The success of any business depends on two aspects.
(1) The product or service that the business offers and
(2) The way they are marketed to the world.
Leaving the challenge of bringing out an attractive product to the company (which most businesses are good at), this blog is going to focus on the second half of the challenge – marketing the product and generating potential leads for a small business.
What is – “EFFECTIVE” Marketing strategy?
“Effective Marketing strategy, are the methods used not just to introduce your product to the world but also to result in bringing POTENTIAL leads for your business, who will eventually become your customer”
To plan an effective marketing strategy, apart from the knowledge of your product and the various channels available, you or your marketing team should also be aware of the below aspects.
1.Who will get benefitted from your product?
Identify and understand your target before shooting your arrow. Few questions that can help you identify your target audience are
- Who they are?
- Where they live?
- What they like to do?
- What their lifestyle and personality is like?
- What is their capacity to spend? and much more business relevant questions.
How to reach them?
Out of numerous channels available, you need to identify the ways that will reach your flock effectively and quickly.
It is an inevitable truth that the current world (at least 70% of them), irrespective of the above classification, has now moved more into a digital world and are available and connected 24/7.
And it will be a wise decision to use these digital platforms to get the attention of your target audience. The following are the Top 10 Methods that have been used by prominent start-up and small companies around the world in generating potential leads for their business.
1.Website – The face of your business
“Make a Big First Impression with Your Website”
Irrespective of the product or service, website is the first place where your prospective customers read and understand about your products & services offerings and the purchase decision takes place here. So, the website should make a Big First Impression. Create visually attractive, customer friendly and information rich websites with many landing pages. Make sure to have an enquiry form, so the leads will have a right way to reach you.
In case you are still not ready to have your own website, there are numerous 3rd party website or mobile applications that provides you a platform to showcase your business to the online world. A few of the widely used platforms are
- EC21 & eworldtrade – for manufacturing
- Yelp , InCityLife – All service category
- Amazon, Flipkart – Products
- Zomato, Foodpanda, Swiggy – Food
- Joboy, Helpit – Home services
- Uber, Ola, RentalCars – Travels
2.Email Marketing – Knock to open
“Move your business to a more personalized Environment -> Inbox”
Emails are considered as an easy and cost-effective way to introduce your product to your target audience. To have a good return of those emails, good amount of effort needs to be taken in framing the content (subject and body of the email).
Subject: Having an attractive and personalized subject improves the success (Click rate) of the email.
Body of the email: The email content should be personalized, short and to the point. It should cover the following
- Step 1: Show the pain point (2 lines)
- Step 2: Describe about the solution
- Step 3: How your product is a solution for that pain point
3.Social Media – Driver of web traffic
“Know them and make yourself known”
Through Social media marketing platforms like Facebook, YouTube videos, Google search, Instagram, Twitter you can showcase your products & services in the social / digital media.
Social media can drive the type of web traffic that are actively seeking your information. They may even be ready to buy your products or services immediately.
Understanding the category in which your target audience will fall and running focused ad campaigns can guarantee a good quantity of potential enquires to your business.
These methods have been proved to be effective in the recent days compared to Television or newspaper ads, since people are nowadays available more on internet through mobile phones than on TV or reading newspapers.
4.Content Marketing – Stimulate interest
“No MATTER what your business is, content still MATTERS”
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
There is a huge demand, for high-value contents. If you meet that need, your users will trust you. The trust may turn into a purchase of your product or service. No matter what your business model is, content still matters. Content may be e-newsletters, White Papers, e-books, High value information or Market research highlights.
Instead of pitching your products or services, you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.
Few areas where your content can be posted and could gain good traction are
a. News letters
b. Quora questions
c. Stack Exchange
d. Case studies
e. White paper
5.Blog – Connect through their challenge
“Blogs make you findable via Google”
Blogging can be an effective lead generation strategy. Blogs are a great way to increase your web presence, making you more visible and “findable” via Google.
Blogging is the heart of Content marketing and enables you to connect with millions of people around the world through the challenges they face and the kind of solution they are looking for.
Blog contents does not always need to be about your business or products, but can be focused on common topics that your target crowd would be interested to read.
Good and attractive blogs will act as the gateway to your website, thus improving the visibility of your products or services to potential leads. The blogs with value adding content, up-to-date statistics, and current trending topics in your business can connect you to the relevant audience and at the same time boost your traffic and will generate quality leads for your business.
