Samantha Long, content marketing manager at Yoma, discusses how you can market your startup online.
Marketing is all about building relationships with consumers to make your brand, products and services known, in order to grow your business.
Before you embark on any kind of marketing campaign, you need to do two things.
First, you must establish your marketing goals.
Any marketing campaign should have a clear purpose so establish your goals first. Whether you want to increase your revenues by 30%, drive sales volumes by 20% or secure 400 new email subscribers, setting targets now enables you to select a marketing mix that delivers results.
Secondly, make sure that you get to know your customers and your competitors
Successful marketing provokes a desirable consumer response. The best way to secure that response is by employing a mix of marketing tools that appeal to your target market.
Think about who your target market is. Where do they get their information from and what kind of marketing do they respond to?
By tailoring marketing campaigns to target the right people, in the right place and at the right time, you can secure the best possible return on your investment. No matter how small or niche your business, it’s always worth researching your competitors; rest assured they will be keeping a close eye on you!
Look at where and how they market their products or services and adapt your approach to differentiate yourselves from them and give your audience something unique.
Marketing approaches
Here’s a brief look at the pros and cons of the three most effective marketing approaches for SME’s:
Email Marketing
Email marketing acts as a cost and time efficient alternative to traditional methods like direct mail-outs, leaflets and print advertising.
Pros: It allows you to communicate directly with previous and potential customers with messages tailored for specific consumer groups as defined by anything from their age and location to their marital status or income, and one email can be send to thousands of individuals in seconds.
According to DBS Data, on average, every £1 spent on email marketing will generate a £26 return.
Cons: Results vary by industry and you need access to a database of email subscribers to write to.
Consumers are bombarded with emails daily so getting them to take notice of yours requires careful planning; get it wrong and consumers will quickly lose interest in your brand.
In a recent survey, 44% of respondents said they would be ‘turned-off’ by a company that sends too many emails, 37% felt that standardised emails lacked relevancy to their individual needs or preferences and 32% felt that ads were too small or poorly structured to interact with on a mobile device.
Social Media Marketing
With billions of users worldwide, it isn’t really a question of whether you ‘do’ social media marketing, but which social media marketing tools and platforms you build into your mix.
There are hundreds of social media outlets that all support different types of business and appeal to different consumer groups. The most popular ones include:
- Facebook and Twitter: Suitable for practically any B2C business, they’re popular with male and female consumers of any age although the biggest user group is adults aged 18-29.
They can be used to share links, advertise and communicate directly with groups defined by age, location and a range of other factors, making them equally suited to local and international businesses.
- Pinterest and Instagram: These platforms appeal predominantly to female consumers who are looking for visual content, making them perfect for showcasing fashion, food, travel and lifestyle brands.
- YouTube and Vimeo: These sites allow you to engage and entertain your customers with short videos, or give them insights into the creative processes behind your products and share tutorials that establish your businesses as knowledgeable and trustworthy.
- Google+ and LinkedIn: Ideal for B2B marketing, these platforms can be used to attract personnel and establish your commercial knowledge and industry authority.
Pros: Social media platforms are easily accessible, very low cost and can generate instant results.
Cons: Maintaining a social media account can be very time consuming. Creating content, updating posts and responding to comments successfully, requires strong creative, strategic and organisational skills.
Digital Marketing
Almost every digital marketing agency will include social media in their marketing services, but specific digital tools like SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) go beyond social platforms to promote your business online:
- SEO: Search Engine Optimisation is a marketing strategy that, through the careful use of on-screen wording and unseen data, can increase your visibility in the search results of Google, Bing and Yahoo! to help consumers find you.
- PPC: Pay-per-click is a form of advertising that, even on a very small budget, can be strategically used to promote your business online.
- Pros: PPC and SEO can dramatically increase consumer awareness of your products and services and drive sales, and in comparison with traditional forms of marketing it’s highly cost and time efficient.
- Cons: Like social media, SEO and PPC campaigns can be very time consuming to manage and executing them successfully requires some levels of digital and marketing expertise.
Regardless of which marketing mix you adopt, there are no simple formulas for success, it’s largely a process of trial and error, particularly if you plan to develop and manage campaigns yourself, so monitor the results carefully.
By assessing the effectiveness or your marketing in detail, you can fine-tune your approach to move towards achieving your goals and optimising the returns on your investment.