Throughout the years I consulted extensively and finally came up with eight strategies that are profitable for most marketing campaigns. The marketing strategies that I have outlined are fairly cheap and are not as expensive as some that big businesses adopt.
1. Website Strategy
Most do not see this as strategy, but your website is without a doubt one of your best strategies you might have. Why do you need a website as a strategy, because it does several duties that another strategy might not be able to accomplish. There small businesses who see this strategy and use it optimally and make a dent in the big business's income projection. Website are able to:
- relate a certain message to the visitor
- generate leads for your business
- sell products online
- sell third-party products on your website
- sell advertising space on your website
- generate income through online offerings
- use it as an interaction platform
- blog
- attract and retain customers via your website content
- landing pages
Over-and-above the listed benefits, a website costs a fraction to maintain, unlike other marketing strategies. You can use your website as a platform where you can create a loyal support base and there are several strategies that your website can perform and you are able to measure the results of your marketing web campaign. A website is your essential information gatherer, and having the right tools, a website is one of tools that will assist in increasing your brand presence and your profitability.
2. Social Media
Using the big 4 as a social media strategy is always going to benefit your business one way or another. Just a couple of days I ago, I outlined how social media is the new word-of-mouth. The big 4 tools are, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+ and Twitter. This strategy allow you to advertise your brand socially and you are able to connect with your customers or fans socially and in non-sale terms. Social media allows you to creatively offer your products in a social manner and allowing customers to interact with the product without being forced into a sale. People want to know more about products without being sold to, so when this happens they able to create their own value structure and when properly nurtured, they will convert to some of your most loyal customers.
3. Gamification
Gamification is an increasingly important marketing method which seeks to effectively engage customers and influence their behavior through game structures and mechanics. It takes advantage of our psychological tendency to engage in games. As a technique it is mainly used to encourage people to engage in behaviors they might ordinarily find boring; like shopping, completing surveys, or reading websites. The only time when we used this strategy, the client received 500% more responses than we anticipated and the conversion rate was 31% more than other strategies. We were stunned by the results that people of all ages generally like to play and have a light-hearted moment. And how best to learn more about your products than in a humor or play.
4. Webinars
A webinar is a strategy that needs a lot of technical experience, but also industry knowledge. When you set up a webinar, you need to know the type of audience you are going to attract and how they are going to benefit your business. Webinars are popular for increasing popularity of your brand and if you understand your sales cycyle, you will know how to use webinars to increase profits. The four main benefits of webinars are:
Using the big 4 as a social media strategy is always going to benefit your business one way or another. Just a couple of days I ago, I outlined how social media is the new word-of-mouth. The big 4 tools are, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+ and Twitter. This strategy allow you to advertise your brand socially and you are able to connect with your customers or fans socially and in non-sale terms. Social media allows you to creatively offer your products in a social manner and allowing customers to interact with the product without being forced into a sale. People want to know more about products without being sold to, so when this happens they able to create their own value structure and when properly nurtured, they will convert to some of your most loyal customers.
3. Gamification
Gamification is an increasingly important marketing method which seeks to effectively engage customers and influence their behavior through game structures and mechanics. It takes advantage of our psychological tendency to engage in games. As a technique it is mainly used to encourage people to engage in behaviors they might ordinarily find boring; like shopping, completing surveys, or reading websites. The only time when we used this strategy, the client received 500% more responses than we anticipated and the conversion rate was 31% more than other strategies. We were stunned by the results that people of all ages generally like to play and have a light-hearted moment. And how best to learn more about your products than in a humor or play.
4. Webinars
A webinar is a strategy that needs a lot of technical experience, but also industry knowledge. When you set up a webinar, you need to know the type of audience you are going to attract and how they are going to benefit your business. Webinars are popular for increasing popularity of your brand and if you understand your sales cycyle, you will know how to use webinars to increase profits. The four main benefits of webinars are:
- it allows people to "meet" the/a real person behind the brand
- you get the benefits of multimedia presentations
- allows you to build trust by using two-way conversations
- a very high sales potential
This strategy will assist your professional image and to improve your customer's loyalty to your brand.
5. Polls
Opinion polls are very important to be able to understand what your customers or non-customers are thinking, buying or feeling about your particular service or product. They are simple yet very effective ways where a visitor can choose product A or B, or more than 2 options. Polls are very helpful when you are trying to determine your audiences preference, and off course you will not please everyone, but if the majority is happy, you will have better conversion rates and better leads, which will convert to sales and better customer experience. Polls can also be used to determine the majority's inclination towards a certain philosophy or understanding and can be used to fill the gap and be able to attract a lot of support in a short space of time.
6. Price
This is the oldest trick in the magic book, there is a school of thought that pricing is not a marketing strategy. But pricing is determined by several factors, competition, demand and supply. When a product like bread in a saturated market, pricing is often a big factor and will determine if they meet their financial obligation or not. Even in a market that is not saturated, just by setting your price right, you can outperform your competition in sales. There is a new school of thought around pricing that is no longer related to cost of production, but the value and new costing models rather use the quantity model to set the price just right. And businesses that are able to balance the equation are blowing the competition out of the water.
