A marketing strategy is a business’s overall game plan to reach prospective consumers and turn them into customers of the products or services it provides. Investing in a marketing strategy takes a lot of money and needs proper planning.
To ensure that you’re not throwing money down the drain, consider the following strategies that most entrepreneurs overlook:
1. Knowing Your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) Rate
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is a marketing metric that is used to measure the total cost to acquire a single paying customer for a campaign or marketing channel. It is an important measurement for marketing success and a way for businesses to determine if their investment in a certain marketing channel is providing them with a maximum ROI.
Make sure you know your current CPA and test different methods of acquiring customers or users. Using small test budgets and testing different tactics that are large enough to have an accurate sample size will help you find what works for you.
2. Raising Your Conversion Rate
Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website out of the total number of visitors that complete a desired goal (a conversion). A high conversion rate also indicates a successful marketing and web design. It means people want what you’re offering and are able to get it easily too.
Raise your conversion rate by looking at the quality of traffic you are receiving, your product, or your web design to grow your business.
3. Having An Appropriate Funnel Approach
Top funnel approaches such as PR and influencer marketing are helpful in sending new people to your site. But first, you have to know your conversion rate as well as a product that sells. This approach is also fit for those who have already optimised the bottom of the funnel.
Bottom of the funnel approaches will help increase your renewal rate and bring in repeat customers. Top of the funnel and bottom of the funnel approaches use different strategies so before shelling out money for marketing, make sure you know which approach you have to invest in to hit your goals.
4. Proper Pricing of Long Term Advertisements
Long term marketing methods, such as PR and influencer marketing can’t be priced like short-term advertisements. They have a higher level of engagement than an ad that may or may not have been viewed. They can give you additional value such as shares on social media, discussions, SEO, and increased brand recognition. They are also forever accessible.
You can put a price tag on each piece of media or action, such as a Facebook share being valued at $5, and an organic site visit through the SEO of that content as $10. By calculating total media value rather than looking solely at impressions, you can better determine if your budget will go to good use.
5. Performing A/B Testing
A/B testing is a user experience research methodology consisting of a randomized experiment with two variants, A and B. You can use it to compare two versions of a web page, email, or other marketing assets to figure out the better performing variation which will help you optimize the layout for future initiatives.
You can make slight changes in the page, such as language, colors, and images and see which one yields the best conversion rate. A/B testing is crucial for top of the funnel marketing by providing valuable data that will help you reach your business goals.
6. Retargeting Site Visitors and Email Readers
Retargeting provides you with the opportunity to optimize your mid and bottom-funnel which are customers who are already familiar with your brand. It is a cookie-based technology that uses simple Javascript code to anonymously track your audience all over the Web. The code, or pixel, is obscure to your site visitors and won’t affect your website’s performance. Every time new visitors come to your site, the code drops an anonymous browser cookie. The cookie will let your retargeting provider know when to serve ads as they browse the Web, ensuring that your ads are served to only to people who have previously visited your site.
You can also place retargeting pixels in your email signature to retarget those who open emails from you. When retargeting works well for you, it means that people are interested in your product and that you’ll be able to run successful abandoned shopping cart campaigns too.
7. Blogging
A blog is a marketing tool that can help develop your online presence, attract leads, and engage with your audience. This is especially useful if you are a new business, or an established business launching a new product.
Blogs add value to site visitors, establish trust, and is a good base to have before engaging in other marketing efforts. Make sure you have a couple of blog posts on your site for visitors to access. You need to update them regularly since they are useful in helping drive traffic to your website, convert them into leads, establish authority in your industry, and grow your business. If you still have to find time for it, take the timestamps off so they don’t seem dated.
8. Having A Clear Set of Goals
Make sure you communicate your budget and goals to your vendors since every client is different. This way, you can determine which one will fit you the best and provide you with the results you want. Factors to consider include:
- anticipated number of site visitors
- conversion rate
- social followers or shares
- event attendees
- email addresses
- downloads
- ads served
- impressions
You can make a list of primary and secondary goals to help your vendor know which is your top priority so they can better adjust and choose the right strategy to fit your needs.
9. Paying Attention to Social Media During Marketing Campaigns
When engaging in any sort of social campaign, make sure that you have someone ready to answer questions online. If you prefer to answer a specific question offline, make sure to answer them first publicly and ask them to email you.
You should also actively engage when a press release gets picked up and shared on social media. These are opportunities to convert questions and compliments into customers.
Conclusion
An effective marketing strategy helps in developing goods and services with the best profit-making potential. It is also useful in addressing the areas affected by organizational growth so you can better develop a plan to cater to your customer needs. However, it is also important to consider money-saving strategies so it’ll be a win-win situation for your business.
