If you've used ‘marketing’ techniques in the past, or worked with an agency, and failed to get the results you expected, you may be wondering if marketing is just a waste of time and cash. However, you'll struggle to attract more clients if your firm's message can't be heard above the crowd – and this is the essence of marketing by whatever term you call it. The techniques you use to do this are secondary to the results (i.e. more sales and revenue), and some methods are better at getting results than others.
Succeeding in marketing your business, and thereby securing more sales, comes down to choosing the right strategic approach. The reason marketing hasn’t worked for you so far could be down to the following five factors:
In order to market your company successfully, you need to take a goal-focussed approach. Dipping your toe into one technique or another is rarely a successful way to approach marketing, and is an easy way to lose money. A strategy means knowing what you want to achieve and how you're going to achieve it. Your marketing strategy should state how your marketing activities will help you to attain the goals laid out in your business plan. Meanwhile, your marketing plan should provide precise details of the activities that you're going to engage in and how they tie in with your overall strategy. You should refer to these strategy and plan documents regularly to ensure that your sales and marketing team are still on the right track.
If you don't understand your clients, you'll find it difficult to find more people like them and persuade those people to buy your products or services. This risks promoting your products and services to the wrong people – those with little or no interest in your services – or approaching the right people in the wrong way, by failing to address their needs. Use the data that you hold about your existing customers to create profiles of fictional but representative prospects (known as buyer personas). Include details such as their favourite social media channels, the daily work challenges that they face, and the purchase processes they like to use, as well as their basic demographic information. You can use these personas to inform your marketing activities and make them more targeted and effective.
While outbound marketing methods, such as cold calling, TV advertising, and direct mail campaigns still have their place, they aren't usually the most cost-effective options. Response levels can be lower than ideal and your acquisition costs are likely to be high. When you utilise inbound marketing techniques, such as content marketing, search engine optimisation, and digital advertising, you can reach large numbers of people in your target demographic at a fraction of the cost. The idea behind inbound marketing is to provide the right information at the right time in a prospect’s consideration process, in order to persuade them to reach out to you.
To increase sales, you need to generate leads constantly. That means you'll get better results if you are continuously promoting your company, rather than running isolated campaigns, or playing stop and start with marketing. What's more, if you pause or stop what you're doing, you could lose traction on social media or find that your website is demoted to a less prominent position on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Nothing looks worse than a previously active blog or social media account that suddenly goes ghostly quiet. Ensure that your team is keeping up to date with their daily marketing tasks, and adopt an integrated, holistic approach so that your activities yield optimal results.
The world of marketing is a complex one and most industry professionals have expertise in particular areas. Therefore, unless you have a large, well-balanced team of marketers in-house, you'll find it tough to succeed. Hiring a business growth agency, such as JDR, could be the best decision that you make. We can help you to plan and manage all of your inbound marketing activities and even keep track of your results.
Contact our advisors now to find out more about our services, and see how we can help!
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