Your Marketing Strategy – Getting it Just Right!

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Is your marketing strategy hitting it out of the park for your business?

As a business owner, long gone are the days when the term “marketing” was synonymous with basic advertising. What traditionally involved broadcasting and talking to audiences as a one-way interaction via radio, print media, or TV, has now evolved into the digital realm. As well as those more established avenues, today’s marketers are much more focused on creating engagement through conversations and actively listening to target audiences to understand them and what they want. We no longer tell consumers what they should do for themselves and us– they, in many ways, tell us what we should be doing for them.

From small business owners to managers of huge companies, the need to create and implement effective, highly targeted marketing strategies has never been greater. These must also be tailored to your brand, business, and customers.

Advertising continues to play an important role in any marketing strategy – but marketing goes much further. It builds brand awareness, generates leads, and encourages engagement and loyalty in your customers.

Marketing properly:

1. defines your business objectives
2. identifies and analyses your target audience
3. brands to suit your objectives and audience
4. analyses your competition
5. develops a unique selling proposition – what sets you apart?
6. sets your budget
7. defines your metrics
8. designs, develops, and implements a plan to drive results
9. reviews and refines your strategy

Doing this well involves the strategic application of activities that are aimed at promoting brand awareness and product or service awareness, and every campaign you conduct should have a specific and measurable goal.

Types of Marketing

There are several types of marketing and these can be implemented on their own or in combination. They include everything from brand development to product marketing, public relations to user-generated and influencer marketing, fundraising to affiliate marketing, SMS marketing, direct mail marketing, video marketing, and more.

5 of the most common types include:

1. Advertising is a more traditional form of marketing that remains relevant. It includes TV and radio advertising. The real power of advertising in the 2020s, however, lies online. Pay-per-click campaigns (e.g. Google Ads) and paid social media ads (e.g., Facebook Ads or Instagram or X Sponsored Posts) involve businesses paying for the ad only when a potential lead clicks on it. It is a budget-friendly way to conduct an advertising campaign.

2. Content Marketing – includes text-based website copy, blog posts, online newsletters, podcasts, and more which should be original, relevant, of high quality, interesting, and informative.

3. Social Media Marketing is powerful as so many of us now spend so much time on social media. We widely use it to connect with family and friends, research brands and products, find the latest news and trends, curate hobbies and interests, and even shop directly. Social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, Pinterest, LinkedIn (for B2B) and TikTok are bursting with opportunities for businesses and marketers.

4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the organic way to extend your reach online. Many consumers actively avoid clicking on ads and pop-ups are unendingly annoying. Brands can overcome this by investing in an SEO campaign. When done well (by a specialist SEO provider) it helps improve your organic search engine results pages (SERPs) ranking so that the consumers who need to find you do so at a time when they are actively looking for the solutions you offer.

5. Email Marketing is a great way to connect with customers to inform, encourage loyalty and interest, and compel prospects to comply with your call to action. This form of marketing content is governed by spam laws and must be sent only on an opt-in basis.

Hire Professionals for Help!

It’s a great idea to call in professionals to help you with your marketing campaigns – and partnering with the right digital marketing agency can be a real game-changer for your business. The right agency will offer an array of services and options, including branding identity and strategy, search engine optimisation, website redesign, content creation, social media management, video marketing, PR – and advertising.

The sky is the limit!