Regardless of the type or size of a business, marketing is important. It helps to get your name out there, increase your brand awareness and ultimately, increase revenue. More often than not, this means combining traditional resources with some innovative technologies.

Fortunately, marketers nowadays have a seemingly endless supply of marketing tools available, so the only question remains which of these are the best to use. Here are some of the most effective marketing resources from which every marketer can benefit.

1. Email Subscriptions

While some might consider them old-fashioned, emails still continue to be one of the most effective tools to give and receive information related to customer engagement.

A customized email subscription list is an excellent way to interact with potential customers and provide them with regular updates on your sales, promotions, and so on.

Whether the messages are generated on the company’s website or through an online email marketing platform, they should be designed to be used on all types of devices.

2. Social Media Platforms

Even if you have your own website perfectly optimized for customer engagement, social media can make content distribution much easier. As a marketer, you want to make sure you are reaching as many potential clients as possible.

Through social media platforms, users can react quickly, and you can track their responses in real-time. This can help gauge the effectiveness of your campaign and make any improvements in it if needed.

While creating a Facebook page is an obvious starting point, it’s best to focus your energies on the 2 to 4 social media outlets that are most relevant to your business.

3. Traditional Resources

Even though online marketing has become a necessary component of any marketing strategy, traditional marketing channels still are helpful for many businesses. Radio stations, newspapers, and other media channels can also be employed successfully for these purposes, even if used in innovative ways.

Similarly, the use of business cards is greatly appreciated as well, and they can be easily made here. These have the convenience of having a tangible form of promotional material, yet they also appeal to the younger generations.

We may be living in a modern age but people still like marketing materials such as posters, leaflets and business cards that they can touch and feel.

4. Project Management System

The best project management systems allow a marketer to delegate tasks to other members of the marketing team. With this method, they can track all the steps that need to be taken a lot more effectively. With the latest project management software, such as Monday.com, this task has become more streamlined than ever.

A unified marketing system that provides more control makes it possible for everyone on the marketing team to be aware of the overall goals. It also helps prevent any mishaps that can occur during the planning stages of a marketing strategy.

5. Marketing KPIs

The effectiveness of a marketing strategy is measured through its key performance indicators (KPIs). A marketer needs to establish a couple of predetermined metrics and measure the campaign’s performance against those.

These metrics can include all the data from occasionally recurring revenues sources, monthly sales records, and even the number of contact form submissions. These ready-made indicators are designed to work on a wide variety of businesses and still provide a truthful picture of the marketing strategy they have in place.

Conclusion

A proper marketing tool used at the right moment can take any advertising strategy to a whole new level. When developing your marketing strategy, it’s important to look at which marketing tools can help you to achieve your goals.

Author: David Fletcher

Setting up a promotion plan for a new small business can be tricky. You are low on money, having spent any budget on your product, stock, or web design. You probably had no idea how much promotion would be needed to get yourself out there. Plus, you’ve spent a little on tentatively targeted ads and they got you absolutely nowhere. If this sounds familiar, don’t worry -we’ve got this! Here is how you can promote your new small business for free.

Brand, Brand, Brand

Branding your business is something that can cost no money and boost your following dramatically. It should be at the forefront of your mind before anything else. Take your business idea and write a brand plan that is designed to appeal directly to your target audience.

Create a business name that stands out, but that states clearly what you offer. Do not overcomplicate it and ensure that the name is not used by another business. Check social media to ensure your name is free to use, so that all your social handles match. Remember to also check the availability of your chosen domain name. You can check this for free at Google Domains.

Design a logo for free online. Keep it clean-cut and ensure it shows off your business. Be selective over the colours and style you use for your logo, as this design will be incorporated into all your future branding.

Create a branded business card online for free at BusinessCards.co and print them at home to save money on extortionate printing costs. Distribute your cards to local businesses, friends, family and colleagues.

Promote Your Brand

Using your brand to promote your business is rule number one in free promotions. When you use a logo on all your content, it enables your audience to start to recognize that the content they are enjoying is brought to them by your business. They might read a few of your articles or watch a few videos before they click on your link. This is normal. By adding your logo and handle, you are letting consumers know who you are and where to find you.

Collaborate

A great free way to promote yourself is to collaborate with other businesses. Be creative and bold about this. The best way is to direct message the business you are interested in and let them know what you want and what you can offer.

Many new business owners are hesitant to do this. But having the confidence to go for what you want is a major factor in entrepreneurial success.

Collaborations do not have to involve money. Think of it as a bartering system. If you share three of their posts in a month, they share three of yours. Or if they add your website link to their bio for a week, you do the same for them. If you both have the same target audience but offer different services, it can be a fantastic win-win all-around.

