Mediastreet
Tag

marketing strategies

Browsing
In News

How To Boost Your Online Presence Through Effective Marketing Strategies

No Comments

Sourced from appPicker

Nowadays, businesses are becoming very competitive and as such, the need for internet marketing strategies has become crucial in helping you to increase your online presence. This means that it is vital for every business to make use of the internet and social media platforms to market their products and services.

Here are some effective digital marketing strategies:

1. User data analysis

This is a marketing strategy that basically focuses on data gathering and analysis. Understanding the needs and desires of your customers can be done through this process. Professionals at smartboost.com understand how to serve your customers better by understanding their digital footprints and all things related to design. This will greatly help you to improve the way you market products and services.

2. Social media presence

The best thing about social media platforms is that they make it easier for one brand or company to interact with other brands and companies in an online space where content sharing takes place. This means that you can share your content on various other platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter among others without necessarily overloading your end users with lots of information. Having a strong social media presence also gives brands more opportunities to interact with their customers.

3. Website design

A website is the main channel that companies use to market their brands and services effectively, which implies that it should be designed in a very special way that will attract more customers. Having a beautiful website design helps bring visitors to your site, who can then be written about your products and services.

4. Social media app development

Social media apps are becoming increasingly popular among people all across the world because they allow for easier sharing of content among different social media platforms. This means you need to focus on developing attractive social media apps to increase traffic to your website. These apps should be easy to use by everyone, irrespective of age or location.

5. Live-streaming

This is one of the best marketing strategies that will allow you to share content with your customers. This can be done in form of videos or images on different social media platforms. By doing so, it keeps your target audience more engaged, and this keeps them coming back to see what’s new about your business. It also allows for customer feedback, which can help improve products and services offered by businesses.

6. Email marketing

Email marketing is a very effective type of digital marketing because it gives you an opportunity to interact directly with your target audience who are into making business deals. You just need to send out emails that advertise the deals that are being offered by your company at different price points compared to other companies that may offer similar products and services.

7. Search engine optimization

SEO is basically a process of ensuring that your website gets ranked high on search engines for keywords related to your products and services to attract more customers who are interested in what you have got to offer. It also involves making sure that the content of your website is original, relevant, and easy-to-read to encourage sharing, which ultimately boosts traffic to your site. SEO becomes more effective when combined with social media marketing.

8. Digital PR

This is not usually done by most businesses, but it is an effective strategy for boosting digital presence.  This kind of PR is better suited for websites that are likely to be referred to by other sites because it helps them boost their traffic too without necessarily compromising your integrity.

9. Mobile marketing

Having an app on different mobile platforms gives you more opportunities to interact with your customers and also get feedback about what they like most about your brands and services, which makes it easier for you to market it in the right way. You can even use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth technology to make sure people can easily find information about your brand, product, or service while they are on the go (on buses, trains, cars, etc.).

10. Video marketing

This is one of the best ways of communicating directly with customers through video sharing on different social media platforms. It also gives you an opportunity to showcase your product or service in a very attractive way, which will help increase traffic to your site and at the same time create awareness about what your company is willing to offer. This can be done through television ads, YouTube videos, podcasting, etc.

Why is online presence important for marketing strategies?

For any business to grow and be profitable, they need to have a strong online presence. This is because more and more people prefer doing their shopping, booking tickets for events, and making other business transactions online. When it comes to marketing strategies, businesses cannot afford to ignore the internet when they want to attract new customers or retain the current ones.

However, not all websites get the same number of visitors who can convert into customers. That means that some sites are likely to perform better than others, depending on how easy it is for potential customers to find information about them and actually go ahead and make a purchase. Prospective clients prefer visiting sites that are easy-to-read, professional-looking, with lots of information about products and services offered by companies.

What are the benefits of having a strong online presence?

With a strong online presence, your business will gain more visibility, especially with the help of social media platforms that are always available for people to search for products and services. This is why you need to use different marketing strategies because they give you the opportunity to be close to potential customers who may become lifelong clients if they see your site as a source of quality products or services.

You can also make good use of social media tools by sharing customer reviews about your brands, upcoming deals, and discounts, etc. which is bound to make them pay another visit to your site. If this continues over time, chances are you will have a steady flow of traffic on your website that is likely to increase as people share news about it with their friends and relatives through different social media platforms, making your online presence grow rapidly.

