It’s all good and well deciding to dedicate a portion of your budget toward marketing your business, but marketing isn’t just one of those things that you throw money at and wait for the return dollars to flood in. You need to have a strategy in place if you don’t want your money to be wasted. While you should incorporate your market research into your marketing campaign strategy, here are a few essentials for you to bear in mind to make your campaign successful.
Getting the Basics Down
Sometimes, business owners bolt the barn door after the horse has made a dash for it. In other ways, they do the right things in some places but make one fundamental mistake that makes everywhere else pointless. Online, this can mean having great marketing ideas but not having the website to back it up. All great marketing campaigns have a strong website behind it that can turn interest into business. If your website isn’t up to scratch, look at Original Element web design. Taking care of the basics won’t necessarily find you new customers, but it will make you look more professional to your potential customers!
Creating Content
If you hadn’t heard: content is king. If you’re not creating content for your website, then now is the time to start. You should have a blog on your website, and updating it regularly (3 or 4 times a month) with high-quality content that is fully referenced and contains images. Also, while it’s trickier than posting a blog, you might want to start making videos for your website. Research shows that the majority of web traffic will be video traffic in the coming years. The people have spoken: they want videos, so give them videos.
Upping Your Social Media Game
Like your website, don’t underestimate just how much of an influence your social media presence can have on your success. If your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages have been running on autopilot for a while, now’s the time to spend some money there and build your customer engagement. You can do this by having paid growth (advertising) or organic growth (sharing shareable content that brings new followers on board).
Don’t Neglect the Free Resources
You can have money in the marketing budget, but one of the best assets you have is your time. There are probably many more resources where could be active online that you’re not currently on, and not all of them will be paid. For example, look at websites that deal specifically with your type of industry (let’s say, as an example, Tripadvisor, and a restaurant) and take the time to curate your presence there. Sometimes it’s less about spending a lot of money on one campaign, and more about spending a little bit of money across many platforms.
Taking it Offline
Finally, don’t be afraid to take your marketing offline, even if you’re an exclusively online business. Mail campaigns have been proven to work well, and don’t underestimate the power of guerrilla marketing tactics when they’re utilized in the right areas.