As a business, you must regularly come up with creative ways to get prospective customers’ attention. Now, more than ever, consumers are inundated by ads. You need to be on the lookout for the latest tips, tricks, and strategies to cut through the noise. By utilizing simple, effective tactics to help your business stand out from the crowd, you can improve your advertising efforts and better reach your target audience.
1. Know your business and your competition.
Take the time to understand your business and develop a deeper understanding of its "why." Why do you operate? What is it that sets your business apart and makes you a vital part of your customers' lives? What are you hoping to accomplish through your business operations?
Then, conduct a competitive analysis. A competitive analysis looks at who your competition is, what they offer, and what marketing strategies they use. With a solid competitive analysis, you can develop a better view of exactly where your business fits into your market and understand what sets you apart.
2. Determine your goals.
What are you trying to accomplish through your marketing efforts? Do you want to spread brand awareness or increase product sales? By fully identifying your goals, you can do a better job of creating marketing materials that support your marketing strategy. You can also do a better job of ensuring that you have the budget on hand to meet your marketing goals.
3. Identify your target audience.
Who is it that you are trying to reach with your marketing efforts? The more you know about them, the more you can target them.
Choose a few specific buyer personas that make up your target audience. A buyer persona should be a highly detailed persona within your target audience, broken down to be sure that you fully understand their specific needs. Choose a few buyer personas to focus on, rather than stretching yourself too thin trying to focus on all of them.
Then, post on sites your target audience will likely visit. Choose locations they already support and places they regularly visit to maximize the return on your advertising investment.
4. Develop your brand.
Consider how your brand is viewed and how you want people to view it. Imagine what you want them to associate with your business, then make sure it's part of your branding campaign. Put yourself in your target audience's shoes. Know who they are, what they need, and why they should choose your brand.
5. Become a blogger.
Blogging helps establish brand authority and build better SEO. Don't let your blogging fall through the cracks as you advance your marketing efforts. You may want to designate a lead blogger on your team or engage a group of people to rotate blogging duties within your organization. A blogging schedule can help keep your content current. Try having a monthly brainstorming session about blog topics or having one meeting to map it out each year, then adding and adjusting topics as you progress through each month.
6. Invest in ad retargeting.
Ad retargeting puts your brand back in front of consumers who have already connected with your business in the past. Often, those ads can offer the incentive your customers need to finish a purchase or add on an item they’ve shown interest in before.
7. Utilize reporting and analytics.
Test and track campaigns. You can't understand what you're doing right or wrong if you're not paying attention to the metrics. Your analytics will tell you how each campaign is performing and allow you to shape your future campaigns to meet the needs of your customers.
8. Use local SEO.
Focusing your efforts locally can help your business grow. Local SEO can attract customers in your immediate area that may not have known about you before their search online.
9. Try some low-cost advertising options.
You may want to try options like:
- Community events
- Customer referrals
- Online reviews
- Word-of-mouth
- Social media engagement
- Flyers
- Business cards
- Customer loyalty programs
- Trade shows and networking events
These relatively low-cost marketing opportunities can help significantly expand overall awareness of your business. Don't forget the importance of cause marketing initiatives! Cause marketing allows you to make a difference in your local community and helps your business stand out from the crowd at the same time.
10. Consider using a media partner.
Working with a media partner can help you cut through the noise and choose the marketing strategies that are best for your business. An effective media partner can help you determine who your target audience is and deploy tactics to reach them best when and where they spend their time. Your media partner can also help collect and review analytics so that you can optimize your campaigns.
Are you ready to take the steps toward an effective advertising strategy? Connect with an experienced media partner to enhance your marketing efforts and help your business succeed.
