Business isn’t like it used to be even in comparison to fifty years ago. You can’t just come up with an incredible idea and expect it to take off on its own. The expansion of the market on a global scale, the technological advancements that have created new industries, and the changing demands of a skilled and educated labor force – all these shifts entail a new era for business development.
There’s work to do to make sure that your business proposition gets to the right people, and the vast majority of it now takes place online. Web marketing has provided some of the most successful businesses with their head starts. In the information age, the internet can help a company take off because everyone’s online now.
But how do you attain the growth you want? Throwing up any old website isn’t going to yield you your first 500,000 customers. The site needs to grab the attention of your target audience and then retain their loyalty to your brand. One-off purchases equate to one victory, but for business growth, the long-term conversion is the end goal. Here are seven ways you can build your business using tried-and-tested marketing strategies.
1. Generate Email Subscription Lists
According to Shopify, one of the ways you can build a loyal client base is through email subscription lists. While nearly everyone uses the internet, not everyone uses social media in particular. The gap means if your entire marketing strategy focuses solely on social media platforms, you’re going to be missing a large chunk of clientele.
What is consistent among almost all internet-users is the existence of an email address. They are necessary for most online transactions from online banking to shopping. The requisite email address entails an excellent marketing lead because it gives you a direct line of communication with a considerable amount of people who could become long standing customers.
However, merely spamming your clientele isn’t going to get you anywhere. If you sound fifty emails a month saying the same things, your email will join the mess of other emails doing the same thing. Grab your target audience’s interest by providing them with the information they will find genuinely interesting.
To get their email, you should go beyond merely requesting that they ‘sign up’. Instead, you want to incentivize it. One method is to state that if the user gives you their email address, you’ll provide vital information related to their interests and your business. Once you deliver on this information, then you can push your product or service. The information-reward model builds trust and gains genuine investment from customers.
2. Utilize Social Media Marketing –
Now, we just established that not everyone uses social media, but there are plenty of people who do. By plenty, we mean literal billions. Social media users comprise an enormous pool of people whom you can target for your marketing. Plus, social media platforms offer an accessible format with which you can present your services or products.
Social media marketing isn’t all advertisements, either. Sure, throwing banner advertisements on Facebook will garner more quick views for your brand name. However, this haphazard method doesn’t come close to guaranteeing any sort of engagement.
Adverts on social media have become so commonplace that most users mindlessly scroll past them. These same users might not even notice you’re there half the time.
The beauty of social media marketing comes through in the form of communication. Advertisement is one thing, but an active engagement with an audience that would directly benefit from what you’re selling is the cornerstone of good business. Form Facebook groups, set up an Instagram business page, engage with your followers and increase conversion by forming real connections with your client base.
Social media marketing can involve:
- Q&A sessions: Address some of your audience’s FAQs in real-time to make yourself more accessible and trustworthy.
- Increased traffic through popular posts: Frequent posts to social media will keep your clients interested in what you’re doing while also reminding them that you exist. Life moves fast, so you shouldn’t let your business fall to the sidelines of your customer’s purview. Just remember with this technique that you don’t want to overdo it and become a spammer. Spam messages will only annoy your customers.
- Giveaway events: If relevant to your particular service, giveaways can be a great way to entice new customers and treat your more loyal clients.
Universally, people love free things, great deals, and feeling as though they’re a part of something big. A strong social media movement combines all three of these factors. Social media has blown the business environment wide open, so why not take advantage of that?
3. Pop-Ups Aren’t Annoying Anymore
Pop-up notifications are not the irritating and colorful obstructions of web-pages that they once were. Nowadays, these notifications are highly effective ways to promote your brand and encourage conversion. Whether you’re using a pop-up on your website to gain an email subscription or to lead viewers through a more complex sales-funnel process, pop-ups can make a difference to your outreach.
The newfound sophistication has to do with how much better we’ve gotten at coding. Coding advancements mean that pop-ups aren’t quite as annoying as they used to be. Now, you can set the coding so that the advertisement pops up only once a user has spent a certain amount of time on your site. The behavior-triggered notification entails the pop-ups aren’t leaping at someone immediately and potentially turning them away.
Also, pop-ups can be a great way to add final notes when a client leaves your site. The closing note could present crucial details that could secure a sale.
Consider adding pop-up sequences to your web-page and see the difference they can make to client conversion and retention. There’s a large variety of pop-ups that you can implement into your site to suit your specific needs. You can customize these messages for your product, service, or subscription. Don’t let the horrors of past pop-ups turn you away from using what can be one of the handiest new tools.
