The world of marketing is extremely broad, with many different tactics available to raise the profile of your business. But whatever your objectives are, whether it’s awareness raising or increasing sales, it’s important to find the right marketing strategies for you.
Choosing the right tactics and determining what can help you achieve your goals takes careful consideration and planning. Doing marketing just for the sake of it is never going to work – you need objectives, KPIs and strategies that align with those of the wider business. Understanding the different types of marketing is key to creating a unique strategy that best suits your brand and goals.
Why is marketing important?
Marketing is a vital cog in the workings of a business – especially for SMEs and start-ups. If you’re not promoting your offering, then who is going to buy it? And if you’re not promoting your business as a whole, then who is going to work for it and invest in it?
Marketing is how you create your virtual shop window, informing your target audience about what your business offers, its value and what sets it apart from competitors. And it’s not just a one stop journey, it’s a process that constantly maintains the relationship between your brand and your customers.
By implementing good marketing tactics, you will be able to engage your target audience, create a strong brand image, generate sales, build customer loyalty and make your brand known.
What is a marketing agency?
If you’re struggling with capacity within your business to deliver marketing strategies, or even to start from scratch and create a marketing strategy, then you can employ a marketing agency to help with this.
A marketing agency will work alongside you or your existing marketing/communications team to understand the ins and outs of your business – your objectives, target audiences, challenges, opportunities, key messages, and much more.
Your agency team will then work to deliver a tailored marketing strategy that provides the results you’re looking for. This could be through traditional techniques such as adverts, brochures and leaflets, or digital marketing techniques such as search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or social media, and you can use PR as a marketing tactic that’s a bit less obvious.
Adding SEO to your marketing strategy
Online sales account for 26.5% of overall retail sales in the UK and businesses depend on having a website that generates leads and sales. But how can you get spotted by people searching the web?
Say hello to SEO: This is used to grow search traffic to websites by optimising them so search engines recognise what you can provide and make it more visible for relevant searches.
By improving the visibility of a website, this increases the likelihood of the website being visited by potential customers, ready for you to draw them into making a sale.
As well as making your website load faster and making it easier to navigate, SEO professionals also pay close attention to content strategy and certain keywords and use these throughout the website, including in areas visitors are unlikely to see, to help the likes of Google and Bing direct people to you.
Using PPC in marketing
Like SEO, PPC marketing is used to drive traffic to websites but this is done through paid tactics. It involves creating adverts which appear on search engines, websites and social media platforms and advertisers only pay a fee if the advert is actually clicked on.
Keywords play a role in PPC marketing too, as PPC professionals will bid on relevant keywords to ensure their adverts appear at the top of the results when these keywords are searched.
What’s more, PPC can be used to target specific demographics, interests and locations, helping the advert to reach exactly the right audience. This can even be taken one step further by using social media tools to target individuals based on their behaviours and interests.
How to use social media in marketing
Social media is used by pretty much everybody – there were 56.2 million social media users in the UK in January 2024 – so making use of social media as part of your marketing strategy is a no-brainer.
Social media sites like Facebook or LinkedIn can be used to increase your leads, revenue and engagement through campaign planning, content management and content creation. Whether this is done organically or through paid tactics, it’s a powerful way to reach potential customers.
But just like any marketing, social media shouldn’t be used by a business just for the sake of it. It’s important to identify which platforms your target audience uses the most and focus your efforts on these, to ensure you’re getting the best results from your activity.
Getting others to do your marketing for you
Lastly, there’s PR – which is all about improving the way you’re seen by your target audience.
PR might focus on branding, refining your sales proposition and using each of the communications channels available to you to attract new consumers and build loyalty in others, but a lot of PR is about using media platforms that belong to third parties.
We often talk about PR as marketing by stealth – getting your company seen, recognised and appreciated without people realising its marketing. The best way to do this is by securing coverage in the media, with positive news stories about your business or through articles, interviews or other appearances that showcase your products, expertise or specialisms.
As well as using other media as another platform for marketing, PR taps into the notion that people are more likely to trust a reputable third party more than they will trust an advert. Or, to put it another way, it’s better for someone else to say how great you are rather than you saying it yourself.
If you’re looking for marketing support and are interested in SEO, PPC, social media or PR, get in touch to see how we can help you!
