The market is one scarce resource that every entrepreneur wants to always have more of its share. As a forward-thinking entrepreneur, how do you break frontiers and capture the market without implementing the best of marketing strategies? Impossible.
For the entrepreneur looking for a way to increase revenue and optimize its brand, marketing is a key component. Not only is marketing a must-have for promoting your products or services, but it is key to optimizing your business’ overall success.
Whether you’re peddling products, services or information, getting the word out there and finding a voice in the marketplace has become increasingly critical. However, without the right marketing strategies to fuel your growth, churning a profit and staying afloat in the marketplace will be dead on arrival.
See Also: How to write a growth plan for your business.
Identifying the right strategies to market your business is the challenge. The big questions are; how do you effectively get your message to the right audience? How do you boost visibility and increase sales while keeping your sales funnel full?
With so many distractions in the world and a lot of attention-grabbing gimmicks in the market place, you need some marketing strategies as an entrepreneur in whatever industry you operate.
See Also: B2B Digital marketing strategies the businesses need to explore.
10 Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business
A marketing strategy is a series of steps you take to engage your leads and customers — ultimately guiding them to a purchase decision.
1.) Know Your Audience
I know this first strategic marketing rule is beginning to sound like a cliche. However, a key mistake is thinking that “anyone or everyone” is your buyer.
In as much as larger companies may be able to appeal to a wide market, however, “the riches are in the niches” for a reason. A niche market is where you’ll have the most leverage as a small business. You need to develop a niche and appeal to buyers within your niche market. Also, you must understand their pains, problems, triggering events, and priorities.
Knowing their buying behavior and understanding other behavioral patterns will help in knowing your market properly as well as helping in your marketing strategies. Craft messages that align with these patterns and also create a buyer persona to simulate the sales process.
See Also: 100 Profitable business ideas to start now for aspiring entrepreneurs and investors.
2.) Value Proposition
A value proposition that’s in sync with your target market is a marketing strategy. What are you bringing to the table? The standout factor of your brand is what helps your marketing strategy.
More so, this is the difference between you and your competition, and also the reason why a buyer would be compelled to patronize your brand. This is what will differentiate you from others in your market. In this lies your strength and the least you can do is to leverage it and suck out the juice of your value. It’s important that you find creative ways to constantly communicate your value proposition to your target market.
See Also: Retail business ideas to start now with low investment for aspiring entrepreneurs.
3.) Social Media Marketing
One of the lead-generating marketing strategies in this digital world is social media marketing. If done properly, it expands your sales funnel and helps you close deals.
Nevertheless, you could be walking on eggshells if you don’t use this marketing channel strategically. Some of the most popular social media sites include Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. They all have millions of users flocking to their website every day. This can offer your business more marketing opportunities.
It is advisable to start out on only one or two social media platforms to avoid being overwhelmed because it requires a lot of work. Don’t spam your social media pages with sales pitches. Provide valuable content that’s relatable to your audience. Be human and civil.
See Also: Social media business ideas to start now for aspiring entrepreneurs.
4.) Email Marketing
Email marketing has stood the test of time and has proven itself right from the dot-com era. You can still deploy your email marketing strategy through your newsletter or industry-based content.
An email marketing campaign is important for all businesses, no matter the size or niche. You want to make your e-mail newsletters easy to read. Do stay connected to your customers, by using your e-mail marketing campaign to deliver educational content, up-sell, and send promotions.
5.) Content Marketing
In this digital world, content marketing is king and it’s not going away anytime soon. Your customers want to see, read, and listen to the things that attract their attention.
To develop a formidable online following, you need to create content that satisfies the wants and needs of your audience. This could come in the form of weekly blog posts, monthly newsletters, or periodical videos. Since you already know what your customers want, you can tailor your content to them.
6.) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
One of the best marketing strategies for entrepreneurs is search engine optimization (SEO). It’s a way of optimizing your website structure and content to be in sync with your brand, especially when customers search for relevant keywords on search engines.
These relevant keywords if well embedded in your content, will increase your ranking on Google when customers search for things relating to your industry. More so, the higher you rank on Google, the more opportunities you will have to drive new traffic to your site.
7.) Create A Website
It is 2020, and I need not say much about how important a website is to your brand as an entrepreneur. It is one of the very good marketing strategy tools of the 21st century.
A website is your online office where people visit to get information about your business. Your website should be created in a way that prospective customers can navigate easily. Also, it should be optimised for SEO.
See Also: Seven things you need to know before you build a website.
8.) Co-Branding and Affinity Marketing
A partnership between two organizations that have common interests and audiences is called co-branding or affinity marketing. This is a way of complementing someone else’s weakness with your strength and vice versa.
Co-branding or affinity marketing refers to a partnership between two organizations that have common interests and audiences. They aren’t direct competitors, so they don’t stand to lose leads to their partners, but they gain access to each others’ followers.
Affinity marketing can also involve co-developed products. You could partner with another entrepreneur and create a course together. This will help you experience increased sales because you’re pooling your audiences.
See Also: How to start and succeed in affiliate marketing.
9.) Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising:
Advertising is indeed a major when planning your marketing strategies. You must keep preaching the gospel of what you do. A pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a type of online ad model that allows small businesses to display their ads to people searching online for relevant products and services.
Pay-per-click works just like it sounds – you pay each time a consumer clicks on your ad content. Though Facebook and other ad platforms use the pay-per-click model, we are going to focus on PPC ads that are displayed on Google and other search engines.
The way it works, advertisers have to bid on certain keywords that are relevant to their product or service offering. The search engine uses an algorithm to determine which of the ads shows up.
10.) Earned Media/PR
Some entrepreneurs outsource their marketing strategies to media companies and agencies while some do it in-house. There’s branded media, paid media and earned media.
Branded media is media that your company produces for the purposes of informing, entertaining, and engaging your audiences.
Paid media refers to any form of advertising that requires an exchange of funds. Earned media, on the other hand, is free exposure, typically via public relations. It might include a mention in a newspaper, magazine, or blog. It could also include brand ambassadors who spread the word about your courses without any incentive to do so.
See Also: Educational business ideas to start now for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Conclusion:
Finding and using different types of marketing strategies make your brand stronger. You have better chances of converting your prospects to customers when you employ the right marketing strategy.
These marketing strategies we have listed are sure to yield useful results when done right. Marketing is a lifestyle for the entrepreneur who wants to be successful. It’s not an icing in the cake, it is the cake.
Which of these marketing strategies have you used before? Which do you think will work best for you? We will like to hear your thought in comments. If you find this content useful, please share it with your audience.
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