For your business to grow and expand, you will need to invest more into your marketing efforts. While you don’t exactly need to spend more money, you will need to spend more time and focus your efforts. To help get you started, we’ve put together six marketing ideas for you to consider thinking about. Let’s get started.
Host Events
Marketing is quite broad as a term. While you may think of it as referring to direct adverts, marketing is also about hosting events. Events hosting could include inviting customers to a day of celebration about your business, or it could be about hosting somewhere public to bring more attention to your business.
Think about the last time you walked in a mall and saw a random business being in the center handing out leaflets or putting on a show of some kind. This is a business hosting an event in order to bring more attention to their business. You could even spend time handing out products to the public at this event.
Also, you can leverage using inflatables for advertising at these events, as inflatable structures are great solutions for creating buzz and visibility at events without breaking the budget. Inflatables can be designed in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors that incorporate branding elements that stand out in a crowd, helping you to maximize your event-marketing effectiveness. They can also be used to create a fun and interactive atmosphere at an event, which can help to engage and retain visitors.
If you don’t have the financial means or inventory to hand out all your products, you could instead engage in some sampling. Sampling usually only works for businesses that deal with food and drink, but there are some exceptions. If you are able to provide some products or samples to random people, then these random people could eventually become customers. This makes it an effective marking tool.
Utilize A Referral Scheme
A fun marketing idea that could help you attract more customers to your business is to implement a referral scheme. Referral marketing is all about getting your existing customers to bring someone else into the business in some way, gaining both individuals a reward.
It would usually work like this. Person A would purchase something from a business or sign up for a service, and they would then send a referral code to person B that gives them a massive discount for first purchasing. If Person B purchases the product or signs up for the service using their referral scheme, the first person would receive a free product or something similar.
The main purpose of referral schemes is to help build up your customer base and bring more and more people into the business. This will then continue onwards, with more people being brought in, allowing sales to be maximized. As mentioned, there are a few different ways to implement a referral scheme, so consider what could work for your business and look at what your competitors are currently doing.
Also read: 4 Best Marketing Automation Strategies for Growth
Create A Direct Mail Strategy
Many businesses assume that the days of direct mail marketing campaigns are gone, but these businesses would be wrong. You will find that customers have a variety of different emails, sometimes dozens in one day, from different businesses that they’ve bought from before. While email marketing campaigns have their place, and we will cover this further on, it shouldn’t be your only way of engaging with marketing.
Direct mail marketing is all about sending marketing efforts to your physical mailbox. You should avoid making your direct mail look like every other piece of mail that they receive, as this will lead to them getting lost amongst the rest. Modern businesses prefer direct mail marketing as they often have a higher return on investment, as more people will see it.
Instead, you should ensure that your direct mail marketing is done in a unique way, such as using custom envelopes or mixing some personalization in. You will need to research direct mail marketing strategies and consider working with marketing experts who can assist you in your campaigns. If you are working through a direct mail campaign, you should ensure you are doing it alongside a digital campaign in order to increase your chances of success.
Overhaul Your Social Media
You should pay careful attention to your social media. Many businesses would have set up their social media accounts years ago but have left them alone since then. They may have done this to ensure they had secured the name and stopped anyone from taking it for when they needed it or stop people messing about with the name.
Even if you are using your social media, it may be time to take a closer look at what you’re doing and overhaul the whole process. Ensure that all of your social media accounts are using the same logo and name where possible so that they are all recognizable to your customers.
This is also known as a house style. Not only should you be using the same logos and names, but you should also be using the same colors and font so that you are consistent in your branding and the message you are trying to portray. A part of this will include using the same voice on your posts, but there are some exceptions.
There will be some social media platforms that have different target audiences. For example, businesses on TikTok are marketing through viral memes in order to enhance their reach and growth, bringing in more traffic to their website. The way they communicate with customers on TikTok is likely to be quite different from how they would communicate on Facebook.
Engage In An Email Campaign
As promised, we will now talk about the importance of email campaigns for your marketing. While a customer will not appreciate masses of emails, they still have their place in the modern world. You will need to think about the way you engage with your customers so that you’re advertising something to them that they will actually want to hear.
Businesses will rarely send cold emails out to potential customers, as they know this will likely be ignored and end up in junk emails. Instead, you should try to convince your customers to sign up for mailing lists. You could inform them of the benefits of signing up to your mailing lists via social media or from the point of purchase.
For example, you could leave a link to sign up during the ordering process on the website or put details about it on the receipt so that they can sign up for it at a later date. An incentive to sign up to a mailing list could be a unique discount code, with the promise of receiving regular discounts and unique offers further down the line.
Also read: 15 keys to Make Sure Your Customers will Open Your Emails
Attend Industry Events
As well as hosting your own events, as mentioned earlier, it may be beneficial for you to attend regular industry events. Throughout the year, depending on your industry, you should be able to find events that you can attend. You could be coming to these events to set up your own booth or attending so that you can find something for yourself.
Often, you could attend industry events to find a new supplier or find a new innovative product/service that can benefit you in some way. In other cases, you may be the supplier or innovative product provider looking for businesses to work with. Essentially, these events are mutually beneficial to everyone who attends. You could even attend just to try and learn something new. This may not seem like direct marketing, but business-to-business marketing is just as important.
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