Developing a successful marketing strategy is a critical task for overall business success. But knowing what marketing strategies will actually grow your business can be tricky. That’s where we can help.
First, let's debunk the myth that marketing is a singular event or campaign. It's not a single, fleeting act but rather an intricate dance of multiple moving parts. Each plays its role at different stages of your customer journey, from long before a transaction even occurs to the grand finale of converting your customer and everything that’s required post purchase.
To do this well, you need to have an in-depth understanding of your target audience and offer them something of value. And you need to offer this at the right time, in the right places and in the right way in order to grow your business. Of course, the activities used to do this effectively will vary between business and industry, but to get the most from your marketing and to reach a wide audience, it’s vital to consider and test out a number of different strategies.
1. Social media
Yes, it’s an obvious one, but it can’t be ignored considering the majority of people are on social media - 63.7% to be exact. Social media marketing presents an opportunity for businesses to get their product or service directly in front of their target audience and find new customers. Your existing customers will also expect a social presence, whether it’s to answer their questions or show them who you are as a brand. And now more than ever, people use social media like a search engine, so it’s imperative you don’t get left behind.
Once you know this, you can research the best type of content to post on each. For example, company culture posts may do well on LinkedIn, while posts highlighting product features may be a fit for Instagram. Top tip - an analytics dashboard is a great way to do this.
Top Tips to Grow Your Business Using Social Media
➤ Show the human side of your brand
With the emergence of AI tools now, it can be tempting to throw together a social media content calendar using chat GPT. The problem with this is though that you could risk sounding robotic and impersonal. The point of social media is to be social (the clue is in the name) so make sure your brand comes across as authentic and relatable, injecting personality into your posts and comments where possible.
➤ Use your social media as a useful resource, not a sales channel
Nobody wants to be sold to constantly. While it’s still useful to post some of your special offers and product-focused content, make sure you don’t overwhelm people with constant sales and pushy offers. Social media is the opportune place to build brand awareness, but this doesn’t happen by shoving your product in people's faces.
It happens by sharing valuable, relatable and relevant content that resonates with your target audience. Your social media channels are also the first touchpoint for many potential customers, so you want to entice them in with useful resources, rather than dozens of posts screaming “sell, sell, sell”.
➤ Be consistent
Research suggests that consistency is key for social algorithms. Those who have engaged with your content in the past or who follow you, are more likely to be shown your content in future. Maintaining a consistent posting schedule will allow you to increase your followers and engagement, leading to a broader reach for your content.
2. Get The Most Out Of Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful tool for nurturing and converting leads and still remains one of the most effective ways to reach customers and generate revenue. In order to make the most of email marketing, you need to ensure you have a list of prospects to email in the first place.
Top Tips to Growing Your Email List:
➛ Make signing up easy - Ensure there are clear email CTAs on your website or app, landing pages, social channels and anywhere else your customers are to make it easy to sign up.
➛ Offer an incentive - People are more likely to sign up for your emails if they are getting something of value in return. Consider giving discounts, vouchers, ebooks or downloadable guides as a reward for signing up.
➛ Don’t be too pushy with sales - Just like we mentioned above on social media, don’t spam people with sales emails constantly. Provide value in your emails, sharing top tips, how-tos, industry news and anything else that would be of interest to those on your email lists.
➛ Segment your lists - Create different lists based on a range of criteria for example interests, behaviour or demographic information and send different emails to each list. For example, you might make a list of people who have purchased a specific product, then email them to recommend another product that they might be interested in. This type of email will only be relevant to a specific subset of people in your overall list, so there is no point in sending that email to everyone. Another example could be if someone clicks on a specific link, they've clearly expressed an interest in something in particular. Mark that person as a subscriber, so you may market to them later. If someone makes a purchase, mark them as a buyer. Identifying your buyers' and subscribers' interests is critical for segmentation.
➛ Automate your emails - Any good email service provider (ESP) will have the ability to set up automated email workflows and sequences, which will form part of any good sales and marketing funnel, helping create strong relationships with subscribers. You could set up welcome emails for new subscribers, re-engagement emails for those who haven’t opened your email for a certain period of time, winback emails for those who haven’t bought from you in a certain period of time or feedback emails for those who have bought a product from you. While these are automated, be sure that they sound human and include personalisation tokens such as first name or company name.
➛CTAs - Make sure each campaign has a clear and compelling CTA. This doesn’t always need to be a sale, it can be a website visit, ebook download, social media follow or read more button. Encouraging people to click CTAs within your emails will increase engagement, keeping potential customers interested and more likely to continue opening your emails in future.
➛A/B testing - Split test everything because you never know what will be the most effective until you put it to the test. This can help you better understand what your audience responds to, allowing you to communicate more effectively and sell to your customers.
3. Take advantage of co-branding, affinity, and cause marketing
Co-branding is a marketing strategy where two or more companies collaborate to promote and sell a new product or service. The result is that consumers are often prepared to spend extra because the brands give their collective credibility to raise the impression of the product or service's value.
You also have the opportunity to use the other brands' existing customer base, meaning you can grow your market share by gaining a new demographic of customers in new locations and regions. Co-branding can be an expensive strategy, however, when the costs are split across both brands, it can be a much more achievable and worthwhile strategy to grow your business. You will also be presented with a great learning opportunity as you will be doubling your resources, which means double the knowledge base to help you both grow.
