Effective and low-cost marketing tips every marketer should consider
Many marketers have found themselves in a situation where they are spending a lot of money in advertising and marketing but end up wasting their money. According to Forbes, almost 50% of advertising is wasted. That is a lot of money, considering the fact that companies spend billions of dollars to gain customers. So how do you ensure that your marketing efforts are strategic, practical, and low-cost? Here are some tips you need to consider.
Know your market
It is imperative to have a clear understanding of your market if you are to succeed in online marketing. Before you even start spending on marketing, you need to figure out your market. That invariably entails knowing your product very well. Once you know your product and how it can help solve your clients’ needs, it will be easier to identify your target market. Once you can identify your target audience, it easy to design a winning marketing strategy without even having to hire an expensive marketing agency.
Your advertising decisions should be based on research
No one goes into the battlefield without designing a winning plan. The case is no different when it comes to marketing and advertising. It is essential to come up with a well-researched and well-thought-out marketing plan.
The plan you come up with will help you to determine the best and most effective marketing channels to reach your audiences.
Things like demographics, bounce rate, conversion rate, acquisition, and audience should be familiar to you. It is important to know how each marketing channel will contribute to your overall growth if you want to make a difference and reap big from your efforts.
Networking
Did you know that networking is one of the most effective marketing tools you can use without the need to break the bank? Join a local business community and be an active participant. If they like your brand, they will tell their friends, colleagues, and relatives without even your knowledge.
People are your greatest assets. Do not underrate what they can do for you.
Content marketing
One of the most effective forms of marketing is content marketing. It is not only cheap but a very effective way of building relationships among people who are genuinely interested in your products. Serious marketers and small business owners have a blog. When writing your blog (or using video and/or podcast) try to offer genuine information to your audience.
It shouldn’t always be about advertising your product because you don’t want to come across a salesman who is only interested in selling his/her products.
Leverage social networks
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are all popular networks that you can take advantage of to market your products and services. They can be a great source of traffic if you share interesting stuff.
By creating and sharing great content, you will grow your audience. However, it would be best if you were patient as it can take years before you build a strong following.
Customer Insights Every Business Owner Should Know
The key to success in today’s small business can be summed up in three simple words. “Know your customer.”
It is a perfect adage for today’s environment in which longstanding practices and realities are melting away to reveal a transformed landscape where opportunities are abundant, but often more obscured. In this new environment, customer insight is not only important, but also imperative.
It is no secret. Small business profitability is deeply connected to customer insight.
But what is customer insight?
Customer insight means having knowledge about customers and markets that helps structure thinking and decision making. It’s about having the whole picture, visible to the whole organization, from executive to customer service.
Customers expect you to know who they are, what they want, and how they want to be addressed. They want to converse with you. They want to be listened to.
Consider these recent consumer survey findings from the analyst firm Digital Clarity Group:
- Only one percent felt their customer expectations were always met.
- Around 89 percent had switched providers due to poor experiences.
- A full 82 percent said that the company they abandoned could have taken steps to keep their business.
What does this tell us? It means gaining customer insight is one of the most important things in business.
The source of insight
The next question we should be asking is, where can we obtain customer insight data? Customer insight comes from combining data from a number of sources. It is about using all data sources and applying the correct weight to them.
Insight comes from compiling and combining evidence, from data, to paint a picture. Merging the market research and database marketing teams is a step in the right direction, but it’s only part of what is required to create insight.
Part of this process is to know your customer’s touch point data. The following are sources of important customer insight data:
These sets of data can be generated from the following channels:
- Social media data
- Enterprise data
- In store talks
- Email communication
- Website logs
- Phone communication
- News media
- Syndicated research data
- Forums and review sites
The challenge most business owners face is leveraging the data they collect in order to create the right marketing mix. They struggle to aggregate the data to form the right customer insights and disseminate the right actions.
Customer insight requires that small business owners address the following points.
- Who are your most valuable customers (MVCs)
- What do they want to purchase?
- What motivates them to purchase?
- Beyond transaction, how can you interact with your MVCs in a relevant and profitable manner?
