A solid marketing strategy is imperative for any business wanting to make an impact in the marketplace. With a strategic approach, your business can both win new customers and keep existing ones coming back. With such a variety of marketing tactics available, it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed with where to start. Here are four pillars for building a solid foundation for your marketing strategy, which you can build upon with additional tactics in time.
Online Presence
Having a strong online presence is crucial for all businesses. Consumers are most likely to go to your website to seek information – it’s your frontline online asset where you will drive all your traffic.
A great website will have a value proposition statement which tells a story to visiting consumers about what you offer as a brand, what you do and why you are best at it. This should be prominently communicated as soon as a consumer lands on your home page. If you are not sure of how your message is appearing to consumers, then you can consider A/B testing which allows you to test different designs and layouts to find which works best.
You also want to create a website that is clean and easy to navigate, providing friendly user experience. Your contact information should be displayed neatly on each page, which prompts consumers with that next step to contact you, every time they load a page.
Mobile-Responsiveness
In March last year, Google announced their next algorithm change would rank mobile-friendly websites higher than non-responsive or desktop-only versions. Alongside having a strong website, you must ensure your website is mobile-responsive. By the end of 2019, 79% of all web traffic will come from mobile phones so you need to be sure your website loads quickly. You can easily check your this through Google PageSpeed. To learn more about the advantages of a mobile-friendly website, read our post on the benefits of revamping your website.
Organic Marketing
Now you have a well-designed, responsive website; how do you drive consumers there? By making your business visible in other organic marketing channels. The best way to achieve this is by being present on Google. You need to ensure that you are showing up in organic search results through the power of SEO, and by having a profile on Google My Business.
In addition to search engines, your business needs to be visible on social media channels and relevant review sites for your industry. If you don’t exist on sites like Facebook or Yelp, then now is the time to create a business profile, page or listing. These pages will also allow you to keep your information such as opening hours, address, and phone number, up to date.
Paid Marketing
It’s equally important to invest in paid search marketing in order to get the most out of your marketing efforts. Why? Because paid ads directly target consumers that are already searching for a business like yours. And since the paid ads sit at the top of the search engine results page, consumers will see an ad before the organic results.
With over a billion active users on social media and 80% of web traffic coming from the video content, you should be looking into investing in paid ads on Facebook and Instagram as well as YouTube. Paid social ads are particularly good for targeting very specific demographics.
Utilise Email Marketing
Even in 2019, email marketing is one of the most effective forms of online marketing tactic, maintaining its historically high ROI. It is best used to cultivate relationships with potential customers, as well as keeping current and past customers informed and updated on your brand and offering. As a more direct form of marketing, it is often more efficient, and is a proven way to foster loyal customers.
There’s a lot you can do to build a strong foundation for your marketing strategy. For help getting started, call ReachLocal and speak to one of our experts: 1300 655 312
Super, very useful post, thanks for the post and for the answers.