4. Start Blogging For Your Business
While the internet landscape has changed massively over the past few years, one thing remains true, blogging is still an effective tool in your marketing toolbox. According to Social Media Today, 77% of internet users still read blogs.
So, where to begin? While anyone can start one, If you're going to blog (especially as a business), be sure you're doing it effectively. Similar to what we said about social media, you should consider how you can add value for your customers. The goal with business blogs isn’t selling, it’s providing useful content that will position you as a thought leader. This is one of the most effective marketing methods for any company and comes with a heap of benefits.
Benefits of starting a company blog
Driving traffic to your website
By regularly posting and updating relevant content to your blog, you can attract more visitors to your website. It’s vital however that you create content that attracts your target audience and you utilise SEO methods to ensure your blogs are getting in front of the right people. Focusing on keywords with a high search volume but low competition from other content creators will increase the likelihood of your content ranking highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). In fact, blogging leads to 55% more website visitors.
➤ Lead generation
Once you successfully have visitors to your blog, you can use this opportunity to capture them as leads. By adding pop-ups or gated content like downloadable ebooks or guides, you can capture basic information like the names and email addresses of your target audience in return for the free content.
➤ Reusable content
You can repurpose your blogs as a valuable source of content to share on your social media channels and email campaigns, creating a valuable opportunity to create engagement with your target audience.
➤ Cost effective marketing
Blogging is a relatively inexpensive method of inbound marketing compared to some other forms of marketing, and once published can always be updated and used in future, providing long-term marketing value.
➤ Establish authority
If you consistently post high-quality, useful and educational content on a specific subset of topics within your industry, you can establish credibility and demonstrate your expertise. This helps to create trust with your audience. Share your articles on networks like Medium, Quora, Reddit and LinkedIn to reach as many people as possible.
5. Use videos as marketing tools
Video is a quick and effective way to get your message through to your audience. 86% of marketing professionals reported that they used video as a marketing tool, and 78% of those say that video has directly increased sales for their business. 86% said videos helped to boost traffic to their website. Video is a great way to demonstrate to your customers exactly how you can solve their problems.
It is also extremely effective for brands with complex ideas, concepts or product features - the adage is "show, don’t tell" for a reason However, not every video needs to be pushing your product. Think outside the box and make entertaining videos that both inform and entertain i.e. how-to videos, customer reviews, behind-the-scenes, tutorial-style videos or even animated videos.
6. Start a podcast
Podcasts are an excellent marketing tool as they are generally a low-cost way to reach new audiences, engage with customers and build brand authority. They can be used to position your company as a thought leader while disseminating information about your products.
We think the best way to do this is to engage in brand storytelling, a well-known communication structure to engage customers emotionally. Rather than simply regurgitating statistics and data, storytelling allows you to tell a compelling story about your business, what it does, what it values, what you value as a business leader, how you engage and contribute to your community, and how you resolve issues and problems. Adding that sort of human impact to your brand stories will emotionally affect your target audience, helping them engage with your business.
7. Understand the power of SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) might be intimidating, but it can also be extremely effective. And when you know how to master SEO properly or you have the help of an SEO agency, the sky truly is the limit.
What is SEO?
SEO is the process of improving your website so that it performs better on search engines like Google and Bing. The thinking behind it is, the better your visibility or ranking on these search engines, the better your overall website traffic will be.
There are generally two types of SEO:
➤ Technical SEO: This is optimising the technical aspects of your site like load time and URL structure.
➤ On-site SEO: This is what people most often think of, and refers to the content on your website. Think of keywords and blog content.
9. Embrace AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a hot topic and is more prevalent than ever, revolutionizing industries and transforming how businesses operate. When leveraged effectively, AI can drive substantial growth and efficiency. According to recent data, 83% of companies now prioritize AI in their business strategies. Although integrating AI into your operations might feel overwhelming, it presents numerous opportunities to scale and enhance your business.
For instance, advanced AI-powered tools, including the best AI girlfriends, showcase the potential of AI in personal and professional applications. These virtual companions highlight how AI can cater to individual preferences, enhance user engagement, and drive innovation in technologies.
Here are just some ways AI can improve various processes in a business, freeing up valuable time and resources to be able to focus your efforts on growing your company.
10. Referral marketing
If a friend recommended a brand to you, chances are you are much more likely to purchase from them, rather than if you just saw an ad for that brand, right? That’s what referral marketing assumes anyway. The concept of referral marketing is that existing, satisfied customers recommend your company to their friends and family, with the aim of generating new customers for the business.
It’s an extremely effective marketing strategy - surveys show that 84% of people trust recommendations from people they know more than brand advertising.
Conclusion
Mastering effective strategies is critical for sustainable growth. From harnessing the power of social media to embracing the personalised touch of AI-driven campaigns, the strategies explored in this blog provide a comprehensive toolkit to get you started. By adapting these approaches to your unique goals and industry, you can create a compelling brand presence, foster meaningful customer relationships, and seize opportunities for business expansion.
Remember, the key lies in continuous adaptation, experimentation, and analysing your results. All the information you gain from analysing, tracking, and measuring will help you find areas for improvement. This will also help you understand the ROI of your marketing strategies.
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