Every day, people form impressions of brands through product and service advertisements, conversations with family and friends, and personal experiences. According to Forbes, the average American consumer sees between 4,000 and 10,000 ads per day. The messages take a myriad of forms, from social media to web ads to tv commercials to radio ads, and they loop through our days on end. And all of these products brand themselves as the next best thing.
Unless a brand really knows how to intrigue its audience, much of this exposure is bound to leave the consumer confused, or worse indifferent. Being ignored is not a position any marketer wants to find itself, and luckily, it can be avoided. The solution is to develop a marketing plan with content that is so creative, distinct and well-presented that people can’t and more importantly don’t want to ignore.
Sounds a lot easier said than done, right?
It certainly is tricky, but it doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as it sounds. There are tons of online, easy-to-use tools available to help you market smarter. Fortunately, we’ve done the grunt work for you and will walk you through some of the best options available in line with marketing strategies that work.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the strategies and tools that will help you grab the attention of your customers.
Why Marketing Is Important for Business Success?
Marketing is a constantly evolving field. What worked even five years ago has probably been replaced by a newer, flashier form of advertising.
For instance, if you’re still using print material to promote your seasonal offers it is less likely to reach a younger audience as a majority of them are reliant on digital advertisements. Or at the other end of the toolbox spectrum, what happens if you switch only to posts on Instagram, but a big chunk of your customers aren’t even active on social media?
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The key is to understand who your target customers are and then choose the most appropriate channel to get your marketing message across.
So, what’s in that toolbox? Here are some strategies to help you quickly become a marketing expert and then use this expertise to your best advantage.
4 Powerful Marketing Strategies That Work Now
1# Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is all about developing a connection with your audience. Everything you publish on your social media should have a personal touch that helps foster your relationship with the consumer. How can you do that? Post bits and pieces of information about your brand on social media in focused, strategic ways so that the right content finds your customers at the right time.
Start by carefully deciding the message you want to convey to your followers. Remember to make sure it is concise and easy to understand because social media users will not stop their scrolling to decode complex brand messages. You can use some humor to make your message more engaging but use it carefully and sparingly. Run it by your colleagues to gauge first impressions and ensure there is no room for misinterpretation.
Source: Postermywall
Next, create stunning, thumb-stopping images to amplify and reinforce your message. The importance of creative and attention-grabbing visuals on social media cannot be overstated.
Did you know visual content is 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than simple text content? And not to forget video – 100 million hours of video is watched every day on Facebook – a tool like that must be utilized in your brand message to maximize reach and impact.
Don’t rush through the process. Take your time to create posts that are coherent and personable. A great way to get your message across effectively is to use visual content, preferably an even mix of both images and videos.
An easy-to-use online graphic design tool, PosterMyWall, can help you do this in minutes. You can create a beautiful design for any platform using one of the thousands of social media templates available and then resize it for free for all platforms in one go with the free Resize feature.
It even lets you download these graphics for free or share them to your Twitter and Facebook pages directly without leaving the site. With the Premium subscription, you can forgo the hassle of posting again and again by creating and scheduling all your posts at once.
An important part of social media marketing is listening to and engaging with your followers and analyzing those results to continually improve your reach. Polls, AskMeAnything questionnaires, and live streams are a great way to stir up conversation and engage your users. Such posts are also a breeze to create with ready-made templates.
According to SEO experts at Igloo agency, SEO helps businesses attain long-term growth on search rankings. This is different from running an SEM campaign, which is dependent on budgets. Once the budget gets over, the campaign comes to a halt and adversely affects your traffic and leads. Businesses that are looking to achieve long-term sustainability and growth online need to invest in SEO strategies.
2# Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If you have a website or blog up and running, the goal is to make sure that people searching for your industry on Google, Bing or other search engines see your company name as high on the search results list as possible.
In a study from Advanced Web Rankings, more than 67% of all clicks go to the top five listings and nearly 95% of web traffic goes to a website on the first page of results. How does this happen?
The way to get your website or blog on that first search results page is through Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Don’t run out of the door! It’s really not that mysterious and while SEO in practice can be very tedious, it is very rewarding if done right.
Source: Seochecklist
You simply have to use words or phrases that have high search volumes on search engines, called keywords, as much as possible on your website pages and blog posts (without spamming, of course).
Moreover, you can improve your website’s rank by internally linking your content to other pages of your website – this will help ensure that users remain on your website for a longer period of time, as well as to external sources that reinforce what you are saying about your product and add credibility to your word.
Now beware, there is no shortcut to overnight success in SEO. It takes a lot of time and persistence but it delivers results. You can hire a professional to help you fine-tune this method or you can even do this on your own.
To find out what keywords your website needs to be optimized for, you can use an online tool like Moz. Its Keyword Research tool helps you get a list of relevant, high search volume keywords related to any industry or topic, and other tools like Rank Tracking and Backlink Analysis help you have a high-performing website from SEO point of view. Once you have your website optimized, your organic traffic will start to grow.
3# Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to reach out to potential, current, or even past customers as it helps build loyalty and trust in your brand. You expand your reach over time by building an email list and then keeping it current. Offer special discounts to people for providing their email address to you, or some exclusive content not found anywhere else.
The goal with email marketing is to turn prospects into customers and one-time buyers into returning clients. Maybe they came to your website or into your store but didn’t buy anything the first time, but your site had an email sign up box or your seller in the store encouraged them to leave their email address. Now, they begin to get emails from your business with great sales and promotions and they ultimately buy a product or service from you.
To maximize the impact of your emails and reduce the bounce rate, make the emails as short and attractive as possible. You can create attractive emails by adding eye-catching email headers to the mix. With PosterMyWall, you can even use built-in features to add custom email lists and send email campaigns directly without even leaving the site.
Colorful and eye-catching email headers accompanied by short, engaging, and possibly humorous content will really leave an impression on your target audience.
4# Content Marketing
Content marketing is another tactic that can help grow your business over time. And if done properly, content marketing packs a two-fold punch for your money.
First, you are providing relevant information that helps people and generates leads. If you do that consistently, it leads to the second: you become established as an opinion leader in the industry, and consumers learn to trust you and come directly to you not only for valuable information but also for reliable products.
To establish a loyal customer base in the long term it is essential to provide value for your target audience. This can be achieved through highly creative, entertaining, and polite presentations. But one thing content marketers need to keep in mind when creating content for their audience is that simply creating useful content will not be enough to keep your target audience hooked.
The content needs to be accompanied by eye-catching and intriguing visuals for readers to keep scrolling through your content for more. Visuals also make your content more skimmable and easy to read for the reader.
As mentioned earlier, creating such visuals is a piece of cake with online tools. Simply pick design templates you like and customize them to your needs in minutes to create the blog post headers, infographics, and other imagery you need.
Whether it is visuals for your blog posts, websites, or promoting your content on social media, there is a template available for everything!
Summing up
There is chatter from brands everywhere we go today, and your business must find a way to surge to the top. As a business owner, you need to have a vision that defines and guides your business. Use this vision to understand who your target audience is and then build a laser-focused marketing plan with the potential and current customers at the center.
These ideas can seem overwhelming but just remember that you are not helpless in this journey. There are hundreds of facile marketing tools available that can support you streamline your marketing process. It’s only a matter of choosing the tools that are right for your business and help you save valuable time and energy. The end result can be a brand that shines above others and keeps your vision alive.