6.Webinar – Reaching beyond boundaries
” Win-Win Situation through Webinars ”
Webinars enables businesses to reach prospects beyond geographical boundaries and still provide a face to face meeting experience to your prospective leads. This is one another technique to expand your customer base that will not take much of your time budget.
Webinars create trust on your business brand. People without hesitation will share their information, because webinars are high value, hands-on training that they can experience from the comfort of their own place. It’s really a win-win situation. You get leads, they get training.
Few points to keep in mind to attract potential registration for the webinar are
- An attractive Title
- A short but effective description
- Highlighting the benefits of the webinar in an easy to read format
- A 1-2 mins video, explaining about the event can improve the registration rate
- Mentioning words like “Limited seats only”, “For first 100 registration only” can create an urgency and scarcity for quick action from the target audience side
- A short note about the speaker can improve the credibility of the session and thus can bring more registrations
- And most of all, target the right group who will get benefitted by it.
7.Search Engine optimization – unveils your website
“Effective tool for Lead generation”
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) attracts traffic to your websites and is ideal for generating leads particularly through organic web searches that prospective customers use every day. It is one of the most effective tools for lead generation.
“Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine. “– Wikipedia
The components like Title, Meta title, Meta keywords, Meta description, Website content & Blogs contribute a lot to improve the ranking of the website while doing a Google search.
Websites that are updated with fresh content at regular frequency will also impact your ranking. The higher you rank in results page, the more clicks and traffic your site will generate, which eventually will result in better lead generation.
8.Video – Retain your leads longer
“A picture is worth a thousand words. A video makes it more…”
Using videos to market your product or services, increases the engagement of leads on your digital and social media channels, educating your customers and reaching your audience through a new medium. Having a video in your website retains your visitors longer than they used to be which has only text and pictures.
A room with good lighting, less prone to noise and a phone with a decent camera configuration is sufficient to produce a decent 1-2 minutes of video explaining your business. To enhance / edit the video for better quality, software like movie maker, Adobe premiere cc, DaVinci Resolve can be used.
Check-out Top 10 Video Making & Editing Software for your video needs
The created videos can be posted as
- Ads in YouTube, Facebook, Instagram.
- Product promotion in Websites
- How to videos, Knowledge based videos, support videos in YouTube and websites
9.Conference and Event – Your physical presence matters
“Make an impact one to one & face to face”
To have a physical presence, to give a brand awareness and display your products directly to the public, events and tradeshow will be a good option. Depending on the event and the wide coverage it gives, can enable your business to cultivate quality and quantity leads.
Is this not a traditional marketing strategy? Yes. You are right. But the same traditional marketing method could be made more effective and efficient with the help of the digital platforms. Few action items that need to be done before you decide or before your company participates in a conference or event can be,
- Choose carefully the show to attend / exhibit – depending on who are the target visitors and your capacity to spend with respect to your effort and budget
- Track sponsoring companies, research & connect with them – well before the event through LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
- Get meeting appointments with potential Visitors of the event – in advance to plan your day
- Know the speakers & other exhibitors of the show
- Making sure to connect with the connected people immediately after the event for further follow-ups
By taking care of the above action points, one can be assured of good ROI from events and conferences.
10.Viral Marketing – Last but not the least
Viral marketing is a process of getting your existing customers to refer others to your product. Though this cannot be the only way to improve your business, this can be used as one of the ways for business development. There had been few cases, where this has become a prime channel over all the other marketing methods.
Few ways that can trigger viral marketing are
- Encouraging word of mouth
- Sharing reviews and comments in website and digital review platforms
- Inherent Virality – restricting the usage based on “Upon Invitation only” option.
- By Encouraging collaboration – enabling quick and easy collaboration for sharing
- Embed virality into communication
- 2 side Incentive
Do all these 10 methods mandatory for a product or business to get potential leads and to have a successful business? not necessarily. These methods highly depend on your target customers and where they belong. To identify that I would suggest you to start trying the above 10 methods as a first step. Within a small duration you will be able to identify 7 to 8 out of these 10 that are attracting more leads to your business.
Investing time and money on these filtered channels will enable you to identify the Top 4 or 5 sources that gets more potential leads for your business. Giving more focus on these sources and increasing your investment for the same will generate more potential leads to your business, whom you can nurture and engage until they become your customers.
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