Marketing, But Not As You Know It
When it comes to running your business and making a success out of it, it’s safe to say that there’s always going to be a set range of things that you’ll want to think about doing. You’ll want to ensure that you have all of your plans in place so that you can just get to work on making your company a success. However, when you start a business, you may also find that you spend a ton of time thinking about what to do, and less actually doing. And this can hold you back, so you’re going to want to get yourself ahead with your ideas, so you can just get right to work. One of the areas that this particularly applies to, is your marketing. You will really want to make sure that you are able to work out how you’re going to market your business for the best.
But something that you may want to keep in mind here, is what you can do to ensure that you’re standing out. It’s just so easy to look at what others are doing with their marketing, to then try and do the same. But really, you need to ensure that you are working on something that is most suitable for you and the success of your company individually. And it can always be fun to try new things and see what kind of results you’re going to get. So, to help you start moving forward and closer to success, let’s take a look at the marketing tactics you might want to act on.
Influencer Marketing
To start with, you should look for influencers that seem to be targeting the same audience as you are, but that also would be a great fit for your brand, and then team up. Working with influencers can be an effective and really engaging way to market your business. As long as you’re working with the right people, you may find that you get great exposure with influencer marketing.
Now, it’s likely that you’re already on social media – or you’re planning to. But if you’ve gone straight for Instagram or Facebook, the two giants of social, you might want to think about Pinterest. Because Pinterest marketing can be pretty powerful. It’s a great traffic driver – particularly for lifestyle sectors. And you can access a highly engaged audience. So you might want to think about working on this.
Social Advertising
Then, when you are thinking about the social content you’re putting out, you might want to think about advertising. Because your reach is destined to be quite small based on what it could be if you did paid activity. So play around with campaigns and see what might work for you.
Email Marketing
From here, you’ll then want to give email marketing some serious consideration. Because it’s a marketing tactic that you own, and that won’t be affected by an algorithm. Here, you’ll want to think about building your marketing lists as early as you can, to ensure that you can start marketing, right off the bat.
Events
Then, you’ve always got the idea of hosting an event. This can be a lot of fun for your audience, and it can be rewarding for your business too. You might even want to work with others, have a wall branded with your sponsors, and make it more into a bigger event. That way, you’re adding more value to your customers and their experience at the event too.
Experiential Marketing
As a step on from that, there’s also the idea of making your shopping experience and marketing as a whole into more of a theatrical display. If you do have a physical presence, then experiential marketing might be something that works really well for you. Those examples are really great, but you may want to think about how you can turn your customer contact into much more of an impressionable, memorable, and exciting experience.
Affiliate Sales
If you want to try and boost your sales, you might want to think about running your own affiliate marketing campaign. Here, you’ll be paying a percentage of your sales to affiliates, when they are generating sales for you. The costs are fixed and relatively low, but your sales increase could be quite impressive.
Pop-Up Shops
From here, if you’re entirely online, it might be fun to think about running a few pop-up shops. If you want to actually get out into the real world to make sales, and maybe even test the waters for a retail space, opening a pop-up shop can allow you to do that. At the same time, you can raise the awareness of your brand and business among people that may not know about you, just by being in the right space.
Content Marketing
Content marketing definitely has to hold a prominent place in your marketing strategy. But you really don’t have to do it, just to say that you are. Have some fun with your marketing. Think about how you can market to your audience and really engage them in a new way. And make sure that you’re working in the latest SEO practices to help you boost search visibility and traffic from Google too. Plus, doing so will give you more content to share on social media, so it’s a win, win, win!
Loyalty Program
And finally, something that might take a bit of work to actually put in place, but is always worth it, is a loyalty program. Maybe you know that you want to build up a loyal fan base of customers? Then a rewards scheme will allow you to encourage your customers to come back and shop with you, time and time again. Using a CRM system, you can also keep their details on file so that you’re able to market to them more efficiently and make their shopping experience much more personalized. And then, you’ll find your marketing is taken to new heights.