Marketing strategies are the best tools you can use to promote your brand or services online. This is because they effectively help you attract more customers as well as retain the ones you already have as potential clients.  When you have a good number of visitors, it means that your online presence has been boosted and this is the beginning of the success of your company.

Sourced from appPicker

Read More
By
In News

5 Pinterest Marketing Strategies That Will Put You Ahead of the Competition

No Comments

By Christina-Lauren Pollack

There are many online marketing strategies small businesses can use to get ahead of the competition. One strategy is Pinterest marketing, which leverages the popular social media platform that has become one of the most effective promotional sites on the internet.

Even though Pinterest is considered a social media platform, in truth, it operates more like a search engine, similar to Google or Yahoo!. While users can leave comments and like posts, most people use Pinterest as a bookmarking tool to save content for future reference. So, now that you understand how it differs from other social networks like Instagram or Facebook, we can explore how to actually use it to benefit your business.

Why is Pinterest helpful for small businesses?

The answer is simple: Pinterest users are often searching for products and services to buy. When you optimize your content, research keywords that people might use when they’re looking for your type of product or service, then pin it on a board, potential customers will be able to find you more easily.

In addition to providing you with robust data on the types of people engaging with your content (otherwise known as “pins”), Pinterest also helps your company’s website rank higher in search results. This means, if someone conducts a Google search for specific keywords, your “pin” on Pinterest could show up in the search results if it’s been properly optimized. Why is this important? Well, for one – it enables you to reach a larger audience of targeted users who are actively seeking your type of product or service. And secondly, because it can lead to more website traffic, boost lead generation, and lower bounce rates for your company’s site.

If you’re looking to target Millennials, it’s an especially helpful system to leverage, as it’s an increasingly popular platform for marketers because of its popularity with the younger generation, who are more likely to make purchase decisions based on what they see online.

How can Pinterest boost SEO for businesses?

As an example, my lifestyle blog for women (Inspirations & Celebrations) gets over 70 percent of its organic website traffic from Pinterest. That means every month, my blog gets thousands and thousands of new visitors without me having to hustle hard for this valuable traffic. Considering how impactful that is on my site’s overall reach, it makes it one of the smartest ways to drive traffic more easily, turn leads into subscribers or customers, and create a sustainable business online.

To help your small business stand out, here are five Pinterest marketing strategies that will help put you ahead of the competition.

Establish a business account on Pinterest for your company. This is the first step to any Pinterest marketing strategy because it enables you to enter more information about your company, such as its mission statement or the products that are available for purchase.

Optimize your account’s bio and boards with keywords that are relevant to your products or services. Conduct some research into the types of keywords or keyword phrases that your target audience often searches for.

Include links to your website and blog in the description of pins. Whether you’re promoting blog posts or product webpages, it helps to pin various images that link back to your website. The more high-quality pins that you post, the greater the chance of getting discovered by potential customers or clients.

As you pin images that link back to your website, create eye-catching images or graphics that capture attention. Vertical images often perform better than horizontal ones. So, it’s helpful to keep this in mind when creating content.

Don’t be afraid to promote your work

Last but not least, promote your Pinterest profile. Be active on the site and follow other people that are similar to your target demographic. Share your Pinterest profile on your other social networks, encourage existing customers to follow your Pinterest account (by including a link in your email signature).

As you can see, using Pinterest for more than just pinning recipe ideas or home decorating inspiration photos can be a great way to market your business online. In addition to driving brand awareness to a larger audience, it’s one of the best (free) ways to attract your ideal customers or clients.

By Christina-Lauren Pollack

Digital Entrepreneur, Business Consultant & Branding Course Creator

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

Read More
By
In News

Want More Traffic for Your Website? Try These Proven Content Marketing Strategies

No Comments

By Rooney Reeves.

In the highly-digitized world, we are living in, we often hear about content marketing. But what exactly is content marketing? Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach, focused on building and distributing relevant, consistent, and valuable content to draw and retain a clearly defined audience, and the ultimate goal is to drive profitable customer action.

Content is king, and website development today entails building websites and web apps with high-quality content. The most experienced successful brands and marketers already are vouching for that by developing powerful and unique content marketing campaigns. Unlike traditional marketing, content marketing costs 62 percent less and provides as many results when it comes to leads and traffic.

