Whether you are looking to grow your business online or want to improve your existing marketing strategy, you need to start somewhere. The truth is that you can’t please everyone, and trying to stay relevant online is a never-ending battle. That’s why focusing on providing value to your audience is so important. And the best way to do that is through online marketing.
Why Online Marketing
If you’re reading this, you’re either already aware of the growing influence of the internet on our daily lives or you’re soon going to become aware of it. According to Cisco Visual Networking, 2018 was the year of the internet of things, with more than 4.9 billion devicesconnected to the internet. That’s a 300% increase from 2016, and it’s really just the beginning.
With every technology breakthrough, comes a new set of opportunities and challenges. One of the biggest opportunities offered by the internet of things is internet marketing. And while you might think that online marketing is just about marketing through websites, mobile, and social media, that’s truly not the case. The internet of things makes it possible to connect every digital channel you can think of to every other digital channel you can think of, creating a massive amount of potential exposure.
Blogging
Blogs are a great way to connect with and engage with your audience, and when done right, can do so much to promote your business. But building a successful blog takes a lot of work, and a fairly hefty investment of both time and money. When you’re first starting out, the idea of building a blog can seem overwhelming. You might even think that you need to make a choice between blogging and being a business owner. You don’t!
You might consider creating a blog as a way to keep your entrepreneurial spirit alive while also providing content to attract and engage your ideal customers. Maybe you want to use blogging to gain credibility as an industry expert or to share your insights on industry news. Whatever your reason, building a blog is a solid choice, and one that you should seriously consider.
Viral Marketing
If you’re not familiar, viral marketing is marketing where the consumer inspires the desire to purchase the product or service through sharing their love for the product or service through social media platforms. Essentially, the goal is to inspire people to share the product or service to others to generate more revenue.
Think about the most successful businesses you’ve ever heard of. Chances are, they used viral marketing successfully to gain millions of users and to generate billions of dollars in revenue. Take a look at TikTok. The video platform is all the rage right now, but did you know that it was started as a viral marketing project? The story goes that creator/CEO/CTO/founder and President of TikTok, Anthony DiFranco, along with his cousin, Devin Cooper, decided to create a video platform that enabled users to share short-form videos.
Now, a year later, it’s one of the most popular apps globally, with over a billion downloads and 500 million active monthly users. And it’s gained such popularity because of its viral marketing campaign, which DiFranco describes as follows:
“Some of our biggest success stories have been completely organic. For example, we released a video of two guys cracking up. It wasn’t scripted, and it wasn’t part of any marketing plan. It just sort of happened. We decided to test the idea out, and lo and behold, the video went viral. It got millions of views and helped launch several businesses, including ours. And that’s exactly what we want to see more of; the success that comes directly from an honest, genuine attempt to be helpful and entertain.”
In other words, you don’t need to have a blog to be able to use viral marketing. You just need to have a creative mind and a way to entertain your audience.
Traditional Marketing
Odds are, you’re already doing traditional marketing. You’ve got a logo, and you use it everywhere, from ads on radio stations to billboards along the side of the road. Maybe you’ve even got some t-shirts or hoodies with the logo on them. In any case, the point is that you already have a brand identity you’re committed to, and you use that identity to market your product or service to the world.
For years, companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s successfully used traditional marketing to build their empires. They invested heavily in TV ads, creating memorable commercials that helped launch their products into stardom and helped establish them as household names.
Traditional marketing is actually very adaptable, and you can use it for almost any type of product or service. It just depends on what is available. If you want to market your plumbing service, you’re going to have to find a way to get your name out there. You can start by creating marketing flyers that you can distribute or post on social media platforms. Or, you can invest in phone cards and start making calls. The opportunities are endless!
Digital Marketing
If you’re looking to truly take your marketing to the next level, you should consider developing a holistic digital marketing strategy that incorporates all of the above. And that’s what you’ll find with most businesses these days. As you might imagine, creating a digital marketing strategy doesn’t have to be hard. You can literally map out your strategy using a tool like HubSpot, which can help you break down the essential components of a successful digital marketing strategy.
Regardless of whether you’re a B2C, B2B, or B2G business, you’re going to have to consider mobile, web, and social media marketing. And if you’re not sure where to start, your best option is to create a separate digital marketing team within your organization.
Steps to Building a Marketing Team
If you’re looking to take your marketing to the next level, you need to start by building a marketing team. A marketing team can help you get the word out about your product or service, generate sales, and develop valuable customer relationships. It is, therefore, a critical piece of the puzzle.
Depending on your resources and the type of business you have, you can either hire outside the box thinkers or task specific specialists to help you build your team. Regardless, you need to understand that investing in marketing is a long-term commitment and can take some time to show results.
Marketing Plan
To develop a solid marketing plan, you’re going to want to take some time to think about your current customers, potential customers, and most importantly, your competitors. By understanding your current situation, you can identify the weaknesses that your competitors are exploiting and take a proactive step to improve your position.
By creating a marketing plan, you can establish key ideas and metrics to guide your strategic marketing decisions, monitor your progress, and measure the effectiveness of your campaign. A well-planned marketing strategy can help you move forward with a clear idea of what to do and how to do it.
Strategic Marketing
Once you’ve established a solid foundation with a marketing plan, you can move onto the next stage, which is to implement the plan.
As the name suggests, this stage is all about executing your plan, which you can do efficiently with a tool like HubSpot. Once you’ve got your marketing strategy in place, you can coordinate your marketing efforts across all platforms and measure their impact. This stage is also about monitoring and adapting your strategy as needed to maximize its effectiveness.
The good news is that while creating a marketing plan and implementing it take some time, this stage is actually one of the easier ones. You can literally get up and running in under an hour, and you’ll be able to see the results of your efforts in no time. When combined with the power of automation, this stage can really help you keep your sanity while also generating impressive growth.
In conclusion, building a marketing team is a necessary step towards taking your marketing to the next level. Once you’ve got a team in place, you can start using strategy to plan your course of action. And with a little help from automation, you can keep up with all of this while also enjoying the benefits of a more relaxed life. Good luck out there.