Talk Loudly

Go out and tell people what you are doing. Let them know how much you love your business. If you go to a family barbeque, tell them all you’d love a follow on social media for support. Or if you take your children swimming, wear your branded t-shirt and spark some conversations.

Speak about your business online too. Join all the Facebook groups and forums related to your business and tell people what you are doing. Many of these groups do not allow advertising. Be casual about it; drop it into conversation or in a comment under another person’s post. You don’t have to add a link to your business. Just let them know what you offer and use the keywords that are related to your business in what you write.

Get blogging and write about your business. This costs nothing but time and can be a great way to promote yourself. Ensure that you learn a little about SEO before setting out and optimize what you write for best results.

Promoting your small business for free is all about letting people know you exist. Get your audience involved in your business and create a positive space where every day is like an event.

Author: Harvey Dunn

If you thought you worked in a fast-paced environment, social media runs even faster than the busiest workplaces, with more being added to it every second of every day.

It can be easy to get lost in people’s timelines, get discouraged at the lack of likes or comments to a particular post that you spent a lot of time and effort crafting to entice new customers to come into your store or browse your website.

However, it is not impossible to make the process easier for you and your staff to navigate and optimize your efforts and make the most out of every single post!

Below, we’re looking at some tried and true methods for streamlining your social media presence.

Know Your Tone

Even if you’re speaking the same language as your customers on the surface, there may still be some aspects of your business that might not translate as well.

For example, if you’re trying to post about how your product can benefit the customer. But you’re using lots of scientific jargon that most people won’t understand; it can be an issue.

Try to be as relatable as you can with your audience. If needed, try to adopt some colloquial slang to help you connect with your target audience and industry.

Consistency is vital! So don’t just put all of your newfound efforts into one social media post and be done with it.

Keeping a consistent tone throughout all of your social posts and campaigns will earn you credibility.

At the same time, you’ll want to make sure the logos and imagery you use on your social feeds are consistent. You can create a brand new logo for free using Logo Creator!

Use A Notifications Hub

If you’re managing multiple different social media accounts for your business, it can be not easy keeping track of all of the activity on each platform all at once.

For this reason, consider using a cross-platform tool, such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social.

These help keep track of all relevant notifications, messages and analytics on each of your social media accounts.

In turn, these tools can prevent you from spending unnecessary hours trying to catch up on one platform before moving on to the next one.

Having all of your notifications neatly arranged in one place will help you gain a clearer picture of how well your content is performing and give you more insight into how your followers are engaging with your posts and accounts.

Recycling Posts For Maximum Viewership

Since new posts are added to timelines by the second, social media posts (particularly those on Twitter) have a very short lifespan.

This means that only so many people will view a post in a given time frame before it gets buried under new content and people stop engaging with it.

There’s no harm in recycling posts that you want more people to engage with, such as promotions, events, collaborations, etc.

You shouldn’t constantly hit the retweet button every few minutes so that one post dominates your followers’ timelines. But a friendly reminder to any important dates or special discounts is never a bad idea.

It’s not guaranteed that every single follower will see each post that you put out there.

So by recycling important content, you will increase your chances of having more people see it even when you first posted it a few weeks ago.

Planning And Scheduling Social Media Content

As a small business owner, it’s practically impossible to oversee all of your business’s daily operations and remain active and engaged on social media.

That’s why it’s crucial to create a social media calendar ahead of time and to stick with it over time.

Having a calendar in place ensures that you’ll always know what to post and when.

Then, you can pair this tactic up with a social media scheduling app like Buffer, and then, you’ll be able to see back and focus on your business while your social followers still get their daily dose of content from your brand!

Author: Corey Obrien

So you’ve started your own business, you feel so good that you are now officially an entrepreneur and you’re convinced your business idea is so good that the money and success will come rolling in. Or maybe, on the other hand, you’ve reached a spot where those good connections have all been milked and you’re not quite sure how to get things moving. Whatever the case, one thing you MUST be aware of; neglecting social media marketing will have you going for a direct head-fall in no time. Think I’m exaggerating? Maybe, or maybe not. Read on to the end of this article and decide for yourself.

I’ve spent a lot of time researching and experimenting with social media. I’ve met business owners and entrepreneurs of all sorts and I’m 100 per cent convinced that most would agree with me; deciding against a social media strategy will have you missing out on a whole lot of benefits for you small business. Stick around and let us take a look at all the great stuff you’re depriving your start-up of when not using social media marketing. Oh, and just so you know, this is not another one of those top five benefits or step by step articles to help you if you decide to implement a social media marketing strategy. This is a warning of what could and most probably will happen if you think you don’t need to use social media to market your business. So, don’t say we didn’t warn you!

