Most business owners know they need to spend time and money, but with the many hats that entrepreneurs wear – it can be challenging to figure out how to prioritize and where to start. Whether you are handling marketing in-house or have hired an agency, below are five tips to ensure you get the most out of your marketing efforts.
- Identify your goal – Before you put dollars against any campaign, make sure you are really clear what you want to accomplish. Are you looking to drive leads or are you just looking to build general awareness of your brand? How you answer this question will be the North Star of your strategy.
- Defining your target audience- Next, make sure you understand who you want to target with your campaign, and ensure any marketing spend can demonstrate it is reaching that audience. It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers, especially on social campaigns, but remember a strategic, quality audience often yields a higher ROI than thousands of people who have no connection to your larger goal.
- Promote something for free – Have you ever heard someone say.. if it’s free, it’s for me? Well, studies show that businesses that offer something as simple as a free consultation to potential clients have seen conversion rates as high as 75%. Get creative and develop content educational, thought leadership to offer as a free download to your clients.
- Champion one social media channel- When it comes to social campaigns, it may be tempting to go guns blazing and try to master 5 different social channels at once. However, we recommend focusing your time and energy on just one platform to start. As marketing guru Neil Patel says “Jumping in headfirst and attempting to manage, say, four or five different channels can be overwhelming, and you’re unlikely to kill it with any strategy. Even if you’re a savvy marketer, you simply can’t devote the necessary time to extract the full potential of any single channel.”
- Evaluate your results and improve your strategy– One of the biggest missed opportunities is ending your campaign without digging into the analytics to understand what resonated and what may have fallen flat. What surprised you about the data? Lean into the data to optimize the next phase in your campaign, as well as future initiatives. For social media campaigns, many are surprised to learn that most social media platforms offer basic, built-in analytics tools. Leverage these tools and others like Google analytics on a weekly basis to see how your content is performing. If something isn’t getting much traction as you had hoped, switch up your content by creating videos, offering educational pieces and trying Instagram reels.
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