Can you believe we’re already in April? The year is passing by and we want to make sure you’re making the most of opportunities to grow your business if you’ve set up your corporation online! Here are 5 different ways you can use marketing to stay ahead of the competition the rest of the year.
#1: Content Marketing
It may sound basic, but most businesses don’t take photos or videos on a regular basis to show people what their products and services are. Nobody knows what you can do for them if you don’t share what you can do!
When you finish a project that a client is happy with, take pictures, videos, and collect testimonials whenever you can! Half the battle is building content creation and documentation into your work process.
Here are a couple different pieces of content you want to make build into your process. There are plenty of other ways to build content for your business, but these are some high priority ones you don’t want to miss.
Testimonials
People don’t care about how great you think you are, but they do care a lot about how you have helped people just like them and ways you may be able to help them solve their problems too! Ask your happy customers for reviews on Google, turn those into graphics and post on social media so people can see the good feedback you’re getting.
Talking-Head Videos
Take a smartphone and record one of your employees talking about a product or service you provide to your customers. Make it 30-60 seconds long and publish to social media. Don’t hide behind your computer. Put a face to your business and help explain what you offer to your clients!
Product Photos
Never underestimate the power of a great photo. A picture can communicate more about your product or service than thousands of words.
You don’t need a fancy camera. Just use your smartphone and edit directly on your phone to give people a visual representation of projects you’re working on, what they can buy from you, or events you’re having!
#2: Organic Social Media
“Organic social media is dead.” Or is it?
Even though you won’t see as many views on your content on Facebook and Instagram as you used to, your biggest fans and people that look you up online still want to see what you’re up to and what you can do for them!
Create a posting schedule and stick to it. It doesn’t have to be every day, but at least 3 times a week you should be publishing something that shows what people can get from working with you or buying your products.
And don’t limit yourself to one platform like Facebook. If you’ve already put the effort into making a post on one platform, repurpose that content across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, TikTok, and YouTube!
#3: Email Marketing
Some people think email marketing is outdated, but it’s still one of the best marketing tools for converting your past customers and prospects into new purchases and deals!
Think of email marketing like one more opportunity to send a push notification to your audience’s phones. Anytime you send out an email blast, whether you’ve got 100 people in your email list or 100,000+, that shows up as a notification on phones, computers, and other devices for people that have signed up for email communications from you.
You want to use this primarily as an educational tool. Show people what you’re capable of, give them tools they can benefit from, and give your advice on your particular area of service. Always give them an opportunity to book a call, buy products, or take the next step near the bottom of your emails, you don’t want to look desperate for sales and make 100% of your emails about new products people can buy. An educated audience is much more likely to buy from you, especially if you’re the one that’s doing the educating.
You can also use this to highlight 5-star reviews people have given your business, link out to your YouTube channel for people that want to spend more time engaging with your marketing, and show photos or your happy customers (with their permission of course).
#4: Search Engine Optimization
One of the most overlooked marketing opportunities in 2024 is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Even though people are increasingly buying products and services from social media, Google is still the primary search engine people use when they are looking to buy. These are your “highest-intent prospects” or those most ready to make the decision to work with you or one of your competitors.
There are some ways you can boost your “find-ability” on search with on-page SEO tactics, but Search Engine Optimization is a complicated process if you want to do it the right way. We recommend finding an SEO agency you can trust and having them build out a strategy that makes sense for your business. It may take 3-6 months for you to see meaningful results, but SEO is something that you can’t rush. Working with search engines to establish relevance takes time and effort on the part of your agency. You may want to check out a couple agencies before choosing one to work with. The wrong agency will waste your time and set you back from your SEO potential.
#5: Paid Advertising
Think you need to spend thousands of dollars a month on paid ads to make it worth your while? Think again!
Here are 3 campaign types you can set up right now that you only need to spend a couple hundred dollars a month to help move the needle for your business.
Website Retargeting
Ad platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn have tracking pixels and insight tags you can install on your website to help you follow site visitors around the web with your ads. And you can personalize these ads to only show up to people who visit specific pages of your site so you can make them more relevant to what people were looking for.
Social Retargeting
Organic social may not be getting the views it used to, but you can leverage ads to help you make the most of your audience! For every follower that sees a post that goes out, there are likely another 9 that don’t see it organically. You can create audiences to target people that already interact with your social accounts or follow you and pay to promote your existing content to make sure you stay in front of them.
Lookalike Campaigns
Ad platforms like Facebook have “Lookalike” tools to help you find more people that are similar to your existing followers and customers. Use this tool to build an audience that is likely to do business with you based on similar shopping habits and preferences.