Relative marketing guides you through the best ways to identify and acquire new customers
Background
We are all looking for that extra revenue in these times, and sometimes those customers are closer to reach than you would think.
There are some quick tips that you can do as a business to boost your digital marketing presence without too much outlay of costs and time.
You’ve got your product and a shiny website. But how do you drive those customers to your site to generate extra leads and sales?
We have organised the business marketing tips in order of ease and cost to do, so start at the top and work your way done for a series of quick wins for your business to increase sales online!
Our Tips:
Google My Business
An often overlooked treasure trove of business marketing! A great tip is that if you are not using the Google My Business (GMB) tool fully, you could be missing out on local searches made by customers for your services.
The first thing you should check here is if everything is up to date. Are your opening hours correct? Have you listed all of your products and services on GMB?
A handy tip to completing your GMB account is to update your cards with information and sales. This is totally free so when a potential customer searches for your services they will see this card in the main local pack of the search.
Another handy tip is to ask for Google reviews from current and previous customers. There is a huge push for these during the current Covid-19 climate and there is a good reason for this. Google considers reviews a key driver for local ranking. Additionally, this creates trust for anyone looking at your company for the first time.
Social media
Social media channels are everywhere and it’s understandable to feel swamped by them all. This is why you need to know where your customers are in order to target the correct channels for selling.
Quick wins here to increase your sales is similar to the Google My Business tip, ensure all of the details on all of your profiles match. It seems obvious, but if there are any discrepancies it can quite often be viewed negatively.
This can be the same for an inactive channel. If you are researching a company for the first time, people will look at the social media elements as well as your website. If you are inactive on those then it can be a cause of concern.
It doesn’t take too much effort to start posting. You can use a website link to help as each platform will find a relevant image from the page and update the post for you. All you need to do is come up with the details of the offer or product on that page.
Facebook group
After you have updated all of your social media channels, a great way to engage further with your customers is to create a Facebook group. If you create a group and invite all of your existing and previous customers to it, you will begin to create your own advocate community.
The key to making this a success is to post regularly about industry news, products and solutions. You will be aiming to include everyone in the conversation and as more people interact, they will post in the group themselves. Especially if it's a group that offers valuable resources.
Referrals
Another quick win for you - reach out to your customer base and offer them discounts for referrals. It doesn't have to be much, everyone loves to be part of this, especially if they’re already advocates of your business.
This can be a very powerful tool and should be used to the full potential. You can reach out via email, or if you have a direct sales team, brief them on the new offer as they are speaking to customers.
Direct mail
If you have some budget to spend, getting creative with a direct mail campaign is a great way to find new customers.
Go old school and create some snazzy new leaflets and drop them in at your prospects home or business. It might take a bit of time but it's well worth the extra brand exposure. In the ever competing digital marketing sector, sometimes a direct mail campaign can cut through much more effectively!
Paid media
The very best way to increase your sales digitally is by a paid media campaign. There are a number of channels that are very effective at providing this for companies, amongst them you have Google ads, Facebook ads and Linkedin Ads.
Each of these has a different value proposition for you as a business, so you will need to know where to put your budget before diving in. If you have researched your customer base in the social media section then this is made a bit easier.
Facebook is great if you are looking for high numbers of leads at a good cost. The pitfalls here are that they may not be ready to buy right away, and may not be as high quality as Linkedin Ads. These are a great deal more expensive but can be targeted much better, and therefore are seen as very high-quality leads. Linkedin is more B2B, so bear that in mind whilst planning your paid campaign.
Another example is Google ads, these are very popular as they are easy to set up if you’ve got your audience and keywords correct. The people who click through to your website after seeing these ads are quite likely to convert.
Value-added content (downloads guides etc.)
This tactic might take a while longer and more effort than the previous suggestions, but it is certainly worthwhile.
It is based around providing your customers, both existing and potential, some value for them visiting your website and parting with their details if you have product guides or how-to guides for example.
If you compile these elements of content, brand them up and make them look fantastic, your customers will want to download and use them in their own businesses and lives. If there are elements of your products or services they may not have considered or know about even, informing your customers with a tip or trick will make them more likely to submit their details to you. This is a great way to help build a customer database you can feed into your CRM to maintain a sales presence.
Conclusion
If you are short on time and money, the first steps in this guide are great as they only require a small amount of time to implement. The paid strategies do require further research into your audiences keywords but give you the opportunity to expand your brand and reach a new set of customers.
If you ever need any assistance growing your sales pipeline and implementing a marketing strategy - give us a call at Relative Marketing now!
