Planning a marketing campaign that will give you temporary success is not the same thing as working towards future expansion. Attracting one-time buyers is one thing; however, making them come back and turning them into return customers might require a softer touch and a bit more subterfuge. Therefore, here are several tricks that will help you adjust your marketing strategy for future business growth.
Start blogging
Blogging is probably the best way to develop an online identity. Here, you will get a platform through which you can promote your corporate values, build a steady customer base and build meaningful relationships with your audience. Nonetheless, keep in mind that blogging is a time-consuming process. Namely, at the moment blogs with 3000 words or more are becoming the industry standard, whereas an average time for writing a blog has risen to 3 hours and 20 minutes. To put this in the right frame, in 2014, the average writing time was somewhere at 2 hours and 24 minutes. In other words, trying to squeeze in blogging into your already busy schedule might not be as simple as you expected.
Video tutorials
In order to gain an audience, especially a loyal audience, you need to offer something of value. It is a rule of the thumb that you should post one piece of self-promoting content for every six posts that add value to your audience. Before we carry on with this, we need to clearly define what this ‘value’ actually is. In truth, it is the content that entertains or educates your audience. The best way to bring the two together is to start making video tutorials. Apart from being a great way to gain subscribers, making video tutorials will also impact your sales by creating a loyal audience for your brand.
Think about growth early on
The next issue that simply has to be addressed is the issue of future marketing. For instance, companies that start out locally often try to appeal to this local audience by adding the name of the city or the suburb they’re from to the name of the business. For a while, this may give you some outstanding results; however, what happens when your company grows beyond its initial habitat? People from other cities and other parts of the country will immediately ask the question: “Do they do business here as well?” This will beyond doubt result in your losing business.
The problem goes even deeper, seeing as how replacing your company’s name once you’ve already established your brand isn’t a simple thing. Sure, changing the name of your website and social media profiles is not a difficult thing, however, it will make it hard for some of your old customers (or at least people who previously inquired about your services) to find you. Moreover, what are you going to do with all those promotional T-shirts, hats and customized umbrellas out there? Are they now completely useless? Needless to say, this is something you need to think about during the company registration process.
Create a highly visual brand
About 90 percent of all information that humans receive is visual. This is why you need to make sure your brand is a visual one, as well. What this means is that you should have corporate colors you’re going to stick with and a logo that you will never truly forsake. Sure, you can revamp it from time to time or even alter it slightly, but these deviations should never be too significant in order not to endanger your brand recognition potential.
Needless to say, this also helps with the issue we’ve discussed in the previous section. The best example of how this works can be seen through Coca-Cola’s Ramadan campaign a few years back. Even without the logo and a name tag, everyone could still recognize a can of Coke when they saw it.
Social marketing as a customer service
Another trend that some of the wildly successful brands are following is using their social media profiles as an unofficial customer service tool. There are two major reasons why this is so efficient.
First, it gives your clients a channel where they can directly communicate with your brand. This is especially important in the era when so many brands outsource their customer service internationally, seeing as how social media marketing is almost exclusively handled in-house.
The second advantage that this brings to the table is the issue of transparency. If you address the issue in the comment section, you’re proving that A) you have nothing to hide, B) you can acknowledge when you’re in the wrong and C) that you respect your customers.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, you need to keep in mind that the main goal of your marketing strategy is to move your brand forward as a whole. In turn, this will also drive your sales and help the expansion of your business. In order for this to work, you need to focus on issues like transparency, value and brand recognition. As Henry Ford once said – If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.
Emma is a digital marketer and blogger from Sydney. After getting a marketing degree she started working with Australian startups on business and marketing development. Emma writes for many relevant, industry related online publications and does a job of an Executive Editor at Bizzmark blog and a guest lecturer at Melbourne University. Interested in marketing, startups and latest business trends.
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