4. Know the Trends
Having an arsenal of marketing strategies at your disposal is just one part of the growth process. You can install as many sales funnels or growth strategies as you like. However, it won’t necessarily lead to the success you’re after if you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing and what makes it so popular.
Market research is an integral part of the growth of any business. Sure, you shouldn’t spend all your time looking at what your competitors are doing, but a side-glance now and again isn’t a cardinal sin. Instead, it’s necessary. It isn’t enough in business to just focus on your plan while paying no mind whatsoever to what other successful companies are doing. There’s a reason some businesses are highly successful. They not only know how to play the field but what the other players are doing as well.
More importantly, however, pay attention to what consumers are responding well to in the market. Businesses aren’t successful because they stay on-trend. They’re successful because they remain in-tune with their customers’ demands. Study what is currently grabbing consumer interest and implement it accordingly. Refrain from merely throwing marketing strategies at your business and seeing what sticks.
5. Measure Your Growth
Knowing how your competition is doing and how they’re doing it is wise. However, focusing on your growth is also integral to success.
Measuring growth involves keeping quantitative records. Keep records of your monthly revenue, the rate of new subscribers for your email lists, etc. Also, track changes within your business operations. Did you implement a new marketing strategy? Did you try out a different outreach technique? And, most importantly, did these new practices work?
Not only does measuring growth allow you to enjoy seeing tangible, quantifiable results, but also it lets you know in numbers the efficacy of your latest marketing strategies. Any business needs to know how it is performing in black and white. Otherwise, if you aren’t achieving steady growth, then your business runs the risk of stagnation.
With the data on your company’s growth, you’ll soon gain more precise insight into what’s working for your brand and what isn’t. Before long, you’ll have an entire framework that informs you on what works best for conversion and sales for your specific target audience. It’s not just about keeping books; it’s about planning for your next move.
6. Use Video to Promote Your Brand
Visuals have never been more crucial than they are today. The surge of social media giants like Instagram and YouTube entails that people aren’t interested in reading enormous walls of text any longer. They want their content quick, informative, and, perhaps most importantly, aesthetically pleasing. Most people want information they can digest without having to give their undivided attention to it. Digital advertising is more significant than ever, which means text-heavy advertising just doesn’t meet those quotas.
The intersection of the demands of consumers and the advancements in digital audio-visual technologies is where visual promotion through video hits its stride.
Video promotion means that potential customers can watch a video you’ve uploaded and obtain all the relevant information without even putting down their phone. These videos grab attention, without demanding too much of your audience.
It’s also worth noting that video content is entirely adaptable, too. You can have videos that garner new interest while appealing to customers who are already customers but just want more in-depth information. By utilizing both, you increase your clientele while also keeping long standing customers engaged. A video is a powerful tool; don’t neglect it.
7. Experiment with Diverse Techniques
If you’re reading this article, you’re probably quite savvy with trying new business techniques. However, you never want to get too comfortable. The nature of business is inconsistent. New trends regularly appear on the scene, and they all rise and fall in popularity and efficacy. The essential takeaway from all this is not to try and predict which trend is going to be the next big thing. Instead, you want to stay consistently innovative.
Review and rework your marketing strategies every quarter. The consistent renewal will ensure you’re keeping a close eye on which elements of your business are yielding the best results. Quarterly reviews also mean you are staying engaged in an environment that demands it. You may have the most exceptional service or product around, but if you fail to keep your clientele interested in the long-term, you’re going to lose out fast. Stagnation has no place in business, so make sure you’re trying out new, diverse techniques as often as you feel possible.
Of course, consistency is key, which is why every quarter is the recommended time frame for experimenting with new techniques. However, don’t let that limit you if you feel like mixing things up with even more frequency. Little changes and experimentation can lead to significant long-term results.
For instance, if you set up social media for your business, why not try live streaming with your clientele to answer questions? Livestream FAQs can actively engage your audience. Monthly live streaming could be a small addition that makes a big difference.
Conclusion
There are numerous techniques and methods that you can use to promote your business. There may be some that you’ve opted for in the past and unfortunately found no success. There might also be some techniques which before you hadn’t considered. None of these oversights is an indication that your plans for business growth are not thoughtful or useful. It just means you need to keep working toward a marketing method suited for your brand!
Business is a mixture of innovation, trial and error, and tenacity. Try new things and understand that trying is vital to finding your avenue of success and moving forward with your brand. While it may seem as though trying new techniques to no avail is a waste of time, the real waste of time is refusing to innovate out of fear of failure. Business is a risk, and utilizing new marketing strategies will carry your brand to success.
