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Any successful business owner will tell you that he or she relies on solid marketing campaigns to promote their brands.
Depending on the size and marketing budget available to each business, they may do marketing in smaller waves than the bigger companies, but they do it nonetheless. Without proper marketing, how would consumers quite frankly know much about your brand?
That said you can market all you want, but a heartfelt effort has to be put into each and every campaign.
So, have your marketing campaigns struck gold or unfortunately struck out?
Use a Variety of Tools at Your Disposal
In order for your marketing campaigns to strike gold, they need to encompass a variety of components.
Among the components in the importance of marketing to business success:
- Know the audience – What good is marketing if you do not know who you are going after in the first place? Through research (you may even hire a firm to assist you with compiling demographics etc.), you can get a better feel for those you’re going to market to. For example, if your business sells products and services to senior citizens, while those typically 65-and-over would be your target market, marketing to people in their 40’s and 50’s would not be totally out of the question. As a matter of fact, you might even want to go after people in their 30’s? If that seems strange, keep in mind that many people in their 30’s 40’s, 50’s etc. have senior citizen parents. In many cases, the older parents do not have computers or spend much time on them. With that in mind, marketing to their kids is not a bad idea. You also have people, especially in their 50’s, who are now of age to qualify for certain rewards (discounts at 55+ etc.). Except for marketing to teens and people in their 20’s, you should keep the age 30 to age 50 and up group on your marketing radar;
- Focus on your website – For countless brands; their websites are the meat and potatoes of their companies. With millions and millions of consumers surfing the worldwide web on a daily basis, you would all but be derelict of your duties if you did not pour a fair amount of time and energy into your website. That said the website needs to be easy to navigate (don’t make consumers feel like they’re be putting through a maze when they visit), contain great blog content (remember, content oftentimes is what consumers first come across when they search for you on Google and other search engines), and it requires regular promotion on social media. If your search engine ranking has been stuck in neutral for a while now, review your website from top to bottom, looking to see what might be dragging it down. Remember, with millions of consumers on the Internet each and every minute of the day, having a viable and active presence on their (your website to be specific) is a necessity, not a choice;
- Think outside the box – Finally, are you one of those brands where change is never an option? If so, your time in business may be shorter than you like. Especially given today’s tech world, change is all but inevitable for countless businesses. Those trying to avoid change are typically the brands where time does catch up with them. So that you don’t fall victim to such an ending, always be thinking outside the box with your marketing initiatives. What can you do to stay ahead of the competition? What new product or service are you capable of putting out there for the public to rave about? Lastly, how often do you engage consumers about what they would like to see from your brand? Regular engagement is nothing short of critical, especially if your business is an online operation and does not have walk-in customers. If you currently use or have been thinking about opting for online surveys and polls, give consumers some incentive to take the time to fill them out. Not only will you hopefully get the responses you wanted, but you also likely just made some new customers with your rewards.
While there is so much more to solid marketing campaigns, always remember the importance of knowing your audience, giving them a killer website, and never be afraid to push the envelope and think outside the box.
With that in mind, what is your brand doing to market the best campaigns possible?