Get connected in the marketing world – online and offline
Marketing is vital to the success of any business across all industries; even more so as brands and products are constantly evolving, updating, and revolutionizing today.
As a business owner, you need to ensure that you are always one step ahead of your competition, or the least considered a front-runner in your chosen field. And this is where marketing can make a significant impact.
In simple terms, effective marketing for your business creates awareness. Clients and customers become familiar with your products, your work ethos, and services, and will therefore be potentially interested in your next big ideas and innovations.
But if they don’t know who you are or what your business is about, they won’t have an interest in your ideas and products.
Running and managing a company dat-to-day can be time consuming and require a lot of hard work and dedication. So it is easy to let something like advertising or marketing slip – especially if you have enough sales coming in right now.
But without a properly planned marketing campaign continually running, you won’t attract new customers, will find it harder to retain existing customers, and your brand reach will dwindle. So it is important to be aware of your business marketing needs – both online and offline – and have a strategy ready to implement.
Let’s look at some suggestions that will help you.
Use email marketing software to connect with customers
As a business you need to engage with existing customers and continually draw in potential new customers. To achieve this you need to make your brand and product visible, and the best way to do this is through online marketing; more specifically email marketing.
Pretty much everyone in the world essentially uses email, and certainly most of the people you want to reach, so email marketing gives you a wide audience to connect with.
Email marketing is also instantaneous, and cheaper than traditional direct mail, ad campaigns or printing and distributing flyers. But how can you plan and run an email marketing campaign?
For this you need an email marketing software program that will meet to your needs, reach contacts without effort, and advertise your company with one click. And this is where companies like Mailrelay.com can help.
Email marketing software companies usually offer free accounts to get started. For example, Mailrelay.com’s free account allows you to send up to 80,000 emails to 20,000 contacts without worrying about daily sending limits. You also get a fully supportive admin team to assist if you need.
As a manager or owner of a company, investing in software programs may not always be a priority. But any hesitation in decision-making often leads to actions never being executed, which could be to the detriment of the firm in the long run.
Email marketing can be easy and fairly quick to set up. And every day you wait is a day you aren’t building your relationship with existing and lapsed customers, and aren’t reaching out to new customers and introducing them to your business.
Let customers know what your business does
Customers are not psychic, and don’t know what your business values are, what you do and why it is the best choice for them. This is what your marketing – both offline marketing and online marketing – needs to do.
Marketing can start with social media. Do you have social media accounts that are properly set up and are sharing content that your audience will appreciate and need? Are you engaging with your followers and growing relationships with them?
Are you encouraging people to move from social media to your website? And, even more important. join your mailing list? You don’t ‘own’ your followers on social media. So if you want to be able to grow relationships with them and move them onto buying from you, you need to find a way to contact them outside social media. Preferably by email.
Your website needs to showcase what you do and give customers all the information they need to make a buying decision – or direct them to a place that gives them this information. It is also an opportunity to grow your brand and share your brand values.
This needs to work in tandem with any external offline marketing you have planned. For example, leaflet and flyer distribution campaigns in targeted areas can be an effective offline marketing solution to get your message out and drive website traffic. It allows you to know your customers as they get to know you. You need to ensure that your branding and messaging is consistent across all channels.
So if someone visits your stand at an exhibition, for example, then checks out your website or finds you on social media, their impression and experience of your company is consistent. This builds trust and grows your brand.
The objective of marketing is to capture attention
The aim of every business is to create products and/or services that solve a problem and sell them for money to the right audience. The aim of your marketing should be to capture the attention of these people, and demonstrate how and why you are the right business to help them. And they can trust you to buy what you offer.
