The engine of every successful business is a good marketing strategy. Marketing strategies are every business’s go-to plan for effectively implementing and achieving the business’s overall goals. Reaching prospective customers, developing valuable relationships with customers that lead to loyalty and trust and ultimately making said prospective customers, active customers of your business’s products or services.
A marketing strategy for any business will depend on the type of business and the resources available to that business. Marketing strategies are long-term plans that help to properly utilize a business’s resources and effectively direct them towards achieving the goals and objectives of the business. Essentially the key to achieving your business’s goals and objectives is having a good marketing strategy.
“Marketing strategy is a series of integrated actions leading to a sustainable competitive advantage” – John Sculley.
The path towards figuring out what works for your business is a continuous one and sometimes finding what works for your business might seem like a brain turner, but therein lays the problem. Marketing strategies aren’t a one size fits all approach it’s more of a, what’s presently working approach. When you consider things like who your target audience is, your budget size, your goals, and so on one major thing to put into consideration in choosing a marketing strategy is knowing what’s currently turning the wheels of marketing generally and why.
Today, distinct marketing strategies are implemented across the marketing world, strategies that show visible and effectual results. Every thriving business focuses on what works and the same can be said about marketing strategies. To understand what marketing strategies work for businesses across the digital world is to know what marketing strategies are likely to work for you as well. More so, there are marketing strategies that not only work but are integral to your business and should be utilized.
Here are five important marketing strategies to integrate into your business.
#1. Content Marketing
These days you cannot say marketing strategies without adding the much-beloved content marketing. Content marketing like all marketing strategies is a long-term plan, it focuses on creating and distributing content that is relevant, consistent, and useful to your target audience and that will not only attract but build valuable and long-lasting relationships with them, effectively converting them to customers. The key to a successful content marketing strategy is delivering the right content at each stage of your buyer journey.
Content marketing is so important to a business’s overall objectives that in 2021 Hubspot (https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics) recorded that 82% of marketers report actively using content marketing, and why not? When reports also show that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing programs, summarily, not only is content marketing a great means of promoting and expanding your online business, but it’s also a far less expensive yet profitable form of marketing. Content marketing aspects like blogs, newsletters, videos, infographics, emails, and more not only attract potential customers but develop the right relationship that makes them see your business as valuable and needful.
#2. Search Engine Marketing
When talking about effective marketing strategies you can’t go wrong with Search Engine Marketing (SEM), basically SEM is a means of marketing a business with the use of paid advertisements that appear on the result pages of search engines. It’s simply an efficient way of putting your business in front of the right audience, at the right time. Using keywords that search engine users often key in while searching for specific products and services, advertisers can bid to have their ads displayed alongside the results from these specific searches, effectively promoting their business to an audience who needs their businesses services and products. You cannot have a growing and expanding business without having SEM as a fundamental part of your marketing strategies. Brainlab (https://content.brainlabsdigital.com/hubfs/Reports/StateofPPC_19_20-092020.pdf) showed that 74% of marketers reported that paid advertising is a key driver of their business. So, effectively SEM is one marketing strategy that lets you utilize search engines in attracting more customers and simultaneously boosting your brand awareness.
#3. Social Media
Imagine quality engagement, exposure, and awareness all wrapped up in one neat package – social media. Social media is today a fundamental part of the lives of billions of people across the world, and more so in the growth of countless businesses. Social media for businesses today is a quick and easy way to reach a larger audience, develop a relationship with your audience, and gain valuable engagement. According to Influencer Marketing Hub (https://influencermarketinghub.com/social-media-marketing-benchmark-report/), there are 4.48 billion social media users worldwide, about 56.8% of the world’s population, and what’s outstanding about this is that these figures will only continue to grow by the year, more and more people are tapping into the vast opportunity that social media marketing brings.
#4. Influencer Marketing
Next on the big list of marketing strategies that work for your business is Influencer Marketing. So what makes Influencer Marketing a go-to marketing strategy for your business? Well, first to explain, Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that promotes a brand or business to a larger audience via an individual who is trusted and deemed credible by their audience. This individual wields considerable influence in their niche, hence the term influencer. Influencers are people actively engaged in social platforms, these people are usually bloggers, celebrities, professionals or just individuals with large followings. Leveraging on influencers as a business owner is influencer marketing. Here you’re having these said influencers advertise your products and services to their audience. An influencer’s audience is more likely to engage with your product due to the trust and loyalty they have for the influencer. Read more about influencer marketing here.
#5. Storytelling
People are moved by stories. Stories connect with people and leave long-lasting impressions that evoke specific feelings and reactions from the audience. Storytelling is a core component of every marketing strategy, so much so that it can be used as an effective driven force for every marketing strategy you can come up with. Storytelling is today an effective way of standing out in a crowd of competitors yelling the same thing. It’s a way of connecting your audience to your product or service through emotions or feelings, and this is done by creating a narrative around your business and product that humanizes your business and makes it more approachable.
Seeing your business grow and take shape is no day’s job it takes determination and hard work, as well as the right marketing strategies. A marketing strategy is your business’s long-term plan of achieving your business goals and objectives. The right marketing strategy not only works for your business but makes it effective and visible.