Marketing is a broadly defined topic that many businesses realize they need, but they don’t know where to begin. With a dizzying array of terms and subtopics, it can be a minefield for the average business to figure out what they need to do to increase brand awareness and ultimately sales and revenue. However, marketing only needs to be complicated as you want to make it. This post will cover what marketing is and provide some of the more common solutions that businesses of all industries can implement.
What Is Marketing?
Before going into detail about the various solutions, it is worth covering what marketing actually means and why all businesses will benefit from it somehow. Marketing is the process of trying to understand the wants and needs of a target market to create products and services that appeal to those needs. Marketing describes all the activities involved in developing, communicating, delivering, and exchanging goods, services, ideas, etc. It is also crucial for marketers to understand how customers think about products and influence their decisions. In essence, marketing is the process of understanding what customers need, what motivates them, and how they make purchasing decisions to manage relationships with them. Some of the benefits that come from a successful marketing campaign include:
- Increased brand awareness
- Higher revenue
- Increased customer loyalty
- Better reputation than your competitors
- Understanding where your market is and/ or moving towards
These are only a few of the advantages, but as you can see, marketing can have a substantial impact on your overall business if performed correctly and in line with your industry standards. Now that you have a broad overview, what are some of the top solutions that every business should be using today, regardless of their industry?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The objective of search engine optimization (SEO) is to increase the visibility of a website or web page in a search engine’s “natural” search results. The purpose of SEO is to increase relevant website traffic. Search engines use different ranking factors to determine how much weight they should give to websites in their search results.
Incoming links are one of the most important ranking signals, but they are only a tiny part of the puzzle. According to most professional digital marketing agencies like webserv.io, other factors influence SEO, including quality keyword research that can bring in those most likely to convert based on what you’re selling. Most SEO campaigns will include a range of other techniques, including content marketing designed to benefit your overall SEO strategy while simultaneously making you an authority in your industry.
Content Marketing
Marketing your products or services through content is an effective way to promote your business. It is a type of marketing that aims to attract and retain a clearly defined audience by creating and distributing valuable, relevant content. Unlike traditional advertising, content marketing uses digital channels such as social media posts, e-books, blog posts, infographics, white papers, online webinars, etc., to reach potential customers.
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising can be broken down into traditional methods and digital advertising. The option you choose will depend on your target market and what products or services you offer. When providing cruises for senior citizens, you might find more successful advertising in national newspapers than social media. Conversely, if your market is a younger audience, digital advertising could be the way to go. Nevertheless, it seems that the writing’s on the wall for convention ads, and those who invest their time and money into digital advertising tend to have the highest ROI.
The use of digital channels such as social media, websites, and search engine optimization to market a product or service is regarded as digital advertising. Digital advertising aims to provide information about a product or service to influence consumer decisions in a highly targeted manner. In some instances, like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, it is possible to drill down into a wealth of demographic data that you can then use to tailor advertisements that are most likely to appeal to them.
Social Media Marketing
A marketing strategy is developed and implemented for social media platforms in social media marketing. Companies can connect with customers, prospects, and employees through social media channels. Businesses can personally reach out to their target audiences thanks to social media. These channels allow businesses to interact with customers and provide customer support more often. Furthermore, they can measure the success of their brand in real-time by monitoring metrics such as likes, shares, and comments.
However, the channels you choose for your business will depend on what you are selling and your demographic. For instance, a company selling machined aerospace components might find more luck using Facebook and Linkedin, while a travel business will benefit more from Instagram (and perhaps even TikTok?).
Email Marketing
Email marketing can be considered an oldie but a goodie. In fact, many businesses find they get the most bang for their buck utilizing email than other marketing solutions. When you collect customers’ or potential customers’ emails, you have complete control over what you can send them and how you communicate with them. As long as you follow certain laws regarding spam and send relevant information, you are free to promote whatever you want. This is especially beneficial for eCommerce-type businesses that need to keep their customers abreast with industry news and their latest offerings.
Influencer Marketing
Although this form of marketing has dropped out of fashion in the past few years, it can still be viable for some brands. You can engage audiences and drive sales using influencer marketing by building long-term relationships with influencers. Influencer marketing aims to build a relationship with influencers through which brands can increase their visibility and revenue by utilizing the endorsements of your products and services.
Affiliate Marketing (If Viable)
Affiliate marketing can be a fantastic way to promote your products by enabling other people to promote your stuff and giving them a commission for every lead or sale. Nonetheless, not all businesses are suited to affiliate marketing. You have to spend a lot of time ensuring that your affiliates promote your products correctly and within your specifications. However, if you have set everything up correctly and screened your affiliates before allowing them to promote your products, you can often find a significant uptick in sales relatively quickly.
Hopefully, this post has provided you with some exciting options that you can add to your marketing mix. The best solutions for your brand will depend on things like your target audience and what you sell. Some of the options listed here can be used to significant effect by most businesses.
