Some business leaders are hesitant to embrace digital marketing, believing it to be a complex and costly exercise that requires a complete overhaul of traditional processes. But this doesn’t have to be the case. You can effectively modernise your marketing with a few tweaks here and there. The key is to develop complimentary tactics that enhance your existing strategies and improve the way your business relates to consumers.
A recent article in Entrepreneur discusses four ways small and medium size businesses can update their marketing for today’s environment. Here are the first two:
1. Email marketing is about a lot more than email.
Sending a digital version of your company newsletter to the same list every month is not enough to differentiate you. Brands have to earn a place in every person’s overcrowded inbox, and this means providing value to them. Send infographics, relevant industry news, insights on the latest tech advances, free ebooks and any fresh content that will help your audience.
It’s also important to segment email lists. You can segment by demographics, number of purchases, past and potential customers and other qualifiers. Once lists are segmented, set up automated responses or drip campaigns to ensure the right people get messages at the right time. This can mean scheduling emails around a new product release, a big event or seasonality, but it can also be an automated email that goes to them when they don’t finish a purchase on your site (or set an appointment if that’s the call-to-action).
2. Digital and social platforms are not just billboards.
Business-to-business and business-to-consumer are still relevant ways to classify your business, but to remain relevant with communications, you should accept the fact it’s now human-to-human -- the purchaser is still a person, no matter what type of business you’re in. Simply being on social media isn’t enough, especially if that means someone in the company who is always on social media anyway posting whatever they think they should.
Every company needs to dedicate resources to forming a social media strategy that caters to their ideal audience. A strategy should include which platforms your brand should be on (and why), who will post to accounts using a set schedule and a regular review of analytics. Once you know what content is working (people are “liking” and clicking through your links), incorporate a social media ad strategy -- these can now be very targeted and great for reaching a new audience and driving sales.
As you can see, it doesn’t take much to modernise your business’ marketing. You can keep doing the same things, but ensure that you’re focused on providing value to the consumer, rather than on how you can benefit. For the two other tips, head to the Entrepreneur site to read the full article, ‘Get Out of the Dark Ages of Cold Calling and Business Cards. Modernise Your Marketing Now’.
Not sure how much modernising your marketing needs? Use our free marketing health check tool to see how your strategy measures up. It’s an Excel based exercise that takes you through the six key elements of ‘healthy’ digital marketing. Click the button below to get started.
