Anyone else a little tired of the gloom. Not the weather, bloody hell the UK is WINNING at summer at the moment. And I’m LOOVING IT!
No, no. I’m talking about the news – and I don’t even watch it!
So I wanted to talk to you about marketing. Cause I feel that marketing is always the first thing to get binned when it comes to tightening budgets. Which is completely backwards, because you’re cutting off the chance to get more customers, which can only benefit the business, right???
Reasons to keep marketing:
Targeted Audience Engagement: Marketing allows you to identify and target specific customer segments that are most likely to be interested in your product or service. By creating tailored marketing campaigns, you can engage with your target audience directly, increasing the chances of converting them into customers.
Lead Generation: Marketing activities, such as content marketing, social media campaigns, and email marketing, help generate leads for your sales funnel. By offering valuable content and incentives, you can attract potential customers, capture their contact information, and guide them through the sales funnel.
Nurturing Customer Relationships: A sales funnel provides a structured framework for nurturing relationships with your leads. By implementing marketing automation tools, you can send personalized and timely messages to your leads, delivering relevant information, addressing their pain points, and building trust. This consistent communication helps to cultivate strong relationships and increases the likelihood of conversion.
Increased Conversion Rates: The purpose of a sales funnel is to guide potential customers through each stage of the buying process, from awareness to consideration to purchase. By using marketing techniques to educate, inform, and persuade your leads, you can significantly increase your conversion rates. A well-optimized sales funnel combined with effective marketing strategies can lead to higher sales and revenue.
Improved Customer Retention: Marketing doesn’t end after a customer makes a purchase. It plays a vital role in customer retention and fostering loyalty. By implementing post-purchase marketing activities, such as follow-up emails, personalized recommendations, and loyalty programs, you can encourage repeat purchases and turn satisfied customers into brand advocates, leading to long-term success.
Remember that the effectiveness of your marketing efforts depends on various factors, such as understanding your target audience, creating compelling content, optimizing your sales funnel, and continuously analysing and refining your strategies based on data-driven insights.
the marketing tips!
Know your audience: who are you selling to? What are they struggling with that you can help them with? Knowing this can help you talk directly to them and help them to hear you over the endless din that is online marketing!
Where do they hang out: You know who they are. You know their problems, now where do you find them? It’s worth spending a day or so just brainstorming the clients you want to work with, their 3 main problems (that you can fix!) and where they go for information. Is it LinkedIn? Is it Facebook?
Leverage email marketing: Always make sure you get your audiences permission and email address. Chatting to people without the fear of algo’s and fear of being locked out of your account (real social media pains) aren’t there with email marketing. It’s my fave way to market. If you’re not doing it – why not?
Use a web funnel to speed up the buying process: OK, you’re marketing, you’re talking to people (sometimes even in real life!!!) and now we need to get people into and through your funnel. Which is just the buying process, so don’t worry. A funnel is usually a set of web pages, strategically laid out to take your customers on a journey and make the process easier and simpler for everyone (you AND them).
Improved Customer Retention: Remember that an existing client is cheaper to acquire than a new one. And if they’re happy, you’ll have a lot less work to do! So make sure you have things in place like referral and loyalty schemes and also make sure you’re keeping in touch with them through emails!
- BONUS TIP: For heavens sake ask for reviews!!! It’s the cheapest way to market your business and help where you appear on Google. We have a tool right here in the Web Architects Tool Kit that can automate the whole thing for you, its just a click of a button and it sends out an email asking your customer for their thoughts on your service. It also has a reputation management side that means that if any dodgy reviews come in from say, a competitor, you can automatically flag it with Google and rectify it.