‘The buyer journey is nothing more than a series of questions to be answered’, so the saying goes, but what if you’ve got a burning question that you
‘The buyer journey is nothing more than a series of questions to be answered’, so the saying goes, but what if you’ve got a burning question that you need answered before you can get cracking on that winning buying journey – ‘how can I improve my marketing?’
In this article, we’ll be looking at the various aspects of your marketing strategy that you can up the ante in to make your marketing work harder for you, attracting the kinds of people your products or services are perfect for, and converting them into customers.
Understand your audience
It’s basic but it’s vital; knowing exactly who you’re targeting will speak directly to them, without giving the impression that they’re being addressed en masse. You may think you know who your audience are, but it’s so worth taking the time to interrogate your belief, you make sure you truly understand who you’re talking to. Conducting market research is one crucial way to do this, be this through surveys, social listening, interviews, or competitive analysis – we’d recommend trying all of the above.
Once you understand your audience, the rest of your marketing should flow from that knowledge – marketing is all about engaging with those ideal customers, which means interacting with them in the ways they prefer to get their information and entertainment from. As a heads up, that could be social media, emails, billboards, or even the TV.
Content marketing
When you approach content marketing, think of it more as providing value as opposed to just simply ticking it off on your marketing to-do list. Published online, content marketing is a real chance to connect with your audience, and give them something they can actually apply to their everyday lives.
By demonstrating your expertise, you’re building trust with your audience, increasing brand awareness, and ultimately converting a (hopefully large) portion of them into paying customers, who already know they’ll benefit from investing in you.
So what do we mean by content marketing? Well, we mean written and audio/visual content created for platforms on which your audience hangs out. This includes:
Blogs: Yes, they’re still a thing! Blogs are a great opportunity to go into detail about various elements of what you do, providing value that users can refer back to. Trustworthy advice will stick in the minds of your audience, and promoting your blogs either on your own platform, or by guest posting on a reputable, popular blog in your industry will help you connect with the right people.
Video content: Have you heard of a little thing called TikTok? Instagram Reels? Even if you haven’t, you must know how much of a big deal YouTube is; video is HUGE right now, and its popularity shows no signs of slowing. It was recently reported by marketing app Dash that 88% of marketers say video is an important part of their marketing strategy – you’re missing out if you’re sleeping on video creation!
Webinars, podcasts, and online workshops: Sometimes, all you need is your voice and your ideas, to really make your brand human at the same time as providing value. Channel your inner TED talk and hosting webinars, creating or being a guest on a relevant podcast, or running online workshops can really help position your business as an industry leader.
One thing to remember throughout all content creation is the power of storytelling; you’re looking to connect with your audience on an emotional level.
Social media marketing
Once you know what platforms your ideal customers are using (such as Facebook, Instagram, and/or LinkedIn), you know where to find a captive audience to target using both organic posts (ones you don’t pay for), and paid advertising, which allows you to reach a far broader audience.
Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram, have an ads platform that makes it relatively straightforward to run digital advertising campaigns, allowing you to target demographics to maximise their success. You are also able to track the performance of your ads, so you know exactly what your ROI is.
Email marketing
Remember the way direct, physical mail made an impact on the success of a business back in the day? Think of email marketing in the same way; instead of doormats, you can reach inboxes, and the benefit now is that this can lead far more easily to your products and services through links to your website, which are just a click away.
Growing an email list organically through incentives and existing customer databases, ensuring that you’re operating in line with GDPR, alongside creating engaging content will put you on the right road to marketing success. Tools such as Mailchimp are there to help save time, analyse success, and make the process more efficient.
SEO services
Being found by people who are actively searching for what you do is pretty much the dream in marketing, and search engine optimisation, known as SEO, is a way of making that dream a reality. How else do you think businesses get to the top of Google searches?!
SEO isn’t just one skill you can master; when it comes to coming out on top for key words and terms that apply to your business, there’s a lot to understand. On-page optimisation (such as improving page loading speeds), keyword research, writing helpful and authoritative content, and earning links back to that content from other reputable sites is all part of making Google sit up and take notice of your site in order to prioritise it.
This isn’t an easy part of your marketing to nail – it’s in-depth, nuanced, with ever-changing goal posts. If you’ve got the time and energy, that’s fantastic, but there are so many benefits of working with professional SEO services, from their expertise and experience, to the tools and resources they bring to the table.
Analytics
Whatever channels form your marketing strategy, it’s essential to monitor their performance, tweaking your approach to them in response to what you glean. Built in social media insights, and tools such as Google Analytics can all help you make data-driven decisions, working to refine and improve your strategies based on what works and what doesn’t.
To conclude
All in all, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to your marketing; it’s a trial-and-error endeavour that requires constant monitoring and tweaking. Those breakthroughs are worth it though, and so long as you remain adaptable and updated with the latest marketing trends, you’re far more likely to experience them.
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