Content Marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating blogs, white papers, videos,
infographics and other forms of media to attract customers. It often goes hand
in hand with SEO marketing, which attempts to optimize pages so that they
rank higher in search results.
Currently, about 82% of marketing teams use content marketing as part of
their strategy, with 40% ranking it as an important part of their overall
marketing approach. With the right content, you can boost audience retention,
land higher conversion rates and establish your authority in your space.
Paid Ads
Any time you pay to have your content shared with users, it’s considered a
paid ad. Paid advertisements can come in a lot of different forms.
For example, you may pay a podcast to do an ad read about your company at
the end of the show. Or, you might use pay-per-click advertising to get search
engines such as Google to display your website at the top of relevant search
results.
Paid advertising has a lot of purposes, but 33% of marketers use it to boost
brand awareness. When paid ads are done right, you can reach relevant
audiences who are more likely to benefit from your products.
Benefits of Marketing
By now, we’ve showcased some of the benefits of marketing. But here’s a more
thorough list of just how investing in marketing can help your small business:
Increases your sales. It’s hard to say exactly how much marketing will
improve your sales. But putting your products in front of your target audience
is very likely to boost your purchase rate.
Curates a stellar reputation. If your company becomes known for having
excellent customer service (not to mention a dash of cunning) on social media,
it can help unaware consumers see your brand as more reputable.
Builds brand awareness. It takes five to seven impressions for someone to
remember a brand. Getting your brand in front of people via advertising can
help your company stay front of mind when it’s time to make a purchase.
Helps you educate customers. In a lot of cases, customers don’t know
they need your product or service because they’re in the dark about certain
facts or issues. Using marketing as a tool to educate helps customers learn
more about how your product can help improve their lives.
Gives you room to grow. The more your brand gets out there and the more
customers you get, the bigger your business will become. If all goes well, you
might graduate from small business to big business.
Marketing Best Practices
After you’ve chosen your marketing strategy, you’re almost ready to get started
with your first campaign. But before you dive in head first, consider some of
these marketing best practices. They’ll help you stay on track and avoid crucial
mistakes as you work to spread the word about your company.
Define your goals. Before you start any campaign, think about what you
want to get out of it. Increased sales? More page views? More email newsletter
sign-ups? Establishing a goal helps you better measure the efficacy and ROI of
your campaign—and it’ll help you know what you can improve on next time.
Define and study your target demographics. Think about who would
benefit most from your products. You might even be able to gather this data
from your existing sales database. It may help to create a customer profile for
each segment of your target audience and use that when crafting content for
your campaigns.
Plan out your campaign. Always create a guideline to follow throughout
the campaign and make sure you have all of the assets you’ll need ready to go.
Start soft, then follow up. This delves into inbound marketing, which is an
approach where you create curated content for the user rather than generic
ads catering to the general public. Lure in potential customers with interesting
content that’s not necessarily sales-y. Then, as the consumer progresses
through the marketing funnel, get more aggressive with your calls to action.
Offer a discount or coupon. Discounts can count toward your marketing
budget, and they offer peace of mind to consumers who are on the fence.
Analyze to see what’s working. Services such as Google Analytics or
HubSpot can help you track page views and interactions with landing pages
and ads. Crunch the numbers to see which parts of your campaign were most
effective, and use this data for future marketing.
Bottom Line
Marketing is a complex and in-depth tool you can use to promote your
business. When done right, you can benefit from increased sales, improved
reputation and brand awareness and better customer retention rates. Of
course, there are many strategies to choose from, so we recommend co
