Modern Businesses rely heavily on Digital Marketing these days. But amidst a plethora of marketing strategies & hacks, how do you figure out which one to adapt to your business? This is the biggest dilemma businesses face with their growth these days. There are simply too many options and a lesser emphasis on ‘why’ a certain Marketing Strategy drives more business growth compared to another.
In today’s article, I will discuss what marketing strategies are currently trending and how you can research and pick your favorite strategy, enjoying rapid business growth, with fewer headaches.
Setting the Foundations for Your Marketing Campaign
To start off, we need to set solid foundations for any digital marketing campaign. You cannot run into war without armor, ammo, weapons, and most importantly, tactics. In the same way, any digital marketing strategy you move forward with needs inherent conditions to work best.
In the context of business, you need stakeholder buy-in – Each stakeholder connected to your business needs to understand why you’re using social media or SEO, or Paid Advertising.
In a similar way, you need to understand the environment you operate in, your target audience and their preferences, as well as your resources and limitations. Once you get a clear idea of these, you can move forward into the research phase.
But before we dive into that, let’s talk about ‘Business Growth’ and how it connects with Marketing.
Business growth refers to the expansion of a company’s operations, whether that is through increasing revenue, expanding market share, or entering new markets. The previous era of Marketing was all product-centric and as such, there was very little marketing except for pushy sales made. However, customers, these days operate on a different wavelength, and as such marketing has become the most crucial piece to driving growth.
For instance, Digital Marketing helps businesses to raise awareness, build their brand, generate leads, and ultimately drive revenue.
Studies have found that companies that invest in marketing experience higher revenue growth compared to companies that do not prioritize marketing. But the question here is – How do I figure out which Marketing Strategy I should invest in?
The rest of the article will help you find the answer to this question.
Put Your Customers at the Forefront of Your Marketing Strategy
Let’s talk about the real truth – Your business is not the only one that needs marketing to grow. And in the same way, the problems you face are not unique to you either (at least in most cases). The question we need to answer here is ‘How Do I differentiate Myself then‘?
To answer that question, you first need to understand your target audience. Here are a few ways to create an ideal customer persona for your target audience:
- Study Your Competitors
- Send survey forms to your existing customer base
- Use the Internet to gather information
Understanding your target audience allows you to tailor your marketing efforts to their specific needs and preferences. This leads to more effective marketing campaigns that are more likely to resonate with potential customers. For a complete kicker on how to plan audience personas with a compelling brand story, you can read my article.
The most effective way to create a target audience is using Market Research. This involves gathering information about your target audience’s demographics, behavior, needs, and preferences. When you’re done finding out this information, you need to answer the following points:
- What does my target audience want?
- How can I promote my solution without being too salesy?
- In what way can I alter my promotions to cut through the noise?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you will have figured out 50% of the Marketing Strategy Dilemma.
A Brief Overview of the Most Popular Digital Marketing Strategies
Digital marketing is a powerful tool for driving business growth. With the rise of the internet and social media, businesses can now reach their target audience through a variety of digital channels, including search engines, social media, email marketing, and more.
Now let’s talk about some of the most popular Marketing Strategies out there:
Social Media Marketing:
As the name implies, Social Media focuses on using social media platforms to promote your business. Right now, we have a plethora of options to choose from – From Facebook to Tik Tok and many more! I’ve included the biggest platforms below and what kind of Marketing you can do on them:
- 2.96 Billion Monthly Users.
- The best platform to run paid marketing.
- Great support for business owners.
- 2.35 Billion Monthly Users.
- Great for creative brands, individuals, and anyone looking to establish a solid brand positioning.
- It has a more personal and 1-1 connection with your audience.
YouTube
- 2.68 Billion Monthly Users.
- Best if you want to use videos to market your business.
- Can be used in conjunction with Google Ads.
Tik Tok
- 1.53 Billion Monthly Users.
- Best for small businesses and businesses that are very niched down.
- Enormous potential for organic growth compared to the rest of the platforms.
Note: All figures above have been collected from Demand Sage
SEO:
SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’ and as the name implies, it’s all about promoting your business on search engines. However, it has a very clear distinction in the sense that SEO is a fully ‘organic strategy‘. That means that you can promote your business on Google or Bing without having to pay a single penny. Cool, right?
