As a startup or small business, you’re frequently looking for ways to stand out from the crowd. Differentiating what you have to offer to your competitors, you need to seek effective methods in order to thrive not only in the present but also in the future. And this is where advertising strategies come in.
In the modern-day, you’ll need a combination of digital and print advertising to target customers. No longer can you simply rely on word of mouth or a billboard – now, you’ll have to find new and innovative ways to capture your customers’ attention, no matter what service or product you’re trying to sell. If you’re uncertain about these mechanisms, however, then advertising might seem very daunting or overwhelming to you.
To help guide you, here are 5 strategies that you could use to help advertise your business to a wider audience:
Create a Target Audience
The first strategy you should complete when it comes to advertising is to create a target audience. Not everyone will find your product or service useful or appealing – it’s just a fact. So you want to ensure that you’re adequately running targeted campaigns from the get-go.
Through market research, you should be able to create an accurate target customer profile which will include information regarding their age, gender, interests, etc. With this information, you can start to target relevant psychographics and demographics to attract more customers.
Keep in mind that when you do this, you should always reflect the type of customers that you want through your imagery and copy.
Demand Side Platform
A clever way of identifying advertising spaces in which you can include targeted ads is by using a demand side platform. Taking into account the user’s location, their language, etc. it will allow advertisers to provide customers with useful information that will appeal to their interests through Voluum demand side platform campaigns.
Social Media Campaigns
One of the main methods that you could use to advertise your products or services to customers is social media campaigns. Whether you create these on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, it can be a very effective way of reaching both your current customers and potential ones.
Once you schedule these and they are published, it’s essential that you maintain and track the results. Facebook, for example, will provide you with statistics related to each ad that you publish. This will help you to determine what’s effective and what isn’t in the eyes of customers.
When advertising on social media, make sure that you publish a variety of content, from imagery to content to keep your customers enticed and interested in what you have to offer. As part of your campaigns, you could also introduce a blog on your website, which not only helps with SEO but helps to differentiate your business from others in the industry.
Email Marketing
Arguably the cornerstone of digital marketing, email marketing has long been a successful advertising strategy for both small businesses and large organizations. By capturing contact information when a customer visits your site, you’ll be able to convert leads. Although this is a strategy that might seem obvious to you, it could be very successful if done effectively.
You need to offer each visitor on your site something compelling in exchange for their email address. This could either be a discount on products/services, a free digital download, a free trial, etc.
Helping you to grow your audience, you can then use the contact information to email/text the customers the latest information about your products or services. This isn’t the only benefit that you can reap through email marketing, however. You could also take advantage of the following:
- It’s easy to automate
- You can achieve a global reach
- Easy to set up and maintain
- Easy to optimize
- Immediate communication between your business and new customers
Optimize, Optimize, Optimize
As you’ll probably know, optimization is essential for small businesses in the modern-day and ranking well in search is vital to success. However, you might not have the time or resources to create new and innovative content for your website.
When this is the case, you can take advantage of services like Google AdWords. Helping your business to appear higher in SERP results, it’s cost-effective and can be very successful.
Content Marketing
A long-term marketing and advertising strategy, content marketing is one of the first things that you should master. Helping to create and nurture strong relationships with customers, it will include things like slide decks, print material, video content and blog posts. When done correctly, it can be more effective than simply opting for traditional paid advertising on its own.
Solving your targeted customer’s problems with valuable content, it’s a less pushy way to advertise. Although social media posts technically fall under this umbrella, it deserves its own point due to the other aspects it involves.
Working hand in hand with email marketing, this extraordinary and successful advertising strategy offers businesses numerous benefits, including, but not limited to:
- An increase in website traffic
- An increase in brand awareness
- Increased sales and leads
- Increased brand credibility and trust
But how do you master the art of content marketing? Well, firstly, it’s essential that you create evergreen content that’s useful for a long time after it’s published. Relevant and fresh, it will help to retain loyal customers as well as attract new ones.
Next, you need to ensure that this content is unforgettable in the eyes of the customers. Engaging and one-of-a-kind, it will solve any problems that they are facing. Thirdly, you want the content to reflect what your brand is all about. Similarly to your targeting strategy, you must ensure that it signifies what your business has to offer and how it’s unique.
Final Thoughts
So, there you go! Those are 5 advertising strategies that you could use to entice new customers. Each extraordinary and effective in their own right when done successfully, they can help to increase brand awareness in the present and in the future. Just make sure that whatever strategy you use aligns with your budget and you have the right resources in place from the start.
