8 Game-Changing Ways to Market Your Business
When it comes to setting up your business, you know that competition is probably going to be fierce. Regardless of what industry your business is in, it’s just a fact of life, unfortunately. While it may sound hard to separate yourself from the rest, it’s definitely possible! Marketing yourself is not only going to show that you’re different from your competitors but it also gains the attention of customers. Standing out, whether it be to become a trendsetter, innovation, or just good marketing skills matters because they’re going to catch attention. This positive attention then has the ability to create a tribe or a following out of customers that love your brand.
This can all be done through the power of marketing. Having a good marketing strategy is a massive game-changer. Essentially, marketing can make or break your business. You can have the best product or service around but it doesn’t really matter if no one knows about it. Marketing is not only going to target your audience, but it can help in boosting your reputation. Marketing should never be neglected, many small businesses starting up will try to cut corners thinking putting little effort will lead to a big reward but it’s far from the case. In this article, we’ll talk about the different marketing strategies that can be done, as well as some cheaper old fashion marketing tactics to target your location.
Search Engine Optimization
Known as SEO for short, this form of marketing has been around since search engines were a thing on the internet. But SEO has only really gained an understanding to marketers, small business owners, and the general public only in the last decade or so. You have to have SEO as a part of your promotional strategy. When it comes to search engine results, people will only look on the first page. Only if someone is in need of information (desperation) will they jump to the next page or even scroll all the way down on page 1 results.
Some people will go to a digital product development agency because at times they will help out in SEO. Just keep in mind that this is something that you’ll need to look into, whether it’s marketing yourself or hiring an employee or agency to do it for you. SEO is massive and has a lot of tactics as well. Never underestimate the power of SEO because if social media fails, SEO is there to reign as king.
Killer Content
Content is King, this is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot but it’s absolutely true. It’s so important to bring value to customers. Nobody is going to want to get involved in your brand if you’re only selling to them all the time. Marketing nowadays is a two-way street. The customer will bring something to you but you have to bring something to them as well.
Killer content is also going to help you get better established online so you can stand out from your competitors. More specifically, if you try to aim your content to go viral there’s a chance that it just may. Going viral will help you gain traction in a variety of ways such as growing your audience base overnight, people sharing your content, and sometimes it even getting on the news! It may sound far-fetched but nowadays thanks to websites like TikTok it’s considered easier than ever to go viral.
Social Media
Social media has been around since the early 2000s back when the “Friendster” website was still a thing, but social media marketing didn’t really hit until around 2010 once Facebook began getting more attention. Now, social media is considered essential to any big or small business. Social media is where brands can give “behind the scenes” bits to their followers. This allows the brand to be more authentic and now it’s easier more than ever to talk with customers about their feedback and opinions on a product or service a business is offering
Social media marketing can come in a couple of forms, one being engaging content and the other being ads. But often they’re going to be combined. Businesses, especially smaller businesses will utilize the free areas of the social media marketing that they can. However, it’s the paid ads that will often have the most impact on reach.
In general, killer content and social media marketing will go hand in hand. You want to create engaging and killer content. This content can beautify imagery, videos, podcasts, blog posts, mini-stories, and going live. It’s important that each time you create content, it looks engaging. The more engagement means the more likely it is that your content is going to spread around. There are plenty of social media platforms right now such as Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. Ideally, if you are doing the social media marketing on your own, you focus on one platform to do the most content and engagement while also letting the others be supplementary. There are plenty of social media courses online to grasp a better understanding of it.
Pay-Per-Click
Pay-per-click still reigns are one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience. This form of digital advertising can be a minefield. Many search engines will offer this service such as Google Ads. This is a great way to help you target your audience while also optimizing your ads. PPC campaigns can be very tailored, so your ads will only show up to certain people who have searched for something that is relevant to your service, product, or even location.
There can be some downsides to PPC though. If your aim is to show up on banner ads or search results, you may not get too lucky. Many people have apps or browser extensions that will block ads. If your ads are blocked this isn’t going to help you at all. However, you can get your ads showing on mobile apps or even something such as YouTube videos. This does help lessen the chance of your ads being blocked.
Email Marketing
Email marketing can be one of the greatest ways to reach out to potential customers but it can also be one of the worst ways too. While yes, it is very powerful to directly email your target audience and have your message show up in their inbox, this also means your competitors are doing that too. You will need to stand out when you’re doing an email marketing campaign. This can include making the headline something very bold and catchy like adding the word “FREE” in it somewhere. Email marketing can be:
- Cost-effective
- Measurable
- Immediate
- Efficient
- Scalable
While email marketing has a lot of benefits it’s up to you to create an efficient marketing campaign where someone will want to open your message. But it goes further than that too. You’ll also need to make sure that nobody unsubscribes from you either. So you’ll need to strike a balance between trying to sell a product, bring value, but also not send messages too often. It can be difficult at first to find this balance but once you do, it’s powerful.
Online Engagement
There are some free ways to do marketing, one of them includes engaging online as yourself. Many business owners will join groups on Facebook, forums on Reddit, and even go on LinkedIn to engage with people. This engagement can be something subtle such as sharing advice or information and organically incorporating their brand. But it can also be as straightforward as cold emailing someone through their inbox. Some people look down on this tactic of marketing while many others see it as essential. In the end, if you’re engaging online, you need to be authentic. You are also a part of your brand. So if you’re coming off as unauthentic and salesy, it’s going to look bad on your business.
Flyers
Putting up flyers is a very old fashion marketing method but it can still work. You’ll often see in cities that posters are put up of certain events like a festival or concert, so you can also try with your business (look if you need to get a permit first for this). Many community centers, libraries, and even universities will have a special area to post up flyers of local businesses. You can even stop by local cafes or restaurants and ask if you can put some down by the register. This is a great way to grab the attention of people who may not get online often.
Get Involved
If you’re from a small-knit community, this can truly do wonders for you. Getting involved in your community can help a lot! This can be by sponsoring a charity or local sports team, donating to something needed in the community, having a radio advertisement, working with other businesses, having a table during local events (like a fair), or even just spreading your business through word of mouth. You can get a lot out of your business by thinking small and focusing on your community. Never understand a community, many people will prefer to purchase locally than from somewhere else. This can be utilized to help your brand.