With the rise of technological innovation, most consumers engage with brands through mobile devices. This made consumer tech launches become relevant. Research shows that 78% of online users research products online. This data shows that most consumers now rely on digital marketing channels to learn about businesses or products.
On the other hand, more and more brands saturate the market by offering similar products or services. As a result, it becomes more challenging for businesses to stand out from their competitors and gain a competitive advantage.
Marketers must develop effective native and branded advertising strategies to help them differentiate their brand from others. That way, you can attract more customers to your business and gain a higher market share. But with all the available tactics, how can you find the best ones that align with your company?
Failure to identify the right strategies for your business may affect the success of your campaigns. For instance, if your target consumers are mostly on Instagram, advertising products on Twitter makes it difficult for your market to find you. If you continue promoting on the same platform, how can you introduce your brand to your ideal clients and convert them into sales?
Here’s a list of eight tips for helping you choose the right marketing strategy for your company:
Determine Marketing Goals
The key to any marketing strategy’s success is identifying goals. In doing so, you can give your team a clear direction as they work on strategies. Also, you can figure out which campaigns are effective for reaching your targets and eliminating the ones that don’t generate positive results.
Here are some examples of marketing goals:
- Increase brand awareness
- Establish strong consumer relationships
- Build social media presence to provide a gateway for seamless customer service
By identifying your company’s marketing goals, you can make better decisions on achieving them best.
Build Your Marketing Tech Stack
Marketing technology tools, like email marketing and voice mail drops, are vital in your promotional campaigns because they help reach your goals. Many chief marketing officers (CMOs) spend a portion of their budgets on such tools. Nowadays, marketers are keen on adopting new technologies to get better results.
Here are two of the essential technologies that you can stack up:
- Email Marketing: Many companies use email platforms for digital marketing and to establish connections with consumers. Aside from that, these platforms help them receive a higher return on investment (ROI). According to a 2022 study, every time a company spends USD$1 on email marketing, they generate an ROI of USD$40. Hence, email platforms are helping businesses deliver their messages to their consumers effectively.
- Voicemail Marketing: Apart from emails, you may use voicemails as a tool to boost your marketing campaigns. With voicemail marketing, you only need a phone line to send promotional messages to clients. When a voicemail drops, it sends users a pre-recorded message.
For instance, you can send customized promotional campaigns for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or Christmas. You can also send special discount codes for Black Friday or Independence Day. With voicemail drops, you can advertise your promotions to consumers directly.
On the other hand, reliable software companies like Drop Cowboy or similar ones can help you save time while reaching more prospects using voicemail. An excellent example is Drop Cowboy’s ringless voicemail technology. Its features allow you to connect with your target consumers with a more personal touch, boosting your sales.
- Customer Experience Software: One of the main goals of your marketing campaign is to win customers. But how can you do that without prioritizing their experience with your brand? A recent study shows that 32% of consumers leave a store after a single unpleasant encounter. Similarly, 92% of the same surveyed consumers abandoned organizations after three negative interactions.
Meanwhile, more companies now use various software to concentrate on customer experience (CX). This technology allows you to monitor service requests and receive notifications for urgent emails from VIP consumers. Consequently, you can respond to the demands of your clients and ensure they leave with positive experiences with you. Hence, you’re likely to retain their loyalty to your brand.
Establishing a tech stack can help streamline your marketing operations. Plus, you’ll get to your customers faster, and they can also receive support from you immediately.
Identify The Preferences Of Your Target Audience
Knowing your ideal consumers is essential, helping you develop tailored marketing campaigns. Did you know that 40% of marketers use consumer research when making decisions? With this in mind, adopting audience analysis is a must.
Determining how to conduct your market analysis is the first step. You can start with focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, or sending surveys via email. Alternatively, looking at your social media analytics can help you pinpoint the most interactive campaigns.
For instance, if your audiences prefer short-form video content on Instagram reels, you can use this insight to plan future posts with a similar structure and format. On the other hand, if most of your audiences aren’t engaging with your posts, consider changing things up a bit.
Try running a survey among your followers or customers to find out what kinds of content they want to see from you. You might be surprised by the answers!
Research The Competitors
Besides your target audience, you also need to study your competitors. Research shows that 70% of large enterprises invest in competitive intelligence as it increases the performance of their campaigns. Knowing your competitors can help you understand how they market themselves. By studying your competitors, you can learn from their best practices. You can transform their weaknesses into strength by seeking innovative advantages for your marketing strategy.
Meanwhile, when conducting competitive analysis, you must consider three competitor types: direct, secondary, and substitute. After identifying your competitors, check their promotional strategies, product quality, marketing edge, and pricing. You can also look at how their consumers respond to their campaigns or how they think about their brand.
