Marketing strategy comprises many elements: content creation and distribution, social media, search engine optimization, etc. Chosen wisely, it can help your company become extremely popular or, otherwise, make it irrelevant and even shunned. One can get creative with their marketing efforts today only to lose it all tomorrow.
In this article, we've put together a list of companies the world admires. You can learn great marketing hacks from them and indulge yourself with the smartest tips and tricks of the marketing world!
So, what should you do to get people excited and see your products and services worshipped by the market?
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1. Give away free stuff
Downloadable freebies are a great way to attract people who don't know about your product or service yet. Give them something useful – and they will return. Offering free stuff in exchange for shares and subscriptions can drastically increase the number of your company's fans and add up to a million followers around the world (who wouldn't want that?). That’s why (and not out of altruism) successful companies connect with consumers through free and helpful resources.
Example:
GraphicBurger's website is a good marketing example. Raul Taciu, a graphic designer and its owner, treats the target audience with lavish gifts. While remaining a freebie-first website, GraphicBurger earns Raul thousands of dollars monthly via affiliate sales, display advertising and driving traffic to his account on CreativeMarket.
Colorlib is another example of the ways you can integrate free stuff into an effective marketing strategy. Free WordPress themes allowed it to build an impressive backlink profile and increase search traffic 30+ times in two years.
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2. Launch diverse products
Even the best reputation sometimes works against you. Growth of business may involve launching a new product that is unrelated to your main activity, just make sure you distance your new brand from the primary one.
Example:
Lexus is a brand owned by Toyota, but it doesn’t openly declare its ties to the famous Japanese company. That is because Lexus is being positioned as a premium brand, while Toyota is aimed at the mass market. This marketing trick allows Toyota Motor Corporation preserve the luxurious image of their top-end cars.
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3. Run blogs
Posting high quality content is also one of the fastest routes to the hearts and wallets of potential buyers. A media campaign built on killer content can make wonders to your search engine results. If your stuff gets published by other top bloggers too, they will link back to your website.
Example:
Hubspot has a polished content strategy. Its articles and posts can be viewed as separate products due to their quality and value. With 3 major categories, it covers the needs of a wide range of content marketers and other professionals.
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4. Create shareable content
Such content is hard to produce, but it can serve as a share-and link-magnet and cause a snowball effect on sales. How? You put together awesome content -> your visitors share it with their friends using social media buttons, their friends, in turn, can also share it...and so it goes. By combining reputable sources, stunning original images and easily scanable text structure, you can get your blog featured across all major social media platforms with just one article.
Example:
We at MonsterPost, have lots of such web triumphs to boast about. For example, this gallery of calligraphic fonts by Alex Bulat has become extremely popular on Pinterest with 80+ thousand repins. This collection of free resources for designers by Helga Moreno was one of the top posts in 2016 because it featured just about everything you can think of in terms of media resouces for freelancers.
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5. Collaborate
Small business owners should reach out to influential bloggers and other companies, even though they may compete in the niche, and get featured on their websites – either as a partner or guest contributor.
Example:
The ‘Intel Inside’ program brought Intel to the consumer market and gave it a reputation of a #1 microprocessor manufacturer for personal computers back in 1991. It brought the company into the top 10 list of the most powerful brands in the world.
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6. Encourage user-generated content
The best marketing strategy is to delegate content creation to someone who is interested in its high quality. In other words, your contributors should get something in return, be it backlinks to their websites, traffic or social recognition.
Example:
Any social network you lives off user generated content. This also applies to all online marketplaces and auctions, such as Amazon, eBay or Fiverr.
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7. Create Affiliate Programs
Another win-win tactics, particularly popular among top marketing and digital companies, is offering affiliate programs. As opposed to display advertising and other similar strategies, it involves no risks: affiliates pay a percentage of what they’ve actually earned and usually do their best to become profitable.
Example:
TemplateMonster Affiliate Program offers commission rates up to 50% per sale. Its participants can start earning by simply sharing a link containing their affiliate ID with the readers of their blogs or social media accounts.
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8. Be closer to young people
People trust brands that share their worldview. Keeping pace with the times is especially beneficial for brands that view millenials as their target audience. To capture the attention of young customers, you can start an Instagram campaign (just like CocaCola did it). But never use this account for business content, only for fun and trendy images.
Example:
Remember that video from 2012 with a guy performing a freefall from the stratosphere? The guy’s name is Felix Baumgartner, but most people will search this video on the web by the name of its sponsor – Red Bull.
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9. Provide free services
It’s very similar to “Give stuff for free” but only appropriate for larger companies with enough resources to provide good customer service free of charge. Providing free trials also falls into this category. If your services are good enough to get visitors addicted, some of them will shift to paid and/or expensive pricing plans.
Example:
Google is the world's most popular search engine and free service provider (we all use Search, Drive, Maps, Mail, YouTube, just to name a few). Most of its money comes from those who are ready to pay – AdWords and AdSense advertisers.
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10. Create a positive image for your brand
Sounds obvious, right? But what does it really mean? It means that you can use the word of mouth advertising by simply being awesome, caring for your customers and stuff, and not making a secret of it!
Example:
‘These guys are great. They provide best service, and their support is helpful and friendly. They regularly make donations and have even adopted an orphan baby badger – it lives in their office. By the way, the office looks like the Batcave, which is cool too. I’d love to work for them!’ .
Which company are they talking about? (Hint: it was already mentioned in the article)
Share your guesses in the comments below!