Strategies to Grow Your Business Without Burning up the Budget
by Rhea Allen
You’ve heard the term, “throwing it at the wall and seeing what sticks” or “taking a shotgun approach” when it comes to marketing. And as tempting as it is to try a little of this and a little of that, in today’s hyper-divided, ever-shrinking, micro attention spans, you really may be better off lighting a pile of money on fire (might earn you some press at the very least!). We’re happy to share our marketing and advertising tips with you to improve your effectiveness. Some of the bullet points below are quick ideas to get you thinking. Use this as a platform to launch a brainstorming session with your team and when you’re ready, we’re here to help implement your most off-the-wall ideas!
Request a QuoteFirst, a look back at what the numbers told us in 2014:
- 310.3 million (87.7%) North Americans online
- 37% of businesses use Facebook, 10% use Twitter, 2% use Pinterest or Instagram
- $118.4 billion spent on digital marketing
- 25 million Americans use coupon apps each month
- 284 million active users on Twitter
- 1.2 trillion Google searches per year worldwide, or 40k searches per second
- 2014 digital marketing budgets increased by 10.5%
- Videos on landing pages increase conversions by 86%
- 187 million unique LinkedIn visitors in 1 month!
- 100 million monthly active Snapchat users
- 1.23 billion monthly active Facebook users, 945 million mobile users
Here are 7 tips and tricks to consider when mapping out your marketing plan.
#1. Setting and Tracking Goals
When thinking about your advertising for the year you’ll want to first start out knowing what makes you successful in all your efforts. There are several key indicators that can give you an indication that you’re on track and doing things right!
#2. Email Marketing Strategies and Considerations
Email marketing is a great way to advertise your business’s product or service or for a non-profit a great way to get awareness about your cause. It’s trackable and provides a good way to test your messaging for other mediums.
92% Of businesses use email to share info about new products and services!
92% Of businesses use email to share info about new products and services!62% Of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of email marketing
Peppershock is an affiliate vendor partner with Vertical Response. We can help set your business up and customize your emails to reflect your brand. We can help you build an email marketing list the right way and help you create, send, and track emails, social media posts, and videos that look great on any device. There are a number of considerations to make when creating good email marketing strategies.
#3. Mobile Marketing
By using mobile advertising you can increase your brand awareness and stay top of mind while your audience is on the go.
- e-commerce or m-commerce, by selling your products and services on mobile platforms you increase your chances of being seen
- Data-capture, creating forms that capture your potential customer’s contact information so you can follow up with them and have lasting relationships with your customer
- Coupons, codes, and conversations, by using coupons, codes, and commenting or having conversations with your customers you are engaging their interests further, and let’s face it; everyone likes it when they get a deal!
Coupon apps are used by about 25 million American each month
- Over 60% of unique email opens occurred on a mobile device.
#4. Social Media & Digital Consumption
- Amplified Employees, Bloggers
- B2B Storytelling
- Snapchat
- Tumbler
Amplified Employees, Bloggers
#5. Tell your Brand’s Story
It’s inherently in our nature to gravitate toward those we know, like, and trust. That’s why great brands tell their story and connect with their customers. Keep these adjectives handy the next time you sit down to write an email, a social media post, or hop on a phone call.
- Be connected
- Be engaged
- Be Inspiring
- Be relative
- Be attention-grabbing
- Be entertaining
- Be humorous
- Be active
- Be an experience
- Be visual
- Be conversational
- Be enlightening
- Be helpful
- Be honest
- Be compelling
- Be charitable
- Be heard
- Be profitable or make a difference
- PPC; Ad retargeting & Banner ads
- Social; Contests, for example:
United Heritage Famous Idaho Potato Bowl Animation - Facebook Ads, sponsored posts, boost & more
- SMS (short message service or text messages)
- Google Ad Words, Google Video Ad Words
- Twitter & Sponsored Tweets
- LinkedIn advertising
- SEO, SEM
- Online quiz marketing! Driving traffic exponentially.
- Using type headlines, http://www.buzzfeed.com
- ViralNova…feeding the Facebook frenzy!
- Reposting interesting content from others
- Anticipate, reacting, generating the content, responding, and distributing/publishing content quickly and efficiently is the new norm
#7 Metrics, 10 metrics to use
1. Website Traffic, the top metric for content marketing success
2. How many conversations = Conversions or Sales
3. Lead quality
4. Lead quantity
5. Social media sharing
6. SEO Ranking
7. Time spent on a website
8. Subscriber growth
9. Feedback from customers
10. Company, product, or service awareness increases
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I couldn’t agree more that it doesn’t make sense to pay for marketing or advertising without putting thought and research into it. Like the article suggests, it’s not worth your money to simply pay for several types of advertising and hope that some of it is effective. In the competitive business world we live in plenty of research should go into finding what is effective and what isn’t, as you can be sure your competition will be doing so.