But that same benefit is also its biggest limitation. As a business owner, what would you prefer?
- To receive $10k in 5 Years?
- To receive $5k in 2 months?
Now that’s a straightforward answer for most businesses. We all prefer to have cash in right now instead of waiting a few years for it. However, with SEO, you would need to work for a long time before you can reap the rewards. As such, search engine optimization is a long-term business growth strategy.
However, if you do it and do it right, it will pay off more than its ‘Paid’ counterpart which is ‘Search Engine Marketing’.
So, if you’re a business looking for long-term growth, brand-building, and customer satisfaction, SEO is the way to go!
Content Marketing:
Content Marketing is one of the most popular Marketing Strategies right now. I’m also a Content Marketer primarily and I have very solid reasons for it.
For instance:
- It has both paid and organic elements to it.
- It is fully customer-centric.
- It works both in the long run and in the short term.
As the name implies, Content Marketing uses ‘the creation and distribution of content to establish brand awareness, and generate sales’. The content itself is not created randomly. Simply put, Content Marketing works in the way of a customer journey and uses content at each stage of the journey to get users to convert into paying customers.
Now these are just a dip in the water when it comes to the options already existing in the market. You can also watch out for other strategies like Growth Hacking, PR & Email Marketing, to begin with.
Hacking Your Way to Success: A Beginner’s Guide to Growth Hacking
Growth marketing and growth hacking are two approaches to marketing that prioritize experimentation and rapid iteration. These approaches are particularly effective for businesses looking to rapidly grow and scale their operations. We didn’t discuss this above as it deserves another section of its own.
Growth marketing involves testing and iterating on marketing strategies to identify the most effective tactics for driving growth. This approach is data-driven and focuses on using analytics to make informed decisions about which strategies to pursue.
The biggest benefit of Growth Hacking includes the rapid pace with which a business can grow. However, for this strategy to truly work, you need to have a small team of highly specialized individuals all of whom excel in very specific fields. For starters, you need highly talented media buyers, SEO Specialists, Email Marketers, Strategists as well as Designers.
And even then, success cannot be guaranteed without a Marketing Manager on top who understands how growth hacking ties in with overall business goals. This is one of the reasons why Growth Hacking isn’t easily implementable for most businesses. Getting the right team is the most crucial factor.
However, with some smart research and careful filtering, you can assemble a team of superheroes who will help you grow your business faster than any other Digital Marketing Strategy can!
Turning Data into Action: Leveraging Analytics to Optimize Your Marketing Strategy
At this stage, maybe you’ve figured out what strategy you want to go forward with and even started implementing some initial steps. The question for this section is – How do you find out if a campaign is successful or not?
To effectively use marketing to drive business growth, it is essential to measure and analyze marketing results. This allows businesses to identify which marketing strategies are working, and which are not, and make data-driven decisions about where to focus marketing efforts.
Finding the answer to the question here is not easy. There are simply too many metrics to keep track of and it can get quite difficult if you have multiple campaigns running concurrently. Here are some of the biggest metrics you should keep an eye on:
- Return on Investment: What you put in, and what you are getting back.
- ROAS: For businesses that run paid ads, this is the equivalent of the revenue you’re generating compared to the amount that you’re spending on running ads.
- CPC: Cost Per Acquisition (CPC) refers to how much you are paying to acquire ‘one customer’. The higher the CPC, the more you’re burning money.
For a complete overview of Digital Marketing Metrics, you can check out this article by Wrike.
Ready, Set, Grow: Take Action with These Marketing Strategies
In conclusion, marketing plays a crucial role in business growth, and with the right strategies and tactics, any small business can increase its customer base and revenue. By understanding the needs and preferences of your target audience, creating a strong brand identity, and utilizing various digital marketing channels, you can attract more customers and build long-term relationships with them. It is also essential to analyze and measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions.
As a digital marketing consultant, my goal is to help businesses of all sizes achieve their growth objectives through effective marketing strategies. I hope this article has provided valuable insights and actionable tips on how to leverage marketing for business growth. If you need help with your marketing efforts, feel free to contact me, and let’s discuss how we can work together to achieve your goals. Remember, with the right marketing strategies and tactics, the sky’s the limit for your business growth!