The Most Overlooked Marketing Strategies
If you're like us, you've probably seen countless articles about the power of digital marketing strategies, content marketing strategies, and omnichannel marketing strategies for success in the digital age. And hey, those articles are right—when you implement those strategies successfully, they will absolutely help your business succeed.
But it's important to remember that content marketing isn't the ONLY way to market your business, there are still some methods that generate a ton of traction that often get overlooked. Here are a few of our favorites!
Email Marketing
Email marketing is still relevant, and it will be for a long time.
More people use email than any other social media service. Email is also more effective with higher conversion rates than social media sites. It's no surprise; email is cheap, easy to use and highly customizable. You can measure the results of your campaigns and send targeted emails to your most loyal subscribers.
Email marketing helps you build brand awareness and retain customers.
Nontraditional Advertising
Nontraditional advertising is basically anything that isn't a traditional ad. While it can refer to any kind of message that promotes your product, the idea is to get someone's attention without them realizing they're being marketed to. The important thing to remember is that most nontraditional ads are more subtle than billboards, TV commercials and other explicit ads. In fact, some nontraditional advertising strategies are so subtle that you may not even recognize them as marketing at all.
Interactive Content
A lot has been said about interactive content and its benefits. But the truth is, it's still not being used as it should be. It's time to change that. It's time for you to discover how useful interactive content can be for your marketing efforts.
Interactive content is any kind of digital media that engages a user through interactions like filling out forms, playing games, answering questions or watching a video. Some examples are contests, surveys, quizzes, polls and calculators or tools.
The best thing about interactive content is that it allows users to interact with your brand in an active manner and get their mind off the sales pitch for a bit. It creates an environment where people feel free to engage with your brand, and doesn't feel pushy at all. You see, this isn't another article trying to sell anything other than the idea of using interactive content in your marketing strategy!
Amplify Customer Voices
You've probably heard the saying "a happy customer tells a friend, but an unhappy customer tells the world." The popularity of this quote is a testament to its truth. Customer voices are powerful—they're more likely to be trusted than a statement made by your company. And since customers are among your best brand advocates, it's up to you to amplify them.
The good news is that it's easier and more affordable than you think to amplify the voices of your loyal customers. All you need is some creativity and the following strategies:
1) Listen more. The more you listen, the more you'll hear. In fact, your ears are probably better at hearing what's going on in the world around you than your eyes and your mouth. And with the help of technology, that's getting easier all the time.
2) Learn from your customers' experiences. Your employees have probably heard or witnessed something that sounds like feedback but isn't yet — so ask them to look out for it and if they find anything interesting, collect it into a form that can be shared with the marketing team (or with a survey tool).
3) Respond to your customers' experiences. Customers are an important part of any company's bottom line — but too often, companies forget who they're actually talking to and how their experiences help or hurt their business.
Sponsorships and Partnerships
Sponsorships and partnerships might be the most underrated strategy on this list, but they pack a powerful punch when it comes to getting your brand out there. Sponsorships are more than just putting up a sign. They’re about building trust and loyalty around your brand.
When you sponsor an event, you’re showing social responsibility by supporting the community and its values. It’s also a unique opportunity for your audience to connect with you in a personal way. If you partner with the right companies, sponsorships can help you stand out from the crowd in crowded markets or give an edge to lesser-known brands that are looking to gain traction.
Image A/B testing
A/B testing is the process of running a controlled experiment between two versions of an advertisement with the goal of determining which one performs better in terms of conversion rate. For example, you want to test two different images (Image A vs. Image B) that are used within your Google Display ad. The version that performs better will be the winner and will automatically be served to visitors more often than the losing variation.
A/B testing is essential if you’re considering using Google Display ads because visuals have a crucial role in helping consumers make decisions about whether or not to click on an ad. Using generic stock images for display ads isn’t going to work anymore; these days, consumers are craving personalized content, so it’s important for your brand to step up its game when it comes to visual content marketing by customizing images for each campaign or even segmenting each audience group and tailoring specific campaigns based on location, behaviors, etc.
Image-based A/B testing is especially important because digital media continues to grow at a fast pace and creative assets are becoming more important than ever before as publishers continue to prioritize premium services over free offerings online and viewers upgrade their viewing experience by purchasing larger screens with higher resolutions.
Social Selling
Social selling is a staple of modern sales strategy, but it’s also one of the most overlooked sales strategies. That’s because people are intimidated by social media – but they don’t have to be! In fact, social selling is highly effective if you approach it right and use the right tools and tactics.
Social Media Automation
In the same way you can use an app like Slack to automate your messaging, there are tools that do the exact same for social media. These automation tools allow you to schedule social media posts into the future. So if you have a huge event coming up and want to generate more traffic on Twitter, you can schedule out tweets reminding people about it that week. The goal is to save time while still getting those marketing messages out there.
There's a lot of talk around the use of automation in social media these days with everyone having their own opinion on what's right or wrong. But I think it depends on how it's used. Automation tools shouldn't be used as a crutch, but as a tool in your marketing arsenal once everything else is done manually via actual human interaction (social media isn't called social networking because we're all robots).
You might be overlooking strategies that will work for you.
You might be thinking, “It’s all very well to tell me the strategies I’m missing out on, but I need to know how in the word do I use them. All this is great advice, but you haven't explained how we're supposed to make it happen!”
Well, here’s the thing. No one really knows what will work in terms of marketing strategies. It changes all the time with new technology and demographic shifts. So you have to be prepared for experimentation and change; you have to keep an open mind about every strategy that comes your way so you can cherry-pick ideas that will benefit your business. You don’t need to use every single marketing strategy out there—even if we listed fifty, some would still go unused by your industry or audience—but at least give each a chance before tossing it aside as nonsense or overly complicated.
If you need help figuring out how to best reach your customers, book your complimentary Strategy Session with us and we will be happy to help you put together a game plan!