It happens to the best of us; here you are, with this amazing product or service, and it’s just not getting the attention it deserves.
If you’re not making a connection with audiences, it’s time to take a step back and look at your company’s marketing strategy. The marketing strategy is the solid foundation of a marketing plan, which defines all marketing and advertising for your business. As General Sun Tzu states, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory—” so if you’re looking to increase your brand awareness, here are 5 foolproof ways to improve your marketing strategy:
1) Review
Take a look at your current marketing efforts and identify the problem areas, using an analytics tool to monitor which channels are performing well and which aren’t. A good example is Google Analytics, which reports your traffic, conversions to your site, and the ROI of your social media campaigns. Use this data to better understand and improve your strategy.
Similarly, check out how your competitors are doing by reaching out to your current customers. What do those competitors offer that your company doesn’t? Your customers will appreciate the concern, and in turn, you will have a means of receiving direct feedback.
2) Re-define
Do you know who your buyer personas are?
Buyer personas are researched-based representations of your ideal customer, and they will help you better understand the buyer’s decision behaviors. When you have insights into what your customers think about doing business with you, you will have more knowledge for re-creating your strategies.
It’s recommended to create 3 - 5 buyer personas, based on demographics, job, values, fears and goals. Hubspot has an awesome how-to page you can reference, which includes a persona template tool you can download to help get your started. With these personas, you can identify with your audience more and better solve their problems.
3) Align
Success is when marketing and sales (and ideally everyone!) have a clear and concise goal of what the company is working to accomplish. You might not be keen on the idea of holding more meetings, but it’s important to get on the same page with both your peers and your managers.
Set up a game plan that everyone is aware of, collaborate on buyer personas, revisit your current offers and focus on keeping customers happy.
4) Create Relevant and Quality Content
Using your buyer personas, define content that will appeal to your audiences. What will entice them to look at your website?
Creating content that can “tell a story” will make sure your audience can identify and make a connection with your brand. Blogs, customer reviews, and instructional videos and articles are good examples.
To help boost your content on search engines, use a Keyword tool (such as Moz) that tracks your SEO and social media presence. Remember, customers like consistency—create an execution plan with content dates and stick to it.
5) Analyze and Tweak Often
Now that your team has has revised the marketing strategy, make sure your efforts are actually worthwhile. Measure your content marketing ROI by utilizing Google Adwords or SpyFy. Always test you results, and continue to find and learn new ways to improve your efforts. Generating traffic from multiple channels (email, social media, display ads) so you’re not relying on a single source for leads, and tweak or regenerate your content every few months to maintain audience interests.
Hope this sheds some light on improving your marketing strategy. Remember, as with all things in life, it takes time to see success so don’t expect instant results. What are some interesting strategies your team has come up with? Leave us a comment and let us know!