Business organizations seeking services of web developers, such for instance a PHP web development company that builds web solutions using PHP are doing so to boost their marketing strategies and to stay on the competitive edge. Unquestionably, content promotion strategies are popular and insanely effective in today’s marketplace. Whatever business vertical you are in, you could leverage content to develop a robust brand reputation, boost brand awareness, and boost ROI.

There are content marketing strategies that help drive more traffic to your website. What are these? Let’s find out.

Proven Content Marketing Strategies to Drive More Traffic

Build Astounding Content for a Very Distinct Audience

A content marketing campaign to be successful demands a lot of things. The most critical, however, is you have to take into account the concerns of your target audience. Put simply, you should recognize and understand the characteristics, behavior, needs, mindset, desires, issues, and habits of your audience.

If you’re to deliver value, then you must certainly know that your content would bring something new, something that your audience could hardly find somewhere else. The most essential element of SEO is keyword research. Look for the keyword and phrases that your audience uses in search engine queries.

Build content around these phrases and words to boost your rankings. When researching a keyword, look for long-tail phrases and keywords to bring in more relevant traffic. It would also be helpful to include keywords that are semantically related.

These are words and phrases that conceptually relate to one another. Some free keywords to help you include:

  • Keyword Tool Dominator
  • Google Search Console
  • Keywords Everywhere
  • Rank Tracker
  • Google Ads Keyword Planner

There are also other on-page and off-page factors, which impact your SEO aside from your content, such as:

  • backlinks
  • inbound links
  • site architecture

Networking and Guest Posting

Aside from engaging in a web development company, one of the most reliable ways of boosting awareness of your brand and blog traffic is guest posting. Guest posting first off enables connecting with niche authorities who possess an established database of customers and followers already. Effective guest posting secondly generates direct traffic.

You nonetheless have to target the right blogs, which target a similar audience, you should share content that amazes your audience, and you also have to link back to your website properly so that readers would feel enticed to click on your CTAs or call-to-action buttons. Guest posting provides an opportunity for you to connect with other same-minded people. All kinds of fruitful relationships could arise since you could share links, knowledge, and opportunities with your network group.

Segment the Audience and Build Various Landing Pages

Intelligent content marketing isn’t done randomly. Effective marketers segment their audiences following their various needs, including product needs, solution needs, and more. Segmentation is necessary simply because some of the visitors to your site are not customers, but some of them are.

Your content thus couldn’t be relevant to all your visitors since they have various needs and are at different stages of the sales process. Thus, as an example, the content you develop to boost brand awareness is wasted basically on people who have purchased one of your products already. The easiest way of segmenting the audience is through developing particular buyer personas.

Q&A Marketing and Forum Marketing

Q&A platforms and industry forums, such as Quora are goldmine content marketing channels. These sources, if properly leveraged, could drive plenty of traffic back to your website. Depending on your industry and the target audience, you have to identify the most relevant boards, which people use in discussing different topics.

There are different discussion forums, depending on the products and services you are selling. Study these forums and make certain that your ideal customers spend time there. The next thing to do is to build a branded profile that features the name and logo of your brand.

Forum marketing is all about interacting and providing effective solutions to people’s problems. Provide relevant advice, engage in relevant discussions, and use your signature in sharing important links back to your landing pages. The more helpful you are, the more leads and traffic you will generate over time.

Master One Social Network yet be Present on all the Others

Billions of people on earth today are active social media users. If you think about it, nearly half the population is using social media for different reasons. This tells you that social media isn’t a should anymore, but has become a must for every kind of business, enterprise, or blog.

Social media and content marketing are interconnected. One completes the other and vice versa. The perfect place for you to develop brand exposure, build meaningful relationships, and gather relevant leads is social media.

Whether you’re promoting content on social channels, you need to identify the most preferred social network by your target audience. Determine what communications channels they use, where they hang out, and how do they spend their time on social media. Quality over quantity is always the best, thus decide on the social channel you should focus more on.

Repurpose, Update, and Link to Old Content

Do not forget old content, especially if it’s evergreen and qualitative. Rather, you should update it, repurpose it and remind it throughout your newest blog posts. Simply, updating your content means adding new visual content, information, and new twists to make it more extensive.