- How can you customize aspects of your product or service in order to meet the individual needs of your MVCs
Indeed, having the answers to the above questions is no longer a luxury. Small business owners must not only find answers but also act on those solutions in order to drive growth and profitability of their businesses.
The ability of firms to understand customers one at a time across multiple channels will mean the difference between success and failure because customer-based strategies are the key to competitive differentiation in today’s business world.
Knowing how, when and what to offer a customer can mean the difference between a profitable versus an unprofitable business.
According to Data Mine, you know you are on the right path and have the right customer insight in place when you have adequately answered the following critical questions.
- What is the aim of this organization?
Why was the organization formed? It is important to have the big picture even as you go about your daily duties. Unfortunately, many small business owners get consumed with daily tasks that they forget the mission statement of the company.
What is the organization’s customer acquisition strategy?
Every organization must have a marketing strategy. Doing business without a marketing strategy is like driving in the dark without the headlights. You risk not only getting involved in a fatal accident, but you also risk moving in the wrong direction.
What do we already know (not think we know)?
Obviously, you already know a few things about your customers. It is important to be aware of what you already know so that you can have a starting place.
- What do we need to know?
Now that you know what you know, it is time to know what you need to know. Identify the knowledge gaps and get the right information. Find out what data you need to collect and what tools you need to collect the data and collect it.
· How are we going to priorities what is needed?
Bearing in mind the constraints of time resources, identify the most urgent needs.
How will we ensure insight is retained in the business?
After gathering the customer insight, you need to ensure that it is retained in the business.
In short, insight is provided when the right questions are asked and solutions provided. The following illustration illustrates this very well.
The building blocks of customer insight are:
· Clearly defined company aim and objectives
· Customer driven marketing
· Organized and accessible data
· The right people in the insight team
· Knowledge management
In order to achieve customer insight, people must work collaboratively in the organization and have a clear data strategy.
Customer insight is not employing an analyst, or even a team of analysts. It requires organizational commitment to change. If it was easy, every organization would have customer insight sorted.
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Are you Utilizing the Power of YouTube Marketing
If you have been ignoring the impact of YouTube marketing, then you have been committing a cardinal marketing sin. There are some shocking statistics that will show you just why YouTube marketing has become a big hit. Nielsen report shows that in the year 2011, internet video streaming views increased by 35% compared to only 0.2% increase in television views in America. Mobile video viewing also increased by 20%; therefore, it is clear that internet video marketing (like YouTube) is now more popular, cheaper, and result oriented than the traditional TV marketing. As a matter of fact, the number of people who visit YouTube for entertainment, research, and education is alarming. YouTube is now the second most search engine by volume.
However, something else you should know is that about 35 hours of videos are being uploaded in YouTube every minute, meaning if you take 10 minutes to read this article, you will meet about 350 hours of newly uploaded YouTube videos. So what? So, it means that if you are thinking of using YouTube to advertise your products, then you should bear in mind that competition is extremely high; so, you need to approach it with some plan if you hope to achieve positive results. In other words, just uploading a video does not necessarily mean that you'll automatically get YouTube hits.
The following are two suggestions to get you started on how to get positive YouTube performance:
1. Just like a website, content is king, and good quality is paramount. Please invest some time to create a quality and compelling video before you upload. Potentials customers should find your videos useful, engaging, and attractive to view. If you let them feel like they have wasted their precious moment viewing you video, be sure that the video will never go viral, or worse still, they wont come back. The rule of the thumb is this: the video should address the needs of the viewers. Anything else is thrash. Therefore, invest some time in researching on what the customer needs and create something relevant. For instance, it doesn't help uploading a video that talks about meditation, yet you are selling cars. In that case, you would want to talk about 'how to maintain a car'.
2. Since it is Google that owns YouTube, you have to play by Google Search optimization rules to get an edge. For instance, in order for the video to be findable, it must have a title, good descriptions, and tags, among others. Also, you should create a brand if you want to attract and retain customers. This doesn't have to be done with massive investment; all you need is to be consistent with your content, create a similar backgrounds, create a playlist for the most popular videos, and choose an appropriate layout.
All in all, taking your business online is not an option in this internet age if you are to stay profitable, and relevant. YouTube presents you with one of the best channel of informing the online users about your presence; hence you should take advantage.