For corporate firms and large brands with marketing
budgets worth millions, shelling a few thousands of dollars for their monthly marketing
is no great deal. However for small scale businesses, every penny counts and
the budget spent in marketing has to garner an immediate ROI.
Is it possible for small businesses to increase their
footfalls using the latest technology at the most affordable rates?
We present 5 strategies to develop a robust marketing
plan that gives the maximum returns on investment.
#1. Thoroughly research about your market
Researching on your target audience, their pain points
and the ideal buyer characteristics has multiple advantages such as:
- Helps brands develop a laser sharp focus on marketing since they already know their likes and dislikes of the target audience.
- Targeted campaigns can be run to attract, engage and woe the audience.
The best marketing teams keep a regular tab on their
competitors’ efforts and delve into their shortcomings and the untapped
opportunities. SurveyMonkey, Instantly
and GutCheck are the free
survey tools used to validate research ideas, check the audience response and
quickly generate the results.
#2. Giving utmost importance to email marketing
The most effective way to convey your brand’s message to
the target audience is via email marketing. 74% consumers prefer commercial
communications through emails (Merkle).
Email management services such as AWeber, MailChimp and iContact offer free email
service for the first few thousands of subscribers and after that you can opt
for paid plans. Amid the intense content clutter on social networks, your
message either gets buried or reaches a very small segment of audience, email
is a surefire way to make your message reach out to the audience.
The key to high email open rates is to convey your
message in the least possible words in a way that keeps the users hooked to
read the entire content. You can also add personalization and incentives such
as an exclusive e-book, thus giving the audience a reason to look forth to your
emails. Never spam the inbox, many bloggers and companies even mention the
frequency of emails when a user signs-up.
#3. Optimize for Search Engines
Many businesses claim word-of-mouth to be the best
marketing strategy, yet before making a purchase offline, 81% go online and
check multiple product details (according to a report
by Search Engine Journal).
Whatever the scale of your business, be it a small scale
entrepreneur or a corporate firm, making your website search engine friendly is
a must. According to the same report by Search Engine Journal, 75% of the
visitors never go past the first page in the search results, hence leverage
equal weightage on search engine optimization of your website.
#4. Use Social Media strategically
Investing a few hundreds of dollars on Facebook and
LinkedIn can take your brand to thousands of potential customers. Investing on
social media has multiple benefits such as – portraying your brand to the
target audience, increase the company page’s followers by a few hundreds’ or
thousands, improved brand awareness and potentially reaping profits in terms of
increased sales.
Based on your business niche, you can use one or two
primary networks for marketing and the other one to supplement the efforts.
With 1.44 billion active users on Facebook, this is one network that should be
used by all businesses. Facebook and LinkedIn marketing is used widely is
because both of them offer tools to segregate the audience based on their
demographics, the amount to be spent is totally in your hands and your brand
gets featured directly in the target audience’s news feed.
Give your fans a reason to follow you on social media,
offer an exclusive Facebook offers
for your fans, thus making them spread the word about your brand to their
network.
#5. Jump Past Competition with location based marketing
According to Pew Research Center, 74%
adults use location based apps to collect information such as reviews, contact details,
and location about the local businesses. By making your brand’s page on
location based apps such as Foursquare,
wWhere and Google Maps, you
will bring in more foot traffic, share exclusive discounts, strengthen customer
loyalty and improve conversions.
Create brand awareness for existing and new users by
being on the quick search tools (location based apps) used to access quick
information. Brands can increase consumer engagement, create greater noise and
thereby increase profits in this way by spending almost nothing on marketing
Brands are remembered for the memorable experiences they
deliver and being a brand owner you don’t necessarily need big bucks to create
innovative marketing strategies, the most cost affordable ones are available
just under your eyes.
Source
| http://trak.in/
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