Content update often could boost your search engine rankings, since crawlers revisit the pages and detect changes, which have been modified. Linking back to your past blogs is another effective way of boosting traffic and reputation to your brand. By adding internal links, which resolve various problems and needs, your target audience gets to spend more time on your blog, become familiar with your value proposition, style, and products.

Content repurposing involves modification to its media type. You could turn text into slides, audio, videos, infographics, and the other way around. As soon as you have numerous versions of the same value and information, share it via the various content channels.

For Better Results, Leverage Professionals

Content marketing is demanding. If you want to stay ahead of the competition and overshadow your competition, then the quality of your content should be great all the time. Keep in mind that a great entrepreneur, webmaster, or marketer is not a good writer or editor all the time.

In these instances, considering partnering with professionals. Aside from saving time and money, the quality of your article would be consistently written and preserved. There are several platforms where you can find talented freelancers.

Before contacting them, however, make certain that you build the profile of an ideal writer. Mention knowledge, experience, and skills requirements, and allow these services to find the perfect match.

Conclusion

Although technology and the internet continue to evolve, the main principle remains the same. Develop a content marketing strategy based on reliable data for a satisfactory and seamless customer journey.

By Rooney Reeves.

Read More
By
In News

Turn Browsers Into Buyers With These 4 E-Commerce Marketing Strategies

No Comments

By .

Using these marketing tricks, there’s light at the end of the funnel.

Whether you’re a novice e-commerce entrepreneur or a veteran in the space, it’s a good idea to continuously set new, higher sales goals. Greater sales translate to greater benefits for your company.

But the rules for how to increase sales aren’t necessarily one-size-fits-all. There are numerous variables to consider, such as product offering, existing customer base and customer demographics. It’s natural, too, for businesses to go through ups and downs, which requires entrepreneurs to keep an eye on e-commerce and purchasing trends and adjust ccordingly. After all, tried-and-true methods may have worked in the past, but eventually, the same old strategies can lose their touch.

Consumer habits tend to change quickly, especially as far as e-commerce. Here are four marketing tricks that could help you bring in a new wave of sales and revenue.

Prove your site is trustworthy

Concerns over cybersecurity have risen exponentially in recent years, which makes it more important than ever for e-commerce entrepreneurs to make their websites secure and even display badges reflecting their relationships with security providers (such as Norton Secured, Google Trusted Store, Verisign, McAfee Secure or BBB Accredited Business).

Think mobile-first and utilize video

Customers are not limiting themselves to shopping from their computers; instead, they’re increasingly using their mobile phones and tablets to make purchases online. This is especially the case for millennials. And it’s also why video demonstrations are great e-commerce tools: Not only do they often encourage consumers to stay on the site longer, but they can also increase engagement no matter which kind of device they’re shopping from. With video, you can showcase how a product works, and this is especially useful for new or unique products.

Create a sense of urgency

Amazon.com mastered many tricks, and the ability to create a sense of urgency in their listings is one of them. Merchants on Amazon know that if you enter an inventory of less than 20 items, the product page will show potential customers the number of items remaining, which can trigger someone to quickly make the purchase before they miss out. Inventories are often kept artificially low to take advantage of this trick.

Another trick that creates a sense of urgency is to offer deadlines with a countdown timer to hook potential buyers who might be on the fence. When it comes to timing, it’s also useful to let people know that if they finalize an order by a certain time, they will receive it before the weekend.

Send abandoned cart reminders

Depending on your customer base, you want to proceed with caution with this one, but it can be extremely beneficial to send emails to customers who abandoned their carts before finalizing a purchase. They’ll be reminded of the product they were considering (make sure to include a photo), and you can even include discount codes or other incentives to buy it that day.

Feature Image Credit: svetikd | Getty Images 

By

Vice President, Innovation at Massive Alliance.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

Read More
By
In News

Marketing Strategies to Boom in 2019

No Comments

By  Anuja Lath

Internet marketing is all set to undergo a tremendous change in 2019. It will completely change the way the businesses have been handling their marketing strategy and technique. The technological onslaught has redefined the whole marketing ecosystem. The expectations of customers have also changed as everyone not only wants the best product at the most competitive price but are not even ready to wait. There is no room for lags as there are many options available. 2019 will be a signature year in terms of marketing as businesses will have to continuously innovate to keep pace with the changing lifestyles and future marketing trends. Businesses will thus have to look deeper into their marketing strategies and reinvent themselves continuously to survive. Recent trends in marketing suggest that it will no more be an easy ball game as the world wide web is getting exhausted with more than 1,800,000,000 websites present and the number is growing by the day.