You will never know what your prospective customer thinks or wants

Whatever marketing strategy you’re implementing, your starting point is always your target audience. You need to know who they are, what they do, where to find them, where they live and so on. Or you may actually want to reach out to a global audience; but how will you do that without social media? Having a website is just not enough. Having good connections all over the place is also not good enough in the long run. Yes, you have a great product or service; yes, you provide top quality and it’s going good, for now. But stagnation is not allowed nowadays. A business needs to develop and expand in order to be a successful one. The social media lets you get close to your audience. You can get to know them better, what they talk about, what they really want and much more. If you don’t know any of this, how will you improve, how will you increase your revenue if you don’t know how to please your potential customer?

Valuable traffic to your website will cease to exist

You probably know how important SEO is. You may have already taken most of the crucial steps technically. But Google is not ranking websites like once upon a time. To put it simply, you need to acquire a good reputation on the internet in order to rank high in the SERP’s. Logically, what other way can you expand that good reputation other than via social media. Other parts of your marketing strategy (if you have one) will allow some visitors to your website, real life referrals, advertising and whatever. But having a good social media marketing strategy lets your voice be heard all over the place. The visitors keep coming in and coming back. Without social media marketing, what traffic can you expect, seriously? How will you use your website to increase sales and grow that start up? Do you really think you can do it without social media?

You’ll lose valuable data for tracking the use of your website

Website metrics show you valuable data about the use of your website and the visitor characteristics. Google analytics has so many options that will not only let you see who’s visiting your site, but also what content and products are generating more traffic, what social media posts are creating more referrals etc. Without so much of that valuable data you will never know what’s working in your marketing strategy and what’s not.  You’ll never be able to improve your product or service. You will prohibit the growth of your business which will not only cause the loss of good reputation but also the loss of money because you’ll be spending it on ineffective advertising campaigns.

So you want to build your brand but you don’t want to use the social media?

Facepalm

Right, so you don’t care if you seem like a trustworthy business or not…

Saying that your goal is to build brand awareness and then saying you’re not using social media marketing, is funny and sad at the same time. Do you really think that in this world of ongoing competition your brand will be able to stand out just because of the quality? That’s a belief of the medieval times of marketing. Today, quality is just not enough. The communication that the internet provides has provided us the opportunity to demand more. Today people demand communication. Audiences demand to be listened to. A client must have their expectations met, otherwise you will be given a bad reputation; and that’s all via social media, whether you use it or not.

Now you can choose to ignore that or you can start respond to the negative comments by showing your prospective clients that you actually care about their opinion. The social media is full of opportunities for building brand awareness.

Whatever, so you’re saying social media marketing can help me with lead generation?

Obviously yes! Communicating with an audience effectively not only gives you the possibility to get to know your clients better and to promote your business, but it also provides a means of referrals. A potential client that likes what you’re doing will tell their friend and they will tell their friend and so on. Just like in the real world, on the internet the social media is the best way to manoeuvre that word of mouth effect.

According to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report of 2015, by Michael A. Stelzner Founder of Social Media Examiner “By spending as little as 6 hours per week, 66%+ of marketers see lead generation benefits with social media.”

Social Media Marketing Importance

Still think your business doesn’t need a social media marketing strategy?

Well think again. Here you’ve been given just a small number of examples of the benefits social media marketing, (there’s plenty of articles that speak of the benefits around) besides the amount of money and resources you can save by using social media. And for the sake of giving you folks that aren’t into social media a wake-up call; here you’ve been given the examples of what you are losing out on. You’ve been warned; neglect your social media marketing, your small business will deteriorate (maybe).

Timing is key. Just like many aspects of your personal life, you don’t want to go on a holiday on the holidays to avoid the rush. Or hold a very important meeting when everybody is surely late by 8am. The concept is also true to creating content for your social media marketing. If you want your content to succeed in social media you’ve got to strategize well before you publish.

So what type of contents gets attention and shared a lot by people?

Great content is nothing if it’s not properly well executed. That includes moods, situations among other things that go around. Here are 5 top list content posts that get a lot of attention:

Videos

– giving the audience a fun or graphic representation of the brand or sharing a momentous occasion of the company.

How to’s

– usually these kind of posts answers a problem, gives a thorough explanation on how to go about it and focus on that topic solely.

Why Posts

– provides the readers a sense of purpose to help out or provide a point of view on a certain situation or topic.

What Posts

– giving further information on specified topic and references to a certain topic.

List

– focus on a certain topic, and then give out number of points and a brief conclusion.

The social analytics shows different results though to certain industries. Judging how every person is reduced to not receiving notifications to businesses that they don’t want to see or hear about. It is safe to say that the content should cater to audience preferences and behaviors. A close assessment of the social metrics is a good indicator for the audience tastes, timing and relevancy key especially if you want to your posts to go viral.