Find A Positioning Statement
After researching the competitors, you can figure out a common pain point that hinders the success of their strategy. Many brands’ most common pain points include consumers’ preference for lower prices, more advanced product features, or more responsive customer service. You can use these insights as your competitive advantage to stay ahead.
You can begin differentiating your brand from the competition through positioning. Find a way to show consumers that you’re not the same as other brands. If consumers identify your brand with excellent customer service, ensure that information is available for everyone to see. You can highlight it in your brand messaging through a good tagline.
However, keep in mind to keep it short and straight to the point for better brand recall. A recent study shows that 60% of customers worldwide prefer buying from a brand they remember rather than a new one.
Establish A Budget
A marketing budget is an outline of your expenses for promotional activities. Without it, you might overspend on an ad that doesn’t generate much ROI. Similarly, you might miss opportunities to introduce your brand to new markets if you don’t spend on other effective channels.
Creating a marketing budget is best with the help of the insights you collect from your competition and customer research. In addition, it helps to identify your existing marketing spend to determine gaps in coverage and effectiveness. You may also invest a portion in traditional radio and TV ads if your competitors lack marketing in those channels.
Considering the salaries of your in-house or outsourced marketing teams is a must when creating a budget. You can also include the costs of your marketing technology tools, including their maintenance fees. If you have sponsorships with influencers, you should also include them.
After drafting your budget, you must determine which expenses help you generate positive results. For instance, if you notice that influencers are more effective than traditional ads, consider cutting the latter and focusing more on partnering with more influencers. That way, you can save money while getting better results.
Pinpoint Marketing Strategies
Once you have a budget, you may start looking for marketing strategies. It’s essential to narrow down your options and decide on the best tactic for your business.
To help you in this process, here are some of the most popular marketing strategies:
- Social Media: Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube are where many modern consumers spend most of their time online. You can use them to create informative content that will help you connect with potential customers.
- Email Campaign: You can send newsletters to your subscribers with links to your e-commerce store. You may also include discount coupons to encourage them to visit and purchase from your website.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It involves optimizing your website for search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. In most cases, consumers use keywords to search for items. You can look up SEO tricks to help you rank higher .With SEO, users can learn about your company and find it online through search engines.
- Public Relations: It involves building relationships with influential people in the media. You can write press releases or do media interviews to generate positive publicity for your company. You can position yourself as an authority figure in your industry to gain the trust of your consumers with the help of media.
You can use all of these marketing strategies at once. However, it’s best to concentrate on the ones that will give you the best ROI.
Test Results Using Metrics
To know whether you chose the right marketing strategy, you must track its performance. Doing so can help determine whether your efforts are paying off. That way, you can adjust accordingly and make changes if needed.
The following are some of the most critical metrics to help you test the effectiveness of your marketing strategy:
- Traffic: This metric shows how many people visited a website each period. If more people visit your website, they’ll likely buy something from you. The more traffic you get, the higher the chance of converting them into customers. Traffic sources can also reveal where your visitors come from. Whether social media platforms or pay-per-click ads, it tells you what channels work best for your business, helping you understand the market.
- Conversion Rate: It measures how many visitors turn into customers after visiting your site for a specific period. You can calculate your conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors or pageviews.
- Impressions: They show the number of times a person views your ads online. This metric is helpful if you’re running a campaign with multiple ads. Impressions can help you determine how many people see your ad and how often they see it.
Click Through Rate (CTR): It measures how many people clicked the ad’s link that led them to your website. The higher the CTR, the more people your ad draws to view your content. On the other hand, a low CTR could mean you’re wasting money on ads that don’t get noticed by anyone. - Bounce Rate: Refers to how many people enter your site and immediately leave. Bounce rate can indicate that they didn’t find what they were looking for or aren’t interested in what you offer. If this happens frequently, it could indicate a problem with your site’s content or poor user experience.
- Cost Per Lead: It tracks how much money you spend on marketing and compares it to how much money you make from the leads generated.
- Return On Ad Spend: It measures how much revenue a campaign generates compared to its cost. You can use it to compare different types of ads and track the effectiveness of specific ad placements over time.
By knowing these metrics, you can determine if a campaign is worth pursuing or if it’s time to move on to another strategy. Hence, you can avoid overspending your marketing budget on ineffective campaigns and focus on worthy ones.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the success of marketing strategies lies in how well you research and examine the data. You can start by studying your competitors in the industry and learning the preferences of your target consumers. In addition, you can also establish a marketing technology stack to help make your marketing operations more manageable.
Deciding on the right marketing strategy for your business also includes budgeting for your marketing campaigns. Also, metrics like click-through rates or cost per lead can help you analyze the effectiveness of each campaign.
By examining the data, you can adjust accordingly to maximize the results. In doing so, you can generate a higher ROI through successful conversions. You can also avoid losing money on ineffective ads.