4 Ways to Market your Business

Growing a business isn’t easy.

We know.

That’s why we compiled a few tactics that will help you. You may have heard of so many infallible strategies.

Without the right guidance, they’re just pipe dreams you get to be excited about until reality hits. Then those dreams disappear in a whiff of smoke.

What I have for you are proven strategies that worked yesterday and will work today and tomorrow.

Contests and Giveaways

As a business owner, be it big small or mid-sized, you’re probably aware of the importance of consistent promotional efforts.

How?

Through contests and giveaways. They help generate brand awareness.

There are quite a few benefits of running a contest for your business.

Boost Online Engagement— It has become difficult to engage people online. Attention spans are at an all-time low. In a world choked full of distractions, contests are the perfect way to reach out to people and generate high-value interactions for your brand.

Build your Email List— One big advantage with contests is —people are used to giving their email ids to participate. It can fuel lead generation efforts. If you generate 10 leads a month, with a popular contest, you can generate 100x the leads.

It goes without saying that participating with an email id should result in additional points to participants. Make it clear.

Inspire virality— Millennials and Gen Z value experiences over possessions. To that end, your contest should be either exciting or socially driven. Or both. This improves their odds of going viral bringing additional traffic, interested fans, revenue, and sales.

Contests are popular and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Here’s why?

72% of millennials prefer to spend more money on experience-related purchases.

My advice is to go for a campaign with a social angle. That way you can create a valuable experience that attracts more people to it.

Here are some examples:

• Do you remember the biggest craze of 2014? —the ALS ice bucket challenge. It went viral as increasing numbers of people challenged their friends to shower ice on themselves. A key driver of the popularity was the fact that funds generated through the campaign would be donated to treating a form of sclerosis. The rest is history. It reached millions and generated hundreds of thousands of charity dollars.

• Another example is No Shave November—Men were asked not to shave their beards in November for a noble cause. This hair was then donated to cancer patients. Both regular people and big shot celebrities taking part in the challenge made it go viral.

By hinging on positive experiences gained from being part of a social movement your contests can leverage the power of doing good.

What’s more, you could even get celebrities as participants.

Use Referral Marketing

The idea behind this strategy was to reach more people by getting their friends and relatives to talk about you.

Gartner Group’s research states that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers.

If you’re not seeing that for your company that’s because you don’t have referral marketing integrated. Or you didn’t think it through.

Loyalty marketing platforms can act as a hub to attract referrals. They ensure people are paid to refer others. New customers are acquired through email, events and digital promotion.

You may have seen this in action outside food outlets, supermarket stores, automobile companies, travel agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and many more such places.

Here’s how to map your own referral marketing program.

Developing a referral marketing technique can be vital in the long run. The following steps can be followed to create their own technique to enhance referral marketing.

1. According to Referral Candy setting up a referral program is the key to acquiring long term success. Start with the right client database prior to launch. With those customers, you can map out your path to new customers. That’s the primary goal.
2. Rewards and bonuses attract a lot of clients. Many organizations pay bonuses, give away vouchers or discounts on their services in exchange for referrals. With the points system, you get points accrued for purchases made. After reaching a particular count, these points can be redeemed for a discount or a voucher gift.
3. Assess results with frequency. This way you can track progress.

Improve Customer Relations

According to professionals from candybar.co increased client interaction can cultivate an atmosphere of geniality

Acknowledging questions or problems clients have and striving hard to provide solutions in a time-bound manner pays off.

This displays how concerned the company is regarding clients.

Think of how well you can create a unique customer experience that’s different than what competitors can do.

Here’s what you can do immediately to improve customer satisfaction.

One way to use your customer service experience to get the biggest lifts in conversions or to simply reduce customer attrition is to use the feedback gleaned to make onboarding simpler.

This helps you alter customer expectations in a way that fosters relationships.

At When I Work, a number of tweaks to their onboarding process, realized in part due to talking to customers on the phone led to a 700% increase in the number of leads that went on to become customers.

Talking to clients they realized how confused many of them were with the on-boarding process.

The team realized customers had a lot of unanswered questions they were doing nothing about.

These changes made a real difference contributing to the gains.

Spend Time Attending Networking Events

With networking events not only do you get to meet new people, but you can also create collaborations that expand your business.

You get access to insights you’d have never come up on your own.

Keep a tab on industry events so you do miss any opportunities.

Most online businesses are so lost in online stuff they forget the value of face to face meetings.

Forbes conducted a survey on this to find that 84 prefer face to face meetings to conduct business. The research results on the importance of face-to-face network is staggering. Forbes Insight conducted a survey on this very subject.

When asked why they preferred in-person business meetings, here were some of the responses:

• 84.9 percent of those surveyed said face to face meetings build stronger relationships.
• 75 percent liked it since it greater better bonding and raised the prospect of continued interaction.

Conclusion

Contests, referral marketing, improving customer experience are all splendid ways to grow your business. Also, with these methods outlined above, you don’t spend much on acquiring a customer.

They’re highly cost-effective and productive. Knowing your focus group and addressing their concerns can be helpful in acquiring their loyalty. It leads to long term success.

What do you think?