No matter what your business, industry, product or service - the fundamentals of marketing remain the same.
Implementing the right marketing strategy is key and can be complicated. You know your product is superior – but how do you get your prospects/customers to agree? You’re getting your message out there – but how can you compete competently with a sea of competitors?
While creating a successful marketing strategy ultimately comes down to knowing the market, your audience, understanding their behaviour, and acting on it accordingly – there’s more that can be done to bring your brand to life and ensure your marketing works towards achieving your business goals.
In this article, we give you some concrete strategies that you can execute right away to get the marketing working for your business. Whether it’s getting more sales leads to your sales teams or getting your brand's key messages in line with your audience’s problems or needs – the following BEAM insights will help provide clarity into the murky waters of marketing.
Understanding Your Market
To compete well within your market, you need to understand your competition. To do this, we recommend doing a bit of digging to get a thorough understanding of your competitors' branding and marketing activities.
Here are three tactics you can do right now to see what your competitors are up to:
- Test Google Search - put yourself in the mind of your typical consumer or target audience and see where you stack up on Google. Test your keywords or services and see what terms your competitors are ranking for. If your competitors are showing up ahead of you, then you know it’s time to do something about your ranking using SEO or Adwords.
- Inspect Social Media - check out what platforms your competitors use, the frequency they are posting, and what content they’re creating. Most importantly, you should note which posts are gaining the most amount of traction to get a better insight into what your target audience responds to.
- Use SEM Rush or other like technology - These platforms allow you access information like the level of website traffic your competitors are receiving. Not only that, you can see where the traffic is coming from, what keywords they’re using, and much more!
Having a Point of Difference.
Being unique is crucial. You need to ask yourself “how is my business different from the rest?” Your point of difference will be the reason why people choose your brand over another. People opt for Apple for their innovation and intuitive product design, just like people rush to McDonald's because of their fast service and value for money.
Once you identify what it is your business or brand can offer that’s different from the rest, it opens up a world of opportunities when it comes to marketing your product or service. By knowing your competitor’s branding and marketing and applying an assessment of how your brand stacks up against them, clearer strategic direction is possible for brand differentiation. This then enables your brand/business to differentiate by clearly communicating its difference and applying marketing tactics to out-perform competitors.Knowing Your Customers
When establishing your marketing strategies, you’ll need to know who your target customers are and match your product or service to best meet their needs. Businesses across all sectors and at every level, are taking steps to understand customer needs and meet them to tailor solutions, communicate effectively and align with their mission and goals.
Here are some worthwhile practices to best meet your customers needs and build stronger relationships with them:
- Build Customer Profiles - Consider location, age, gender, job functions, spending habits, interests and pain points of your target audience. With this information, you will then understand how to attract and retain them as customers.
- Mapping Your Customer Journey - This includes mapping out the multiple phases and touch points the customer goes through, right from first time buyer to loyal customers. It helps you to identify particular pain points and timing opportunities to streamline communication methods.
- Be consistent in customer communication - Focus on communicating customer solutions that talk to your customer's pain points in a tone that suits your ideal customer. Keep your messaging engaging, consistent and in line with your brand’s tone of voice.
Having a Strong Brand
Your brand is the cornerstone of your marketing. It’s what elevates your brand/business in the hearts and minds of customers, while acting as the bedrock from which your brand development and ongoing marketing is forged.
Successful brands aren’t built solely upon a catchy graphic or slogan however. They are created and evolve with a well-defined brand strategy, a clear point of difference, a purpose, and being able to consistently address your customer’s needs and aspirations. Being strategic with your brand development is a surefire way of creating more meaningful connections with audiences, and increasing your chances of turning them into loyal customers.
Rebranding your business is sometimes necessary and all great brands have needed to modernise and evolve over time. Whether you feel your brand no longer reflects who your company is today, or you simply want to focus your message to a different audience – a rebrand might be exactly what your business needs to inject new life into your business.Be Active And Integrate all Marketing
Marketing that is integrated gives your brand the maximum reach, engagement and impact possible. Having unified communications and advertising across all available channels is one of the best marketing strategies available.
This not only leads to increased brand awareness, but greater memorability and impact and offers your brand more punch and your budget more bang! A properly integrated marketing campaign can turn converted sales from 4% to 40% !
Marketing to Sales Systems
Sales leads are the lifeblood of any business. And to grow, your business needs a steady stream of new customer leads. Without a reliable and repeatable system for identifying and maintaining every possible opportunity, business’s struggle to generate growth.
Ensuring your lead generation & sales conversion ratio is accurately measured and meets your sales goals is essential to any successful business and where Marketing should be made accountable to business owners and Sales & Marketing Managers.
Consider using a CRM system like Hubspot to ensure your Marketing is feeding your Sales team sales leads and educate your teams to use the power of CRM’s for sales nurturing and effective conversions.
Make your Marketing Accountable
“Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed” – Analytical Marketing Leader, Dan Zarella.
If you want your brand to thrive and beat your competitors, then you need accountable marketing.
Using the latest technologies available, BEAM constantly measures and reports to our client’s the results of their digital activities. Our measurement tools track and report on:
- Website traffic & performance including e-commerce
- E-Communication's engagement results (e-newsletters & content marketing)
- Adword campaigns
- Social media communications
- Ad Campaign performance
- Lead generation
- Competitor intelligence & market insights
Make sure your team or Marketing agency is providing monthly results so you can track ‘Marketing to Sales’ performance and a return-on-investment for your marketing spend.
Refine & Optimise
Focus more on what works and don’t be afraid to change what is not. Not getting enough leads? Chances are, there are holes somewhere in your process. Once you fill those, marketing and sales results will increase.
Get In Touch With BEAM Today
For all your marketing needs, from marketing plans to marketing teams, BEAM offers a full breadth of services necessary to boost your overall marketing and sales performance.
We are a full-service, sales-focussed Marketing and Branding Agency – driven to achieve your business results. All marketing plans, activities and creativity are founded on thorough strategy and are underpinned by accountable practices to ensure business success and growth.
Get in touch today via email or contact us at 1300 099 795.