ads’ shares and likes
· Vary your post types – Links, live streams, instant articles, and virtual reality
· Develop a Facebook marketing strategy
· Measure and track the results with Facebook analytics
YouTube
YouTube is known to be an educational and entertainment platform. However, it is proving to be a useful tool in the world of marketing. Nearly 50% of marketers are already using YouTube to promote their brands.
There are two main reasons for the increasing popularity of YouTube marketing: YouTube has over a billion monthly active users. A third of the total global time online is spent on YouTube. So, you have two solid reasons to begin a YouTube marketing campaign.
Tips for growing your business with YouTube:
· Create and brand a YouTube channel
· Develop a YouTube marketing strategy
· Run a YouTube advertising campaign
· Create different types of YouTube videos
· Optimize your videos for SEO
Search Engine Marketing
You are unlikely to achieve business growth if you don’t have some presence on search engines. On the contrary, you can increase organic traffic to your website and boost your revenues by following SEO best practices.
Search engine optimization (SEO) marketing magnifies your visibility and ranking in organic search results. In simpler terms, your website ranks high on search engine result pages (SERP) relative to competitor websites. And as a result, more people will visit your site, increasing the chances of converting prospects to customers.
To improve your ranking and visibility on Google, you need to optimize your website in three areas – links, content, and website setup.
Links
Links boost your online popularity. If other websites reference content on your site, this is considered a backlink. According to Google, backlinks are a sign of a website’s authority. Therefore, to generate traffic, you must acquire as many backlinks as possible. You can achieve this using the following strategies:
· Create internal links to other pages on your website.
· Publish content on a third-party website and link it back to your website.
· Reach out to other companies and request them to reference your content.
· Create high-quality content to earn organic links.
Content
People search for content on the internet. Content can be a web page, blog post, video, or infographics. You need to optimize your content because Google uses it to rank your website. Follow these tips to optimize your content for SEO:
· Find out the keywords that your target audience would use to find your website
· Use keywords strategically in your site
· Leverage internal and external links in your content
Website Setup
The technical setup of your website affects your ranking on search engines. The website should have features that allow Google to scan and index it quickly. As such, pay attention to the architecture of your website in relation to the following elements:
· Ensure short loading time
· Avoid duplicate content and dead links
· Use short and simple URLs
· Simplify the usability of your website
Direct Mail Marketing
Though old, direct mail is still a viable promotional tool for marketers. Direct mailing is an excellent way to neutralize the marketing noise your customers are exposed to, especially for professionals like mortgage brokers, real estate agents, and pest control technicians. Other advantages of direct mail include:
· It is inexpensive
· They are easy to track
· Tangible and personalized
· It is versatile and creative
· Helps to build relationships with clients
· Highly tangible
To get the most from your direct mail marketing campaign, you need to create quality content. Also, develop items that are unique and captivating. This way, you will keep your audiences engaged, and they will always anticipate receiving your mail.
Tips for growing your business with direct mail:
· Personalize the mails by addressing the recipients by name
· Be creative in designing your advertising items and make sure they reflect your brand image
· Offer your recipients multiple feedback channels, including your website, email, and social media
· Track and measure campaign performance
· Include a concise call to action
Email Marketing
There are over 3 billion email users globally. Furthermore, research shows that two-thirds of customers purchase a product or service following an email marketing campaign. When it comes to return on investment, email generates $38 for each dollar spent. And, no other digital marketing strategy can beat email in customer acquisition. These are the four main benefits of email marketing.
Through email marketing, you can generate and nurture leads. Besides that, you can establish valuable relationships with your clients through personalized engagement. It is also a great way to promote your brand and products or services. More importantly, email marketing enables you to share valuable content with your prospects.
Tips for building an email list:
· Host events and collect emails of participants
· Offer deals and discounts in exchange for email addresses
· Reward the employees who collect most emails
· Incentivize loyal email followers as a way of encouraging them to forward links to family and friend
· Create slide-in or pop-ups in your web pages where visitors can leave their email addresses
· Engage on social media and encourage your follower to visit your website, where they will fill in their details.
Summary
Marketing is more effective when it is a concerted effort. Utilizing several tactics provides the much-needed synergy in your marketing campaigns. For that reason, you might want to explore all the marketing strategies discusses above, or at least three of them.
