If potential customers are already knocking on your door, it can be tempting to rein in your marketing activities. If you do, however, you could be missing out on lucrative business opportunities. No matter how well your marketing strategy is doing, you should never underestimate marketing’s potential to be doing even more to bring new sales to your business. Let's examine why it's so important to continue promoting your company on an ongoing basis, and the activities that you should be engaging in.
Why Marketing Your Business Is A Must
Marketing shouldn't just be used as a quick fix when sales are flagging. Instead, you should be continuously promoting your business. This will allow you to:
- Increase awareness of your brand, so more people will think about your company when in need of the products or services that you supply;
- Provide people with detailed information about your products and services, which could prompt them to purchase them from you;
- Communicate with potential customers in a way that makes you stand out from your competitors;
- Build and nurture long-term relationships with people, so you can boost your sales figures and customer retention rates.
- Increase the chances that you'll have an ongoing stream of enquiries and sales, rather than peaks and troughs which are difficult to manage operationally.
- Gradually expand your customer base, so that your income and profits snowball.
Essential Digital Marketing Tools & Strategies
You'll need to have the following in place if you want your business to succeed in digital marketing:
1) A Lead-Generating Website
This should be professionally designed, include information about your products or services, and be optimised for mobile devices. Lead generating websites are built with the user experience in mind. They are built for conversion. And by this I mean the whole buyer’s journey has been expertly mapped out so that you are talking to people in their language and putting forward the right information at the right time for them. This approach enables you to convert website visitors into leads. More on the buyers journey can be found here.
2) An SEO Strategy
You'll need to use the latest search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques, so your website ranks well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for terms linked to your business. This will make it simpler for people to find your site. This is a big topic and it takes time to deliver consistent results. But one thing is for sure Google really values consistency and a start stop approach to SEO rarely ever gets the desired results!
3) A Content Marketing Plan
Publishing e-books, white papers, blog posts, thought pieces, videos, podcasts, and social media content help position your business as a leader in your field. This engenders trust and loyalty among your customers, and helps you to attract new leads. The best content marketing plans are well thought out and always centred around the ideal buyer persona.
4) An Email Marketing Plan
Email marketing is a cost-effective way of sending compelling messages to people at times when they are most likely to buy. You can inform them of new products, remind them of the benefits of using your company, and direct them to online content or offers that might interest them. You can also personalise your emails, something which has been proven to get better results than generic material.
5) Automated Marketing Processes
If you automate routine tasks, such as posting on social media or sending out marketing emails, you can promote your company while you focus on other things. Automating your emails will also make it easier to send messages to people at appropriate points in their customer journeys, and ensure no customer responses are left unanswered for lack of time.
6) An Analytics Package
Use an analytics package, such as HubSpot Analytics or Google Analytics, and you'll be able to collect and analyse data about your online marketing activities. You can then use the insights that you've gained to boost the success of your future marketing campaigns, emphasising what worked and tweaking anything that needs improvement.
Next Steps
However, before you get started on any of these activities, research your target market thoroughly. Use the data that you hold about your customers to create buyer personas, for example, so that you can ensure you're targeting your communications appropriately. If you need some help to do this or to create your marketing plan, please get in touch with our friendly team of marketing specialists today.
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