Best Digital Marketing Strategies to Make a Mark in 2019

  • Inbound Marketing: This typically focusses on your product which is able to add more value to the lives of your customers or audience. There is an obvious shift in the industry towards enhanced levels of personalized content. Content takes center-stage but it should not just offer the keywords used in searches, it should also be able to address the concern for which someone punched in that keyword. There is no dearth of content on Google, so the content has to offer an accurate and precise solution to the problem. Fresh and original content will remain a hot favourite for both Google and the audience. Content is thus here to stay as more and more businesses are increasing their budgetary allocations for producing more relevant content.
  • Video Marketing: No future marketing strategy can dare to ignore the scope of video marketing. Video and audio form of content is yet to reach its saturation level on the internet, unlike the text content. These forms also have a much more attractive and engaged audience. The prevalence of smart devices has made streaming of videos much more competitive. Marketers thus cannot afford to miss this trend as videos are more likely to result in conversions than plain text. Making a professional video is expensive but it presents a compelling case for businesses that they do not want to miss the chance. The extent of success can be gauged from the fact that more than 100 million hours of videos are being watched on Facebook every day!
  • Growth Hacking: This comprises a group of small and simple techniques which are highly helpful for the businesses for stimulating their growth and demand. Some of the strategies involved may not satisfy the ethical criteria but the results suggest that this cannot be missed. The people behind it, also known as growth hackers, are highly committed to taking your business to a new level as they see the whole idea of digital marketing as a battle which has to be won at all costs. These hackers play with data and creativity to give rise to revolutionary products. Growth hacking has emerged as one of the best marketing strategies of all time.
  • Chatbots: Chatbots are a recent strategy in the realm of Internet marketing but have come loaded with immense potential. These are bots which enter meaningful conversations in real-time with customers with the help of AI. Majority of the businesses around the world are looking at chatbots as the most promising future marketing strategy. Customers also prefer to speak to chatbots over humans due to their efficiency, quick response time, helpful in recalling the whole purchase history and are very cordial. One can instead focus on more important tasks as these help in automation of repetitive work.
  • Automation: Future marketing trends present a strong case for the automation of marketing. It comprises of software which aims to automate repetitive marketing tasks like email marketing, social media or website actions, etc. This has helped businesses to develop their relationships with prospective clients without having to spend any extra time on it. The technology which has developed in recent years has shown no sign of slowing and will stand pronounced in 2019 as one of the best digital marketing strategies.

Conclusion

2019 will be a defining year for the marketers as the latter will have to experiment and come up with new approaches and strategies to win the customers. Technology will continue to evolve and keeping pace with it will be the biggest challenge. It is going to drive you crazy and it is this craziness which will make you succeed. The best digital marketing strategies to rule 2019 will be marked by technologies like AI and machine learning. Chatbots and other automation techniques present a strong case along with video marketing. Content will still be valued provided it is original.

 

 

By  Anuja Lath

Anuja is India’s #7 LinkedIn Top Voice 2017. She is the Co-founder and CEO of RedAlkemi Online Pvt. Ltd., a digital marketing agency helping clients with their end to end online presence. Anuja has 30 years of work experience as a successful entrepreneur and has co-founded several ventures since 1986. She and her team are passionate about helping SMEs achieve measurable online success for their business. Anuja holds a Bachelors degree in Advertising from the Government College of Fine Arts, Chandigarh, India.

Sourced from BBN Times

Read More
By
In News

4 Marketing Strategies Every Startup Can Afford

No Comments

By Juupiner

You don’t need to outspend your competition. You just need to out-think and out-work them.

Do your products sell themselves?

Having a great product is essential, but that alone isn’t enough to make your startup successful. Aside from your fantastic product, you’ll also need a stellar marketing strategy to grow your startup. But for many entrepreneurs, it’s simply not realistic to spend a lot of money to acquire new business.

