Easy marketing ideas to improve your bottom line…

Is your marketing strategy in check?

When it comes to your marketing strategy, it's important to understand which attempts at marketing are working and which are not.  

Our key message on Social Marketing is to market to where your customers ARE, this might sound a bit 'Art of War' but it's very basic, if your target audience is business to business chances are that your efforts to should be put in to LinkedIn over Snapchat, conversely if your market is Tweens and Teens Snapchat and TikTok are your ideal platforms.

We don't for a moment suggest neglecting the other social networks however when time or budgets are short target your efforts in to the most likely platform for the best return.

Having done some research in to the ideal market and platform for your target audience there is then the case of publishing and scheduling, this can take a big chunk of time out of your day so utilising some scheduling software might well be your solution. Setting your content strategy for the month/ week etc then batch creating your posts.

There are online platforms, such as Hootsuite, Sendable, Agorapulse to name just a few, which will help you manage multiple social media accounts, easily at the same time, without the need to log in and out of various accounts.

These platforms are in place to enable you to share the same content on various accounts at the same time. Let's use Hootsuite as an example, Hootsuite enables you to create your posts and then schedule them at just the right time, ahead of time.  One of the most important key functions with this platform is you can view unique analytic options that will provide you with an in-depth view of how well your social media strategy is working.

These tools track clicks and deliver them in an efficient easy-to-read set of charts. Hootsuite then also gives you the option to create professional business reports to analyse. You have the option to receive a complete overview of your key metrics as well as to measure how long it takes your team to respond to customers Tweets, messages, and comments, allowing you to stay on top of the workload

Having a system such as this in place will give you an understanding of whether or not your strategy is working or just needs a bit of a tweak. The digital world is constantly changing, so chances are, you are going to need to change your strategy from time to time. As a business you need to ensure you are moving with the changes and not losing money and time on a strategy that perhaps once worked, but no longer serves your business.

You can waste so much revenue by getting your social media advertising wrong, especially if you are using paid-for advertising, you may well see your CPC (Cost Per Click) increase rapidly, Therefore top tip is to know your target audience and focus on reaching out to them with your marketing efforts.  Also focus on developing conversion-driven campaigns, rather than traffic driven campaigns.

Okay, so that's social media strategy sorted.  How about going back to basics, somewhat, before social media?

Email Marketing

Utilising email is also a must, even still in this day and age. If you are updating your existing customers with anything new you have to say or to offer is also a must. The more you reach out to the existing or even new email contacts you have obtained, regularly the more trusted you will become in your customer's minds, and let's face it, you are awesome at what you do right?

Whether it be a service or product in which you offer, you know your offering, inside and out. By keeping in touch, you will soon become the go-to for information, products, or services, because you will in your customer's eyes, become more trusted. Especially in small service based businesses people will be buying in to you as not only a business but as an individual, keeping in contact and 'humanising' your business with help build trust.

You can automate your emails, keeping in regular contact, not just for sending newsletters (although definitely do that too!) but for creating emails for all touch points throughout your customer journey. These systems can not only create but also monitor email effectiveness in the same way you would social media analysis, using mailing systems such as Mail Chimp, HubSpot, SendinBlue, ActiveCampaign, etc, there are many more, but some would say these are the leaders in the email marketing industry. 

Most of,  if not all of these platforms are really easy to use! Even if you don't have the design skills to create an email template from scratch, they have a simple drag and drop functionality that allows you to create a beautiful eye-catching template in no time at all. 

Email analytics and reports will help you make data-based decisions as to how effective your campaign has been, based on factors such as open rate, click-through rate (CTR), you can even see which device your customers or prospective customers are using to read the email.  This understanding will help you decide on which strategy is best to use for your email marketing campaigns in the future.

You might be reading this blog and thinking "This learning curve is too challenging" or you simply still don't have the time and resources right now. Well, the good news is, we can help you out with this.  If you have more questions on this, contact us and one of our team will happily discuss email or social marketing and analytics with you.

Okay, so that's social media and email marketing covered, what's next to improve your bottom line?

Are your SEO & Tags in check?

It's time to make sure your website SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is optimised as best it can be.  Getting your website on the first page of search engine listings takes time and patience.  You will have to continually tweak your website to fine-tune it over some time, for your website to rise on the listings gradually. Adding new and engaging content regularly in the form of new pages, products, blogs and vlogs.

So, you may be thinking, "Why is SEO so important?"  Well SEO is essentially free traffic, it has no media costs associated, and search engines appreciate websites with great SEO, in return search engines reward websites that have relevant content to your potential customers, by ranking your website higher in the listings. Prospective customers have searched for what you are offering after all, therefore focus on optimising for your target audience.

We have two previous blogs about how to to supercharge your onsite SEO yourself and the importance of building high value backlinks. Both aspects of SEO are as important. By putting effort in to your SEO you will improve your search engine results.

Contact us today to discuss your digital marketing strategy, from holistic marketing strategy to specific aspects of your online presence.