So, you’ve done all the hard work of making a viable business plan which took you many rewrites and drafts to get it right. You’ve made your products and or services, and have a team waiting behind you to get out into the world and show them what you’re made of. Many people think that actually, knowing what you want is the easy part and selling it is where the going gets tough. However, breathe in your second wind and get ready to go, man, your battlestations and go campaigning. Building up your marketing campaign strategy can feel like stabbing in the dark because there are so many different variations to choose from. Not every entrepreneur who starts a small business will have the knowledge needed to travel into the homes of their customers via online marketing and get the boosting response they want. They may be able to find a niche in their product, but how do you get the attention of consumers?
Building up your marketing campaign strategy can feel like stabbing in the dark because there are so many different variations to choose from. Not every entrepreneur who starts a small business will have the knowledge needed to travel into the homes of their customers via online marketing and get the boosting response they want. They may be able to find a niche in their product, but how do you get the attention of consumers?
Image by – janeb13
Bypass the middleman first
It’s very easy to hire a marketing team and take a load off your mind by letting them deal with promoting your business. However, once you’ve established yourself, actually, you have many options at your disposal. The first thing you should be focusing on is connecting with your existing and new customers who have just found out about you.
For your website, you should have a great user interface, whereby anyone is able to sign up, i.e. register for an account. The purpose of allowing customers to make their accounts is so that you’re creating a constant communication line between your business and the customer.
In addition, you’re also fostering a community by essentially, creating an island out of thin air online. For your website you should have a register mechanism, that upon the making of a username and setting a password, an email verification process is employed. With the plethora of emails, your website will have, you can then form newsletter mailing lists, which will allow you to update customers at any time.
In the newsletter, you could advertise discounts, special deals, seasonal greetings and general feedback from your customers about your business. By doing this, you’re establishing a firm line of communication. The most important aspect is that you’re not intrusive and allow customers to find out about the latest news concerning your business in their own time and schedule.
Photo by – Sebastiaan ter Burg
Shouting atop the mountain
Every single business no matter how small or large must have its very own social media accounts. By making an account on the biggest platforms, i.e. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn, you’re virtually able to shout aloud on top of a sea of consumers to be seen and heard. But just how should you behave on social media? Businesses must be fully aware, that what you’re tweet, or write a post; you’re broadcasting to the entire world. Unlike anything humanity has ever seen before, social media is a window into the lives, homes and minds of hundreds of millions of people from all walks of life. You are on display when you respond to customers online.
Businesses must be fully aware, that what you’re tweet, or write a post; you’re broadcasting to the entire world. Unlike anything humanity has ever seen before, social media is a window into the lives, homes and minds of hundreds of millions of people from all walks of life. You are on display when you respond to customers online.
For the two biggest platforms right now, which are Twitter and Facebook, hashtagging is a technique used to trend topics or have your post enter into a gateway and be in a group of other similar tweets. You can link your marketing campaign to a particular hashtag or the best way if to make one up by yourself and continuously, only use this specific hashtag for all your promotional advertising. By getting shares on Facebook and retweets on Twitter, users who may or may not be customers can write about your business, product and or service you’re promoting. Essentially, the open market does the work for you. It’s vital to not fall behind on queries and potentially negative press by a raging customer not getting a reply to their issue. You could have a social media team as part of your staff to monitor your accounts, replies and comments, to maintain the constant need to update your feed with the news.
By getting shares on Facebook and retweets on Twitter, users who may or may not be customers can write about your business, product and or service you’re promoting. Essentially, the open market does the work for you. It’s vital to not fall behind on queries and potentially negative press by a raging customer not getting a reply to their issue. You could have a social media team as part of your staff to monitor your accounts, replies and comments, to maintain the constant need to update your feed with the news.
Credit – Joe The Goat Farmer
Reaching out far and wide
Creating an advertisement that can fit in the margins, or in the banners of websites should be your next move. The pay per click marketing route is one of the best ways you can reach out to new customers and browsing shoppers. First off you must choose your account, which means you should select a search engine provider for your online marketing advertisement, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, FireFox, Opera, etc.
The obviously best choice is Google because it is a colossus compared to any other search engine. However, the best one for you will be subject to your budget. Next, you need to draw up a campaign, which will be chosen for each service or product you want to advertise; each one needs to have its own separate campaign, therefore see them as individual projects.
Next, you will need to choose your ad group, which is consists of the kinds of mechanisms you will be using, such as the keywords inside the text of your advertisement. These words need to be carefully selected because you cannot throw a bunch of words out there, which are all linked to one another. Far from looking like spam, the keywords, inside the text should be an understandable and flowing sentence; this could be a catchphrase or a tagline.
Businesses like https://digitalico.com/ppc can display video advertisements, display ads and social advertisements for you. They can also help you to increase the exposure of your business make your website, one of the first links people see. Pick your negatives, which are words that consumers might be searching for, possibly in some way, linked to your product, but which you don’t want to be associated with. These words could be things like ‘free’ or ‘discount’; so you set yourself away from the herd and not get cluttered with other popular searches in the same kinds of category of your product.
Photo by – Max Pixel
Get your video trending
It used to be the main objective for businesses to get on the trending page of YouTube. However, that’s no longer necessary because now your video advertisement can be shown on any monetized video. You mainly have two options, due to the structure of YouTube in its current form. There is a skip button on many advertisements, which becomes active after around 5 seconds of the video playing. You can, therefore, make a 30-second advertisement, which goes into great detail about your product and what your business is about. On the other hand, you can make an eye catching 5-second ‘splash’ advertisement, where you’re using rapid visuals to symbolise your business, product or service.
Businesses have found it easier to simply splice the 30-second advertisement in such as way, that it is cut down to 5 seconds, hitting two birds with one stone. For your 30-second promotional video, you could do absolutely anything you wanted. Hence, this is a time-consuming process to come up with an idea, and accumulating the right amount of money to fund it.
Think about hiring actors, location, script, lighting and the misc-en-scene. Hiring a professional cinematography business to come up with an idea and shoot it is by far the best option. It’s vital to form your plan of action and the message you want to put across before contacting any video artist. Together with each department, headed by the marketing team, decide on what makes your business special together with the ethos and doctrine you want to project unto the customer. You can tell a story or make an observational video, but the bottom line is, to make sure your business is relevant to the topic.
Do something in the real world
Times have changed, and the billboard doesn’t hold as much power as the advertisement that is power by complex consumer trends and keyword algorithms, but the face to face approach will not die out. You could hire a car or use any vehicle, and stick your company logo on the side and go out to meet consumers.
By forming a team of survey staff, go out with a carefully thought out list of questions that are somewhat general, but still connected back to trends and the industry you’re in. You may find greater interaction, if you offer a prize to anyone who can get through the entire list of questions, which can be simply a chocolate bar, or a discount code to your product and services list online.
Getting motivated to market your business is sometimes hit and miss. Of course, you want to reach and get new customers, but the complex nature of online marketing can take you aback. It’s simply not as easy as displaying your business on any given web page. Getting the order of things just right will allow you to have a structured and extremely focused online advertisement campaign.
Social media is incredibly important because you are communicating with your customers with no safety net. Everything you say will be judged, but you can spread your hashtag campaign far and wide simply by users doing the work for you. Emailing newsletters to consumers is a great way to update them, and make them feel ‘part of the club’.
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