Instead, consider a few of these cost-effective marketing strategies that can help generate early successes.

Affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is the most cost-effective marketing strategy that works. I believe all businesses — regardless of size — should adopt referral, or affiliate, marketing. I’ve used it with a good deal of success and put it to work in all my online businesses.

Here’s how it works: Encourage people to recommend your products to others, and pay a commission only when someone purchases your products through those referrals.

Start by setting up an affiliate program though networks such as ShareASale or ImpactRadius. You then can promote your affiliate program by featuring it prominently on your website and inviting customers to join the program. Additionally, you can choose the right reward structure — one that’s compelling enough for your network’s members to engage.

Email outreach also can serve as an efficient tool when communicating with influencers:

  • Create a list of influencers and experts in your industry,
  • Send an outreach email requesting they try your product for free, and
  • Explain the monetary rewards they could earn by referring a user.
Click HERE to read the remainder of the article
Feature Image Credit: Getty

Sourced from Juupiner

Read More
By
In News

What Are The Best App Marketing Strategies?

No Comments

Sourced from Forbes

What are the best app marketing strategies? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer by Julia Tokareva, Software Development Consultant at RubyGarage, on Quora:

If you have built a mobile app, you already have faced the tough turf of competition. If you want to stand out, use the following app marketing strategies that can guarantee success to a large extent.

Research target market.

To start marketing your app, you should define your target audience. Don’t try to reach everyone. Choose a particular group of consumers at which your product is aimed and create their profile. Define such important details as demographics, psychographics, habits, lifestyle. The effect will be stronger if you attract target audience instead of all people.

Perform competitor research.

Knowing about your competitors will help you to communicate with your target audience, distinguish your business from competitors, improve your processes, and navigate challenges in your market. Determine their main advantages and try to improve on them.

Create a landing page that sells.

Create a mobile app landing page that keeps readers informed in a creative and unexpected way. Make sure that the key elements of your mobile app landing page are included: app name, features, clear call to action, promo video.

Make your app visible in app store.

This is a process of optimizing mobile apps to rank higher in an app store search results. The higher your app ranks in an app store search results, the more visible it is to potential customers. Main factors that affect your ASO:

  • Title – make it readable, focused and it should have a high recognition value.
  • Description – make sure to point out what problems your app solves and use keywords.
  • Icon – focus on one element that reflects your app’s essence and design it in a unique shape.
  • Screenshots – show an app’s core features and most important functions.

Create viral video content.

Humans are visual creatures, which is why videos are the most popular form of content today. You can create video for YouTube as it’s a powerful tool to spread the word about your product. An effective way to market an app is to create a fun video using famous heroes or playing on sensational memes.

If you want to create a promo video, keep it short and to the point, focus only on your app’s best features and provide a strong call to action. As a final check, mute your video. If it still makes sense, it’s well done.

Start a blog.

Tell your audience about the development process. Blogging can build interest around your product and provides better search visibility. Select target keywords, create quality content, and link to influencers to improve your blog’s search engine rankings.

Reach your audience with social networks.

Social media can help you to reach your potential customers more easily. Social networks provide you an access to important data about users’ interests, hobbies, and so on. This information can help businesses to target their advertisements. For example, Facebook Ads allows you to customize advertising as accurately as possible since ads are targeted solely at your potential users.

Measure your app KPIs.

Regular analysis of your mobile app KPIs will help you gain the best insights into your idea so you’ll know how well your app is doing. Let’s consider the most important KPIs to pay attention to when assessing your app’s success.

julia

Always keep in mind your users and their feelings about your app. When dealing with mobile application marketing, every detail is essential.

If you’re interested in mobile app marketing strategies and how to use them, read this article to know more about this.

This question originally appeared on Quora – the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

Sourced from Forbes

Read More
By
In News

4 “Outdated” Marketing Strategies That Still Work

No Comments

By 

The hottest trends in marketing today look very different than they did a decade (or several) ago. From influencer marketing to mobile video, chatbots, and integration with the Internet of Things, today’s marketing strategies tend to be digital, data-driven, and tech-savvy.

These trends are enough for many marketing “gurus” to declare old-school marketing techniques as good as dead. That’s an attitude that makes for great headlines, but it’s also tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. While some strategies may indeed have gone by the wayside (telemarketing, anyone?), there’s still a place for traditional approaches at the marketing table. Here are four supposedly “outdated” marketing strategies that continue to be worth your time today.

