Marketers get in touch with potential clients way before sales reps do. That does not mean marketers are able to sell a product, but it does mean that it is time to start working together in a clever win-win kind of way. Are you ready to rethink your marketing strategies and even boost your company’s marketing approach?
Choose a strategy & dare yourself to reevaluate on a regular base
Obviously this is not a strategy, but it sure is a good piece of advice. A successful selling process is impossible without a good strategy. Most starting companies fully focus on the development of their product or service first and due to lack of time and hands, skip the part in where they determine how to approach their potential clients. Other companies cling to their chosen strategy way too much. The most important advice to our clients: take time to choose a marketing (& sales) strategy that is a good fit for your business goals. Reevaluate your sales strategy on a regular base however. Quarterly for example. Dare yourself to stay flexible during the execution of your strategy and don’t be afraid to add alterations if necessary. This will help you to optimize your strategy which may lead to generating more business and closing new deals for your company!
Determine your goals the SMART way
Speaking about your business goals; if you have those clear, you’re on the right track! Don’t have them fully distilled yet? Start thinking about them right now. What is the spot your product or service should be in, let’s say, half a year from now? Write those goals down and make sure you:
- Keep your target audience in mind at all times
- Formulate SMART goals
As you might know, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Based. Setting SMART goals is a simple way to leave unclear goals behind and a huge step to achieving actually successful results. When you have specified your SMART business goals, it’s time to add a strategy to start accomplishing your goals.
Related: Why you should combine inbound marketing and outbound sales
3 savvy marketing strategies for small companies & starters
Once you have set your SMART business goals, it will be easier to determine which strategy matches the stage your start up is in right now. Remember that choosing a strategy is not a choice for life. It’s a choice for a strategy that matches the business goals you have set, and the time you choose to accomplish these goals. From our (sales) point of view, 3 of the savviest marketing strategies are:
- Paid Search Marketing
- Word of mouth marketing
- Inbound Marketing
Paid Search Marketing
Benefits: Immediate results, Instant first page exposure, Highly targeted ads
Cons: Running a PPC campaign can be a bit complex, Investments can turn out to be quite high when competing with direct competitors ranking for the same keywords as your company is, the ROI on consistent traffic can therefore turn out to be a bit disappointing.
Tip: Do not send traffic to your company’s homepage. Because your homepage is (probably) not a specific, targeted page for the product or service you are trying to sell, it is not the place your audience is expecting to ‘land on’ when clicking one of your ads. Offer them a specified Landing Page that meets their expectations.
Recommendation: When SEA is your strategy of choice, be smart and hire a professional to set up and manage your PPC campaign(s). It will save you time and money and you will get a positive experience with Paid Search Marketing instead of a frustration experience that will scare you away from it forever.
Word of mouth marketing
Platforms have changed, principle of the strategy (followers of your brand tell friends who tell friends who tell colleagues who tell other colleagues who tell soccer mates who will tell colleagues and so on) remains the same.
Benefits: Increases brand awareness & improves brand loyalty, More conversion opportunities (every post is a possibility to trigger your audience to convert), Improved Search Engine Rankings, Improved customer satisfaction.
Cons: Social Media Marketing should actually not be considered a strategy.
Tip: This former strategy deserves to be mentioned here. Why? As said; executing a 100% social strategy which is purely based on social media is not a very a good idea. Social media marketing is the perfect tool though to boost a specific campaign or spread a certain message to your target audience.
Recommendations: If you combine this tool with the perfect marketing approach for your start up and execute it the right way, you are on the right track to a killer strategy.
Inbound Marketing
Benefits: focuses fully on your target audience, enables you to reach this target audience and to turn visitors into serious prospects. Good fit for start ups with smaller budgets that wish to make an online impact and search for a way to compete against larger competitors with more money. Final, but MAYOR pro, there is plenty of automated marketing software available that will make your job a lot easier and less time consuming. Yay!
Cons: Setting up and executing your first inbound campaign can seem to take too much of your time when you first start with it and this might be a turnoff for instant-result-seekers. On the long term however, this strategy is going to make it seriously easy for you to perform your online marketing activities.
Tip: Don’t go for Inbound Marketing if you are looking for instant results. Inbound marketing is a process that requires regular and consistent creation of content to increase your visibility. Patience and persistence are key for this to work an before you see the results. See inbound as a marathon, not a sprint..
Recommendation: Contrary to Paid Search Marketing, inbound marketing is less challenging for Online Marketing newbies. Does that mean two-fingers-in-the-nose-simple? No. But entrepreneurs growing business from scratch and looking to get found online might want to dive into the subject and will probably not stop before that free inbound marketing certification is theirs.
Roll out that plan
Whatever marketing strategy you choose, the success of executing depends on the effort you put in. As said, once you choose a strategy, make sure you stick to it for the period of time you agreed with once setting those SMART goals. While doing so, keep in mind that you should:
- Break your goals down into a specific set of tasks
- Execute every task from start to finish
- Periodically review your progress and make adjustments if necessary
Accelerate your business growth
Nothing will accelerate the growth of your business more than a solid plan and a thorough execution. You now know how to kick start your start up online success. Go for it! Need direct help? Don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us a message. We’re happy to help you out.