Top 13 - Marketing Strategies That Work
In a crowded market, marketing is a challenge. But you want your target audience to hear your message, and you want your brand to stand out. But how do you do that when the competition is so fierce?
Here we will cover the top 13 marketing strategies that work.
Your Business Name
If you’re just starting your business, your business name is more important than you might think. You need a name that’s unique and easy to remember. No marketing strategy will be effective if people have difficulty remembering the name of your business.
If you’re having trouble coming up with a name, you can use a business name creator. You’ll just enter a keyword, and it will literally generate hundreds of names to help you come up with an idea.
You can also ask family and friends for suggestions, or even post an online survey and have people vote on your short list of ideas.
2. Content Is King
Your website is a powerful marketing and sales tool – but you need to get people to your site. One of the best ways to do that is to post content that your target audience will be interested in reading. The key is to make your content educational, not “salesy”.
Posting content that answers questions your target customers have will build your brand’s trust factor. It will also bring people to your website and keep them coming back.
Relevant content also builds your authority on Google which will help you appear higher in the search rankings.
3. Make Your Marketing Messaging Personal
Customers want to connect with the brands that they do business with, so your messaging needs to be relatable to your target audience. It has to show how your product or service specifically meets the needs and wants of your customers.
Creating this messaging starts with knowing your customers intimately. You have to know what your customers need and want and what would make them buy your product or service. You need to do extensive market research to create a profile of the people who are most likely to buy your product.
You need to understand your audience in order to make your messaging as relevant to them as possible.
4. Social Media Marketing
We all know the power of social media. You need to leverage social media as much as you can for your business. You can post on your channels, but you should also try paid ads on specific sites. This, again, requires that you know your customers and what sites they frequent. Are they on Facebook or are they on Instagram or TikTok?
Often, it’s a good idea to have one person within your company manage your social media strategy, as it can be very time-consuming.
5. Influencer Marketing
Social media influencers are very powerful. Having an influencer talk about your brand can create a buzz and get your brand noticed. You’ll have to pay them, of course, but you can start with smaller influencers and work your way up.
You’ll need to create a plan for your influencer. You’ll need to determine what message you want them to send and what the goal is. Is it to get people to your website? Is it to get people to your store? It all depends on how you sell your product or service.
6. Email Marketing
Email marketing is an essential strategy for most businesses. You don’t want to bombard your customers, however, with salesy emails. You want to, again, make your emails relevant to your target audience. You can even send links to your content to get them to your site.
Of course, you need to capture as many email addresses as you can so you have a large pool of people to send your messages to. The easiest way to do this is to offer an incentive on your website for people to sign up for email updates. A small discount on a purchase is generally adequate.
You can do the same to gather a phone list for text updates.
7.Try HARO
Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a service where journalists post requests for expert quotes to include in their articles. Usually, they will include not only your name and company name with the quote in the article but also a link to your website.
This can get you valuable backlinks to your site from sites that have high Google authority. This boosts your site’s authority, and, again, helps your Google search rankings.
You just need a strategy to select which queries to answer and how you’ll answer them. If you do it well, HARO can be quite a powerful tool.
8.How-To Videos
Video content ranks high on Google, and posting videos on your website can help your site’s rankings. In a similar fashion to your content marketing, video marketing that educates will resonate with your customers. You can do how-to videos on topics related to your business and then promote your product within those videos.
If you want to invest in this, there are many companies that can help you create and implement a video marketing strategy.
9.Local SEO
If you have a local business, you’ll want customers to know that you’re nearby. You can use Google My Business tools as well as Yelp to increase your local Google presence.
For Google My Business to be most effective, you have to be proactive with posts and promotions. You should also encourage your customers to leave reviews on your Google and Yelp pages.
Your Google My Business listing will also include a map to help customers locate you.
10.Goodwill Branding
More and more people are looking at the corporate social responsibility of the brands they do business with. They want brands that promote positivity and that do good things in their community. If your company works to display this kind of activity, your brand will gain a goodwill factor, which essentially makes customers feel good about your brand.
11.Rewards Programs
Rewards programs are a great way to keep your customers coming back. If people feel that by buying your products, they are gaining something, which generally is a discount of some kind, they are more likely to keep coming back to buy more rather than go to the competition.
There are many softwares and apps that can help you to simply set up your rewards program. You’ll be able to customize it to meet the needs of your business.
12.Hold a Webinar
A webinar on which you show your expertise can help to build trust in your company and brand. It also increases your brand awareness because you have the potential to reach a large audience. The key is to promote your webinar to get as many attendees as possible. You can send invitations to your email list, and heavily promote the webinar on your website and your social media channels.
A webinar can also help you add to your email list, as when people register for your webinar, they will need to supply their email addresses.
13. Listen to Your Customers
The most important factor in the success of any business is creating a positive experience for your customer in every way. But how do you know you’re doing that if you’re not listening to what they say? Read your reviews, respond, and if you’re hearing something negative, fix it.
You should also send periodic surveys to your customers to get their feedback. Ask specific questions but allow them to speak freely as well.
It’s critical to know if you’re meeting customer needs. You need to capitalize on what you’re doing well, and change what’s not working if you want to attract and retain customers.
In Closing
All of these marketing strategies can have benefits, but first, you need to create an overall strategy with specific goals and a budget. It’s best to set your budget first and figure out what you can do within that budget. An effective marketing strategy can boost your business and spread the word about your brand, which can help you move toward your long-term goals for your company.