Attending networking events

Sure, professional conferences, seminars, trade shows, and other networking events may not be the most thrilling way to spend your time. But they’re still an effective means of making meaningful connections and getting the word out about your company.

If there are no notable networking events in your locality or industry, then it may be time to start one. Consider sponsoring an event for local professionals or coordinating a seminar or course that will help get your name out and establish you as an authority in your field. Even if it feels tedious at times, there’s no substitute for making in-person connections and having your brand recognized at industry events.

Connecting with local publications

Sure, print media may not hold the clout it once did. But newspapers still get read, and they also have digital presences that help to reach a wider audience. Thus, it’s still important to get to know your friendly neighborhood reporters.

When it comes time to publicize a major business development or announcement, being in the good graces of local publications will make it that much easier to receive coverage. You can maximize the impact of this coverage by sharing it across your digital platforms, from email newsletters to social media posts.

Giving out promotional materials

From free social events to free consultations, to free gifts, promotional events and material giveaways can be a great way to attract people to your business. Because you’re not asking prospects for a commitment up front, it encourages them to interact with your brand with no strings attached. Make a good impression, and they’re likely to stick around to learn more about your offerings. Meanwhile, physical products circulate and continue to advertise on your behalf without you paying anything beyond the upfront cost.

Pairing up with other big-name brands in a complementary space (as in this collaboration between BarBend and USA Weightlifting) can help you maximize the impact of promotional materials. That’s because you can combine your audiences, giving both brands extra exposure to new potential customers.

Offering deals and discounts

From referral programs that give both the referrer and the referee a discount, to deals for brand advocates, to flash sales, to loyalty programs that provide participants with ongoing discounts on your products or services, pretty much everybody is attracted to deals. This may be especially true for millennials—one case study found more than 75 percent of millennial consumers both participate in loyalty rewards programs and are more likely to choose brands that offer these types of programs.

This is another marketing strategy that lends itself well to partnering with other brands. For example, you might offer members of your loyalty program discounts at the other brand, and vice versa.

These marketing strategies may not be as sexy as data-driven sales funnels, but they have been tried, tested, and found to be effective across industries. If your marketing is feeling a little stale, it may be time to get some inspiration from the old school.

By 

Sourced from Socialnomics

Read More
By
In News

7 marketing strategies behind Donald Trump’s success

No Comments

By

Regardless of the politics surrounding the man, Donald Trump built a real estate empire and then, against almost all the odds, catapulted to the most powerful job in the world, thanks in large part to his exceptional ability to market his brand and himself.

1. There’s no such thing as bad publicity

While it’s certainly a cliché and definitely not true in all cases, Trump showed that in some instances bad publicity and bad PR can be a boom to one’s notoriety, specifically brand awareness, without crashing their reputation.

During his presidential run, Trump continuously made the news for all the wrong reasons, at least according to conventional campaign wisdom, by repeatedly saying things that were shocking or potentially insensitive and by constantly breaking with presidential decorum.

Yes, Trump received lots of scorn for these things, but more importantly, he gobbled up $5 billion worth of free media while spending only one-third on advertising as his main competitor, Hillary Clinton. Trump’s face and voice being seen and heard on TVs across America at all times must have certainly helped his successful presidential campaign.

So while brands surely don’t want to make a splash in the media or on social media often for the wrong reasons, as long as the content doesn’t alienate and turn off the targeted audience, then the consequences might be negligible.

2. Know the image you want and push it confidently

Perhaps the biggest reason for Trump’s success as a candidate was his embrace of being an outsider. Trump knew he had an advantage over other vanilla politicians with his perceived status as a “businessman,” a “non-politician,” and “politically incorrect.”

And Trump saw this edge written in the tea leaves or by just simply looking at about any poll on Americans’ distrust of their elected politicians.

Brands who know their desired image down to a T, and more specifically, knowing why their brand is unique, makes marketing in an authentic way miles simpler.

And, as it turns out, consumers rank authenticity and honesty above both unique product offerings and great customer service.

3. Break the rules

Echoing the above points, Donald Trump’s habit of spitting in the face of conventional campaign wisdom is something that every marketer could learn from.