7. Product Promotion
This type of strategy is the one that is commonly used everyday on our television sets. A product like Dove, a soap for women and they emphasize certain qualities of the soap, some of those benefits are not known by an average person. When people hear something they don't know and assume that this must be good for them and the sales increase, just by emphasizing a certain quality. Another method is to take the product to the people to get a feel of a product. This is very popular with mobile phone companies, they have discovered that telling someone on a brochure and a television ad, is not as effective as when you place people at a Mall or where there is an avalanche of people and let them feel the phone and see it in the palm of their hands. People like speaking to people and be careful not to send sales people, send people who are going to give business cards and tell people more about the product. This strategy is very effective if done properly, and it also serves as a good opportunity to create a database to follow up.
8. Ambassadors
This is another popular strategy, where a company nominates a popular superstar to be their brand representative or spokesperson. It enhances the business's public relations, plays on the people's psychology that if they use or consume the product, they will be just as beautiful, and just as successful. Loreal Paris used Beyonce Knowles to promote their make-up range and floods of black working class women started using Loreal Paris as the preferred make-up brand. Part of this strategy is to have the superstar attend a couple of functions and speak to people about the benefits of the product. And this strategy has the fastest conversion rate, people almost take out their last penny/cent to purchase the product, just to remember the experience. Although this campaign might seem to be expensive, but you can be creative on how you will pay the superstar. And the ambassador does not have to be a superstar, but somebody who has made the news for all the good reasons. One company in the USA has used a firefighter who was just made the news for saving a family in a fire, and this company leveraged on the firefighter's new found fame, for almost close to nothing.
When adopting any campaign for your business, always keep your objective in mind, but the main goal is to ensure that the campaign is profitable, and if you can't measure the success of a campaign, you can't account for its success or failure. A certain staffing company had a billboard at an airport at a seemingly good location, and it met all the marketing checks, but they did not benefit from the campaign, when they decided to investigate, the public said they could not see it, the area is so full that travelers are more concerned about being bumped over than watching some billboard. The moral of the story is do your research before spending large sums of money on a campaign, even when you are hiring a marketing agency, do your research so that you have a general idea on how the campaign benefits you.
6. Price
This is the oldest trick in the magic book, there is a school of thought that pricing is not a marketing strategy. But pricing is determined by several factors, competition, demand and supply. When a product like bread in a saturated market, pricing is often a big factor and will determine if they meet their financial obligation or not. Even in a market that is not saturated, just by setting your price right, you can outperform your competition in sales. There is a new school of thought around pricing that is no longer related to cost of production, but the value and new costing models rather use the quantity model to set the price just right. And businesses that are able to balance the equation are blowing the competition out of the water.
7. Product Promotion
This type of strategy is the one that is commonly used everyday on our television sets. A product like Dove, a soap for women and they emphasize certain qualities of the soap, some of those benefits are not known by an average person. When people hear something they don't know and assume that this must be good for them and the sales increase, just by emphasizing a certain quality. Another method is to take the product to the people to get a feel of a product. This is very popular with mobile phone companies, they have discovered that telling someone on a brochure and a television ad, is not as effective as when you place people at a Mall or where there is an avalanche of people and let them feel the phone and see it in the palm of their hands. People like speaking to people and be careful not to send sales people, send people who are going to give business cards and tell people more about the product. This strategy is very effective if done properly, and it also serves as a good opportunity to create a database to follow up.
8. Ambassadors
This is another popular strategy, where a company nominates a popular superstar to be their brand representative or spokesperson. It enhances the business's public relations, plays on the people's psychology that if they use or consume the product, they will be just as beautiful, and just as successful. Loreal Paris used Beyonce Knowles to promote their make-up range and floods of black working class women started using Loreal Paris as the preferred make-up brand. Part of this strategy is to have the superstar attend a couple of functions and speak to people about the benefits of the product. And this strategy has the fastest conversion rate, people almost take out their last penny/cent to purchase the product, just to remember the experience. Although this campaign might seem to be expensive, but you can be creative on how you will pay the superstar. And the ambassador does not have to be a superstar, but somebody who has made the news for all the good reasons. One company in the USA has used a firefighter who was just made the news for saving a family in a fire, and this company leveraged on the firefighter's new found fame, for almost close to nothing.
When adopting any campaign for your business, always keep your objective in mind, but the main goal is to ensure that the campaign is profitable, and if you can't measure the success of a campaign, you can't account for its success or failure. A certain staffing company had a billboard at an airport at a seemingly good location, and it met all the marketing checks, but they did not benefit from the campaign, when they decided to investigate, the public said they could not see it, the area is so full that travelers are more concerned about being bumped over than watching some billboard. The moral of the story is do your research before spending large sums of money on a campaign, even when you are hiring a marketing agency, do your research so that you have a general idea on how the campaign benefits you.
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