By Bonnie

Posted on October 20, 2021

Top Marketing Strategies to Prompt Customer Action

Marketing is one of the most important investments for practically any type of business. Whether you have a small budget or need to secure business financing to see your campaign through, it’s a good idea to use the most effective marketing tactics to help meet your goals. The following marketing strategies are reliable, yet low-cost ways to help promote customer engagement and boost sales.

1. Utilize Email Marketing

Email marketing is an effective to build customer relationships, encourage repeat purchases, promote sales or notify subscribers of new items and services. If you need to build or grow your email list, it’s helpful to offer a sign-up bonus or discount. Additionally, effective email marketing generally provides some type of ongoing benefit to the customer, like fun or interesting content and occasional discounts and coupons.

In order to find out what works best for your email list, it’s helpful to know what subscribers want and how your email content performs. For example, if you find that a particular email performed well, aim to use the results as a benchmark as you continue running campaigns. Keep note of what works well and what needs work within your campaign to improve your content in the future. If you need help developing emails and tracking campaigns, use feature-rich email marketing software like Mailchimp or HubSpot.

2. Improve Your Website

If you don’t already have a business website, now is the time to create a high-quality online page for your business. While you may not have an online store, maintaining an up to date website is an essential step for any business. At a minimum, a business website should contain a business’s address and/or contact information, hours of operation, and a description of its services or listing of products.

In order to create or maintain an effective business website, regularly review the following areas of your site:

• Google My Business: Creating and maintaining a listing on Google My Business for physical business locations helps keep you in touch with customers in your area.
• Invest in Your Site SEO: Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, helps improve the quality of traffic your website receives by matching words and phrases that people search for on search engines like Google.
• Create a UX-focused Design: An effective business website should have simple navigation, clear calls to action (CTAs) and fast loading speed.
• Maintain a Blog: Content marketing, or regularly posting relevant blogs, can help you develop followers, increase brand awareness and contribute to your site’s SEO strategy.

3. Use Social Media to Find and Reach Customers

Social media is an effective platform to connect with customers and promote your business. Whether you promote your content or simply engage with customers, it’s a good idea to create business accounts on all or most of the major social media sites. Effective social media promotion strategies include:

• Staying Active: Post on a regular basis to help customers find you and develop brand recognition. You can also create targeted ads that promote your content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social platforms.
• Promoting Contests and Special Events: Social media contests are a great way to increase engagement and promote your business to a wider audience.
• Posting Video Content: If possible, develop a YouTube channel with brand-relevant content and tutorials to help increase awareness of your company, products or services.

4. Promote Yourself

Promoting yourself and becoming an industry expert is a great way to network and advertise your business. While it may not be a marketing strategy that all businesses will utilize, becoming a more visible business owner can help you develop valuable industry contacts and reach a broader customer base. The following suggestions can help you promote yourself as an entrepreneur and industry expert:

• Teach a Class: Use your skills to share knowledge, interact with your community and spread awareness of your business. Teaching an online class can also help you reach people you may not normally interact with in person.
• Offer Consulting Services: Depending on the nature of your business and/or personal background, you may be able to build your personal brand and market your company by providing consulting services or tutorials to customers and other business owners.
• Write an Expert Blog: Another way to promote yourself is to write a business-based blog, tutorial or guide. For best results, promote your content or look for industry-based sites to host your content.

5. Build a Marketing Partnership

Marketing partnerships, sometimes referred to as affiliate marketing, are shared commission agreements with other businesses for a particular marketing campaign. Typically, affiliate partnerships are best suited with an adjacent business. Although affiliate partnerships can vary widely, you can advertise your business on a website with more traffic, create a referral program with another business in your area or co-create content with a complementary brand. This type of marketing strategy is generally a low-cost way to reach new customers that you may not normally encounter while increasing profit.

Bonnie

Bonnie is a Chicago transplant who's committed to seeing the world on a dime. As an avid news junkie with an affinity for finance, she loves to help others do more with less.