His willingness to break the standard rules of politicking was refreshing to many people. And many times, even if people didn’t technically agree with what Trump was saying, they found it a breath of fresh air that he would speak his mind and be outside the box — at least in terms of the political sphere.

And sure, there are a lot of traditional marketing strategies and techniques that are tried and true and will inevitably pay dividends in the long run, but ditching the marketing manual every now and then can make your brand stand out from the pack in a world where many younger consumers are very skeptical about advertisers.

Rather than throwing out the same old marketing content as other brands have done for years, pushing bold and innovative advertising that speaks to customers in new, relatable ways is exactly what Trump did for his voters.

4. Have an enemy

One wildly successful aspect of Donald Trump’s election run was his ability to find and exploit a huge number of enemies — enemies of both himself and his would-be voters.

Whether it be the media and their “fake news,” the Washington elites, the big-money interests, Crooked Hillary, Rosie O’Donnell, illegal immigrants, or Islamic terrorists, Trump knew that having enemies creates a conflict and storyline that will rally people. Trump supporters stood with him based on his beliefs and attitudes, but probably more so, because of what he stood against: business as usual in Washington.

Having or creating an enemy is also a priceless marketing technique, just ask T-Mobile, who was struggling to keep up with other mobile carriers until the company launched its “Un-carrier” campaign, which essentially painted AT&T and Verizon Wireless as the enemies of carrier freedom.

The campaign was a huge success and rallied many young, dissatisfied mobile phone users to make the switch to T-Mobile. Now T-Mobile is the fastest growing mobile phone carrier in the US.

5. Speak Like Us

Trump’s social media presence, especially on Twitter, is a great example of how he knows what will resonate with his audience.

Rather than coming off as fake and superficial like most politicians who opt to have social media managers do their posting, Trump offers wholly unfiltered hot takes on his Twitter timeline on a regular basis, which not only amplifies his brand but makes him seem more like an authentic person.

On top of this, you might have heard that Trump speaks at a 4th-grade level, tending to repeat things over and over again, use primarily one-syllable words, and simple sentences in his speech.

You could draw many conclusions from this, but the most important is that his speech is easy to understand, more memorable, and is much closer to how the average person talks than an in-the-weeds politician.

For marketers, speaking like an average person and coming across as authentic can be a huge challenge. It often times feels fake and forced.

A great and increasingly popular way to remedy this is by building a network of trusted social media influencers to market your message. Influencers, unlike brands, are much more trusted by consumers because they are like us in our eyes and we relate to them in ways we could never relate to an impersonal brand.

6. Simple messaging

If you asked people what Trump’s campaign, or Bernie Sanders’ for that matter, stood for in just one or two sentences you would get a tight and quick answer. If you asked that same question of Hillary Clinton’s campaign or any of Trump’s main Republican primary challengers, you would probably get a lot of “uh’s” and “um’s.”

The reason for this is simple messaging. In Trump’s case, he stuck to simple, easy to remember phrases like “Make America Great Again” and “build the wall.” Sanders, likewise, often repeated “Medicare for All” and “free college.”

In marketing, this is invaluable. Consumers should know a brand’s message and identity and be able to say it in a one or two sentences or a few short phrases.

This can be achieved by utilizing highly-focused ads and audience targeting. Spreading content too thin can often times lead to vague and forgettable messaging.

Rather than buying loads of TV ads and hoping to attract a energized base, Trump built a relevant, consistent, concise, and simple message that easily resonated.

7. Know your audience

Trump’s clear understanding of his audience was a key reason he succeeded in getting to the White House.

He knew that many Americans had been forgotten by their politicians and left to fend for themselves and used this to market his campaign with laser-focus targeting. Even more, his underlying populist messaging was simple and ultimately what they wanted to hear, that the system isn’t looking out for them and that he was going to shake things up.

Furthermore, he was acutely aware of the beliefs and demographics of his audience and, for that reason, didn’t care to burn bridges with say, Hispanic-Americans or Muslim-Americans to build support and to rally his targeted audience.

Marketers too must sharply know their audience in order to mobilize them to purchase their goods or services, especially in the digital age when consumers expect heavily personalized advertising that speaks directly to them.

By

Sourced from NICHEHUNT

Read More
By