Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between effective marketing and… well, everything else? Why does a marketing strategy work with one site, but not with another? Why do some marketers seem to just “get it”, while others always seem to struggle?
The fact is, effective marketing doesn’t have to be rocket science. You simply have to understand that marketing is a multifaceted concept involving more than one channel. Sales cycles can be extremely convoluted – especially in today’s multi-channel world of opportunity. Getting excited about having multiple touchpoints to reach out to the customer is all well and good, but tracking correctly can be a nightmare.
Good marketers recognize the individual needs of a business and realize there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Many a business owner has gotten hold of a marketing blog, started reading, and decided they’d learned everything necessary to market their site.
-But, for the most part, every business has different needs. For example, marketers understand that the marketing plan and strategies for a mortgage broker will require different tactics than that of a retailer.
Read on to learn 5 more tips every marketer applies to their strategies for effective marketing.
5 Tips to Know for Effective Marketing
1. Everything is a test.
There is some trial and error involved in implementing a marketing plan. The Four P’s of Marketing – promotional strategy, placement strategy, pricing and product – must work cohesively. That’s why tweaking, tracking and testing should always be baked into a strategy.
Testing the market to set target goals and sales goals can help you understand your organization’s profits, inquiries, and revenue. Marketing is a numbers game and there is no point of continuing tactics that will not indirectly or directly create new business.
2. There’s a difference between marketing and advertising.
Marketing and advertising both work, but they aren’t the same thing.
Marketing says, “Company ABC is having problems bringing in revenue. Our services help increase that revenue, growing money trees on an exponential scale.” In other words, marketing is the process of identifying customer needs, or pain points. Once identified, we determine how our products or services fix those pain points.
In contrast, advertising is paid promotion. Advertising says, “Fix your revenue problems with our money trees. Guaranteed to grow your bottom line exponentially!” In other words, advertising is just one marketing channel.
However, paid advertising isn’t the only marketing channel. There are several methods of attracting new business and retaining current clients. Effective marketing means testing different methods and eliminating those that don’t work.
Marketing can be a difficult field to navigate. For your marketing strategies to be effective, you need to understand the customer, learning to recognize what they need and value. This helps build relationships and reduce customer churn long after the initial sale.
3. Focus on a niche.
In some cases, focusing on a niche is easier than creating an extensive marketing strategy. Now, you can have service pillars inside a niche, but if you can be laser focused on each service or product offering, you have the possibility of overwhelming the competition.
Focusing on a niche, especially if you’re in a highly saturated marketing like ours, is a matter of finding the parts of your services or products that people are looking for, but have a much lower competition. It doesn’t mean you get rid of everything else you offer, but you have to find your hook.
For example, maybe there is competition for our money trees, but we’re the only one who has orange money trees. There may be only 2% of buyers that are looking for orange money trees, but that entire 2% is ours. Having that special color that no one else has is our hook.
4. Build relationships.
Although it may seem like common knowledge, it’s cheaper to retain a customer than it is to acquire a new one. For that reason, marketers help businesses establish quality relationships with its customer base. This is a crucial aspect of the marketing strategy.
One effective way to build relationships with customers is to create an email or social media campaign that interacts with customers. Creating open communication that is both helpful and informative can build trust and create loyalty. More importantly, customers will look forward to engaging in the social media campaign. This generates an open dialogue that interest customers and makes them feel comfortable.
Another way is to reach out at critical customer journey touchpoints. You can reach out with customer surveys, two question feedback forms, or even a brief non-sale email that lets your customers know you’re thinking about them and appreciate them.
5. Be a storyteller
In most cases, storytelling creates a connection between brands and customers. Every business has a meaningful story to tell. The story can involve the latest technology or general information that some customers may consider boring.
However, the story can also relate to specific customers and build bonds. Effective marketing has to understand how the content complements the business as well as how customers will interact with the content. Developing stories can provide a method of connecting the customer with the business brand.
6. Be creative and know how to use content
For marketing to be effective, the content strategy needs to engage the customer. It needs to be creative to attract new customers. In a world struggling with marketing overload, content has to stand out.
What resonates with your customers depends on your niche and demographics. Not everybody is going to jump on the latest Facebook ad, for example. Therefore, FB ads aren’t necessarily the kind of content you want to be developing.
Point is, you can’t just assume that because XYZ company is targeting social media, you should be as well. It’s your responsibility as a marketer to locate where your target market is – whether on social media or some place else – had create content dedicated to them.
Effective marketing helps a business in more than one way. Good marketers understand the target market and create laser-focused campaigns to get maximum benefit from their content and marketing strategies.
Your organization isn’t going to realize strong returns by putting on a one-size-fits-all solution. Learn your clients and their pain points, and develop a marketing campaign that talks to them.
Do you need help creating effective marketing campaigns? Level343 can help. With over two decades of marketing experience, we can give you the edge you need to make a positive impression. Contact us today.
