- Tried and tested ways you can market your business - February 26, 2020
- The importance of knowing your audience - February 26, 2020
- Marketing your business – Part 4 - February 26, 2020
In part 1 we covered what areas you need to focus on in order to be ahead of your competitors. The five areas that we covered were multi-channel attribution, how focusing on a single channel to bring in more customers is not enough. Next, take a closer look at the tools you currently use to analyse your marketing efforts and also planning your marketing activity for the upcoming year. How running your tests will help you shape your marketing activity and finally looking for guidance, by using information from your competitors save you time an resource. If you haven’t yet read the Marketing your business – Part 1, please click here.
In this article, we will be going into more depth about what different marketing channels you should be using now. There are two channels that I am going to cover and both have changed significantly over the past decade the first being social marketing and the second is email.
Facebook started its advertising through its site in 2007 but did not launch in the UK until much later. Initially, brands and online stores were sceptical about selling on FB this was because, in the early days, selling through social channels just did not work. This was due to the consumer having a different frame of mind when using the social channel. They want to see what their friends (sometimes enemies) are up to, to catch up with old classmates etc. they were not on the site to shop. So, what ended up happening was advertisers were receiving 1000’s of impressions but very few clicks and even lower conversions. Today that is no longer the case face book has continuously improved its advertising channel by making it easier for a brand and online stores to target specific users.
When it comes to email until Gmail came along, people had limited storage they were a lot more selective with the emails they kept. Today, with improvements in technology that no longer is the case. Now the main issues sellers have is the number of emails that received and trying to make your email stand out. If you ever wondered how many emails get sent every day, think about how many you received is it 10, 20, 100? Although we can’t be 100% accurate a Statista report 269 billion emails were sent in 2017 and that figure is rose to 350 billion in 2021.
So should you be advertising on social media and through email right now? The answer is YES, eMarketer has reported in the US 26% of adults surveyed said that they have visited a brands website or online store or purchased a service or product after they had received a promotional eMail. eMarketer also reported that in 2018 Adults spend on average 38 minutes a day on Facebook and 26 mins a day on Instagram. Another channel that has started to pick up a lot of traffic is podcasts. In the Edison Research’s Infinite Dial report it has been reported that 50% of Americans have listened to a podcast and almost a third (32%) listen monthly. This channel does have its challenges like creating a podcast can take up a lot more time but the benefits for those who venture down that past is that it starts to make you an authority within your field and people will have more trust when they buy through you.
So, where do you begin?
As mentioned in part 1 testing needs to continue, you will never really understand what content, message or image etc. resounds best with your customers until you test. You can learn something from every penny that you spend whether it is through Instagram or Facebook or the message in the email you have sent
Remember data is your friend
This year utilizing data will be key in deciding which direction your marketing will go. Data will tell you whether your best customer is a woman aged between 55-65 who like gardening or a millennial who enjoys films. Whoever your customer is, your data will show you. Data will help you target your customers that have left your sales funnel at a specific stage and if you have access to their email you can retarget them with a specific message.
Get personal
Personalisation is pivotal. Think about receiving an email that starts off with Dear customer thanks you for your purchase, sounds so impersonal. Mentioning your name, the product you brought immediately shows that this email is for specifically for you.
The same goes for social messaging I’m not saying you need to mention the customer’s name but you can make the message more personal to their needs. For example, if they have visited a specific page on your site it would be great to have a message that reflects that.
Bring your Data together
Once your ad campaigns and emails have been created make sure that you bring the data from both sources together. The best way is to use a marketing platform to view the data in one place. Google Analytics is suitable for most companies. The advantage is being able to understand what channels Affect each other. Does sending a mass email on Monday effect PPC performance on Wednesday? or is social activity helping increase organic searches for specific products? You may even find sending too many emails has a negative effect on your business. Whatever the outcome you will only know if you combine your data.
Conclusion
At Rutland Capital Partners we are continuously looking at ways to market our business, this article is an example of one of them. We also share posts on Linkedin as we know that the people we will do business with most likely have a LinkedIn profile. We also have determined that one of the marketing channels, that is vital to our business, is email and its something that has and is working well. So, no matter what your business is you will likely find someone who is interested through social and email marketing.
Rutland Capital Partners have assisted many businesses with finance or support to grow or help them, if selling is the best way forward, either way we would be happy to help you. Please get in contact with us if you would like to discuss further.
