When using a marketing strategy, it is keenly important to make an honest assessment of a company's needs. There are many choices available in marketing today, but each must be evaluated for the practical use and application that it offers any business. In reality, there is no definite answer to the question of what is the best marketing strategy for all business models. In fact, such assumptions are what get many businesses into trouble during the first few years, so do not allow your company to fall into ruts or singularly narrow viewpoints on marketing.
Always Know Your Playing Field
The key to top level marketing strategies is to know your playing field. Know all of the best and practical options for marketing your business, then implement them. Yet, always be aware of the bigger picture and be willing to try something different, if necessities or opportunities present themselves.
Making good choices often requires a more complex arrangement based on a particular market. Finding the best mix of potential and probable tactics should be based on a number of key factors. Of all the factors, most company money is spent on marketing activities successfully increase the ROI
, because return on investment is the goal.
Although the bigger a company is the more this decision making process changes. ROI is less important to big companies, than are branding and advertising. Other investments may be given higher priority, such as recruitment and education. Whatever the goals for a particular company, it must be able to regroup itself at any point and continue to be active in promoting itself. This means marketing, something that becomes a staple of the work necessary to build a successful company.
A Complete Checklist For Online and Media Marketing
Since marketing is handled by all different levels of the company structure, it is of utmost importance to have a checklist for online and media marketing purposes. All the departments involved with company marketing must coordinate by this checklist so that their work can focus on details and complete necessary deadlines to facilitate a good marketing campaign strategy.
Here is a complete checklist of avenues for online and media marketing campaigns. Some may be useful, practical or cost effective. Some maybe tailor suited to your particular niche marketing needs, but all can be utilized to increase ROI, traffic, customers and clients.
Branding Awareness
This is truly the first step toward successful marketing. The branding of companies and their products influences every other factor of the marketing process. All ill branded product will face challenges that overshadow the rest of the campaign, so know the product or corporate brand, so that it can utilized in making the strongest impact on consumers, clients and whatever the associated audience is for it. The strength of niche market branding is a prime example of how powerful this factor can be.
Niche Marketing Options
When a product or company holds a niche market successfully, it benefits the structure of the entire business. Being able to count on a niche market means regular capital for investments, a guaranteed sales base of interested customers, and allows business decisions to be successfully guided by the market. Never let a niche market angle be lost, especially for smaller businesses that often rely on niches to stay in the red. Explore options like regional advertising, newsletters, online boards, forum posting and back linking of websites to grow or expand your current niche marketing success.
Online Public Relations
This is the process of generating media presence, usually from online outlets so that a company can increase traffic and reinforce branding. Such media influence can be a bit expensive, so this is often reserved for well-established companies. In any case, having a good online public relations campaign is beneficial, particularly if the main product is an idea, politics or a charitable organization. These type public campaigns benefit from the exposure and the media repetition of the branding level being used.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
A relatively recent heavy hitter in modern marketing is social media marketing or SMM. Putting an advertising campaign live on the social networks will get a product or idea talked about like no other medium. SMM is the fastest growing form of active content advertising available today. Although well engineered SMM campaigns need attention to detail, constant updating, and continual content creation to be successful. All online businesses need to focus a good portion of their advertising budget on social media, but the costs are lower than most other media out there today.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is the process by which ranking is earned on the major search engines, based on individually generated organic results. Search engine marketing or SEO is considered to be essential for online advertising success. It includes a combination of keyword research, link building, on page optimization techniques, and sometimes a little black hat knows how. Once considered less than legitimate, SEO has proven itself to be a key factor in all online and media marketing strategies.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
This is the process of improving pathways from landing to conversion for campaign ads or other website marketing tools. It is generally used to increase leads, sign ups, and conversion of visiting traffic into paying customers. Examples of CRO are split tests, multivariate testing, click-through-rate improvements, and simplifications to purchase processing. Many marketing methods overlap into the realm of CRO techniques.
Email Marketing and Affiliate Marketing
Both of these are utilized to increase ROI when used in tandem with other strong online marketing formulas. Email marketing allows for fast and cost effective market influencing, because of this it is a favorite choice of scams, but can be used with ethical standards. Affiliate marketing is also popular for increasing overall ROI but allows for networking with the relative and associated branded companies, products, client and customer groupings. Both styles are still relative in the online media marketing of products or services in the information age.
Display Advertising and Viral Content Campaigns
Banner ads are considered a top way to get traffic to websites. The banner brings a new customer to the website and the longer they stay, the more likely they are to purchase something or subscribe to a service. If the business website contains an active viral piece of content, it will generate repeat visitations by one or more customers. Viral content campaigns can generate years worth of free traffic if they are put together with the right display advertising or with a website that is well branded. Display ads never stop being a viable resource for online marketing.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
If trying to generate traffic or continual alternative revenue streams, this is a good form of advertising to consider. Pay-per-click advertising or PPC can be place on any website, no matter the complexity or lack there of on a given web page. It is quickly ready to implement, usually only requiring directing ads toward a webpage, or copy pasting the necessary code into the HTML design. PPC is a favorite to make a small budget go further, it also can generate regular revenues for small website companies.
Direct Marketing
Although less widely utilized today, direct marketing is still going strong. Smaller businesses or ones reliant on localized niche markets still greatly benefit from a direct market mailer. The costs are more or less break even unless the advertising component has a strong ROI, such as coupons allow for as a printed incentive.
Radio and Stream Channels
Advertising on radio and some streaming channels are available cheaper than most people think. The costs of audio advertising production are much less, because of technologies that are available to the independent studio. Engineering a marketing campaign via local radio stations can be even more lucrative if the niche market is a dominant part of a company advertising budget.
Mobile and Telemarketing Campaigns
Mobile campaigns are really a part of any online promotional advertising, but there is still the telephonic component many companies neglect today. Like radio promotion, the localized phone bank or telemarketing service is a fairly cheap medium for getting the word out there. Large companies still use telemarketing, simply because it reaches someone directly and can be very successful with the right product, like political campaigning or getting people to switch telephone brands.
Television and Media Advertising
Always consider television and media advertising campaigns, despite the greater costs national TV ads might cost. At the regional level, TV ads are a great tool and can be aimed at specific demographic groups much easier than other advertising. Plus TV ads are a quick way of getting people to remember a brand name, so it can spread from one person to another rapidly. The memorable jingle or TV commercial has the impact on whole demographic sections of a national area, sometimes in days or less. Keep television advertising in mind, when checking off your possible marketing options.
Word of Mouth
Never let it be forgotten that what people say about your company, gets around quick. As essential as branding is to the success of a corporate entity, word of mouth is the equivalent for the local business. On a grander scale, word of mouth advertising ends up being a very important factor in judging the success of a marketing campaign. This is why demographics are still gathered by telephone bank, focus groups, and marketing research services.
What customers think of a product or company is going to reach at least 20 other people individually, so the numbers add up fast. This is true within an office or another internal working environment. So realize the power generated through word of mouth advertising, and conduct your business accordingly, but have this on your checklist to remind yourself.
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