marketing tips

The one thing to keep in mind when developing your businesses’ marketing strategy is to think carefully about your longer term goals instead of just the short term tactical marketing activations. It is important to develop an effective long term marketing strategy rather than just focussing on short term wins.

There is no doubt that without an effective short-term plan, your business may not be able to make it to the next month. However, you do also need to plan for the future growth of your business. Long-term activities will continue to establish brand awareness and continue to drive results for your business years after they have been implemented. Without a long-term strategy, you don’t know where your business could be in 5 -10 years.

So, how can you ensure that the money you are investing in marketing will drive you a return for your business in the longer term? What are the initiatives you need to put in place now to reap the results later?

Below are 5 essential marketing tips that will be beneficial to your business and help it to grow in the long run. All of them are fairly simple to implement. And they’re all very effective at building awareness for any type of business:

1. Invest in good quality signage for your business shop front that will last for years

Use a reliable printing solution company such as Colour Graphics to ensure that you receive high-quality materials that have the durability factor. By establishing a permanent presence that clearly represents your brand in a beautifully designed shop front will help drive ongoing awareness with passersby.

As signage moves from print to digital, be sure to keep up with market trends and invest in some high-quality digital signage as well. Create stunning and affordable HD and 4k signage visuals in minutes using professional digital signage templates on PosterMyWall. Play your customized on-brand visuals on your signage screens in a few clicks, edit your designs in real-time and start attracting people to your stores!

2. Invest in a well-designed website for your business

Establish your online presence by creating a website that represents your brand in the best way. It doesn’t cost much to get a professional website designer. Create content that is optimised for search to drive traffic to your site on an ongoing basis.

If you have great content on your site that includes relevant keywords, you will find that it continues to get even without any investment. Once a website is designed and has great content, it can be fairly easy to maintain for as long as your business is running.

3. Start to run regular Facebook campaigns to grow your reach

Add Facebook campaigns to your ongoing marketing strategy. They are cost effective and drive great results in terms of awareness for your business online.

You can target potential customers on Facebook using their paid advertising options. It doesn’t cost much and allows you to really target those who could be interested. Since you don’t have to invest much budget, this is an effective tactic to use over the long term.

4. Get on social media to engage with your customers

A good tactic to establish yourself as a brand over the long term is to engage with customers online.

Social media is also a great avenue to post any news or offers from your business. Platforms like Twitter are also really great as customer service channels.

Ongoing engagement and interaction with customers will help build their trust and affection for your business over the years. This will in turn drive long term loyalty that will result in brand growth over time.

5. Get the local community excited about the business if it’s local, using posters and banners

Create a local marketing plan that is more focused on driving ongoing awareness of your business in the neighbourhood. You can use physical marketing tactics such as banners and other more permanent types of signage to establish your presence in the local community.

If you’re looking for quality print solutions in the UK, Colour Graphics offer a range of affordable options for banner printing. Visit their website to find out more.

Start-ups are usually a little low on budget as they’ve to cope up with the procedures of starting a new business from scratch. However, marketing for a start-up is crucial because the public needs to know about the product/service offered and avail them.

The following effective marketing tips could be implemented by start-ups to hit it off:

1. Positioning your product correctly is crucial

Customers buy the benefit and not merely the product irrespective of the price. The value offered, risks and the demand for the product in the market are factors which boost its sale. However, it is important to position your product correctly in the minds of your customers. If a start-up makes a mistake in the positioning, it will affect the venture hugely.

For instance, Unwanted-72, a morning pill didn’t work well with the women in India because of the negative connotation attached to the word Unwanted. Hence, naming your product also defines its position.

2. The customer is the king

Always stick by “you exist for the customer and not vice versa.” Try and give customers a feel of your product and make them believe that they are special while the use the same. Understand your target audience and then take steps to market your venture; otherwise, you’ll unnecessarily be spamming people which will lead in a negative name for your venture and cause losses in the very beginning. You could use various SEO tools available to understand and then, target your audience.

3. Be innovative

You cannot hope to get customers if you aren’t offering them something new. However, even when you offer them an old or revamped product, it is very essential to bring about changes in the marketing tactics to create new and lasting impressions in the minds of your customers. This can be done only by thinking out of the box and not sticking to the done and dusted marketing tactics.

Ariel, a detergent brand, used a hashtag to break gender stereotypes existing in the country. They denied the age-old belief that laundry is a woman’s job by using #ShareTheLoad. This campaign struck a chord with a billion Indians and it was an immediate success.

4. Use social media creatively

Social media is growing at a rapid rate today and platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are used actively by marketers to promote their products. In the same way, a start-ups could employ various organic and inorganic tools to promote their venture online and target their niche audience.

All brands use social media to promote their products today. However, Hippo took it one step forward by asking people on Twitter for locations where there is no availability of Hippo. Through replies garnered, they improved their sales and distribution channels by providing Hippo to the locations suggested by the Twitter users.

5. Generate exceptional content

It is very important to use inbound techniques like content generation to market your product more. The website of your company should be dynamic and updated with relevant information, ads, success stories and more to attract more online traffic and boost sales.

6. Make the customers a part of your team

This is a fool-proof, effective and simple marketing tactic through which an entrepreneur can build loyalty amongst customers. Once, they feel like they belong to a group, it is very difficult to switch from it. So, give preferences to loyal customers and try and incorporate them into a group.

MI did a brilliant job at this as the first few customers were given the status of MI pioneers who initiated discussions of the websites and spread goodwill about the brand.

Image credit:

Tag: marketing tips

Top 5 marketing methods that will benefit your business in the long run