Top Tips on Marketing

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My top tips on marketing are for those who are less than happy with the results of your marketing activities. Having a super cool website, eye-catching business cards, and social media is all well and good, but it is only the beginning. How good is your engagement? What is your plan, your strategy to develop the connections, the followers and conversations into a business relationship?

If you are not laser targeted with your marketing approach, you are wasting time, opportunities and resources. Whether you are creating a new business or your boss is less than generous with the marketing budget, this post will give you some top marketing tips on working strategically to get the desired results. When you don’t have a big budget, the next best currency to work with is time, and planning how you spend your time is vital. In this blog, I offer top tips to get the best results with the least amount of work. Sound good?

Online Presence

The best way for potential clients to find you and for you to find them is online. It may seem obvious but focusing on your online presence is a must for dramatically reducing time spent marketing. An up-to-date website that is regularly updated and has good SEO (search engine optimisation) content and calls to action is all-important. Setting up a Google My Business account https://business.google.com/create  is free and will increase the visibility of your business. Please make the most of your website, keep it updated with regular posts and remove any old and redundant information. Keeping your website in good shape will give your business credibility and acts as a go-to tool when actively engaging online and building relationships. 

Social Media Presence on Multiple Platforms

Having a social media presence across multiple platforms to disseminate your content will raise your profile and can help to increase traffic to your website. It doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming; there are plenty of free tools like Buffer (free version) you can use for scheduling social media posts all in one go. 

Where to spend your marketing activity time

If your time is limited, research and identify the platform which is the most popular place for your market. Spend most of your time working through your marketing funnel steps ( See LinkedIn Blog) whilst still scheduling content through Buffer (or similar) to other platforms.

Free content creation tool

Visual images, GIFs and videos are essential to get attention and engage people when posting content. So having a content creation tool is a must. So lucky for us, creating content has never been easier; Canva has a free version that allows you to upload your images and logo or utilise their free library. You can easily create images which look professional and are in keeping with your brand.

Whilst we are on the topic of content creation, to increase your marketing success, consider using video marketing in your overall marketing strategy. I have put together a video marketing blog that offers tips and inspiration and takes you through the real benefits of using video to market your business.

Marketing Funnel to focus activity and time spent

To learn more about creating a marketing funnel for your online activity, you can read my LinkedIn post, which takes you through the steps from making the initial connection with your potential client to making the sale.

The foundation of a slick successful marketing strategy is making it sales-focused. It will yield greater rewards and keep you focused on activities designed to move your potential client to the next stage in the sales and marketing process. It reduces wasted time spent engaging and posting content using a scatter gun approach, likely to give patchy results as you become more stressed and twitchy.

 

Results Driven LinkedIn Marketing Strategy 

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You must have heard of LinkedIn, but how often or effectively have you used it? Have you successfully created any business from it? 

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for business-to-business (B2B) activity that allows you to pinpoint your target market so you can connect with the right contacts in the right industry. It does the hard work for you, and you don’t have to spend hours or days manually searching for your potential contacts online. LinkedIn often does free trials if you don’t have a premium account, so taking advantage of the function during the free trial is a top priority if you don’t have the budget to keep it going.

Before you start connecting with people, you must review your profile and ensure it is up to date and engaging. Check out people in your industry, look for some good examples of engaging profiles and compare them to yours; how can you improve it? 

Once LinkedIn has worked its magic and given you your ideal contacts, it’s time to start the marketing and sales process. 

If you haven’t access to the automated search function, you will need to spend some time researching potentials manually through the LinkedIns filter system.

 

Creating a Sales and Marketing Funnel

Spending time putting together a process is time well spent. Create a sales and marketing funnel with specific steps from the initial introduction and connection request to moving to a deal. The stages will depend partly on your business, products and services and will influence the management of each step. The process could be entirely online and automated, or it may be that you move quickly to a telephone or video call or even a face-to-face meeting.

Creating a script for each stage of the process will help speed the process up from the introduction onwards. Use the script for LinkedIn messaging or email or in later stages as telephone scripts. The benefit of using a script ensures you are covering the essential points, staying on target and being effective with well-thought-out language, and of course, you can tailor it when you feel it is necessary. 

Once you have found the potential clients, you can engage with them, and having a strategy and script to work from will improve results and save time. Monitor and refine your results as you go to increase success further and reduce your time.

 

Win Your Potential Client’s Trust

Once LinkedIn has given you a list of perfect potential contacts, do a little research; what information do they share on their profile? Do you have anything in common that would help connect with them? Please look not only at their credentials but hobbies, where they live, or work experience.

When making your introduction, NEVER go straight in and try selling the shutters will go down, and you will have lost them forever. 

Connect with people and show interest in who they are, building trust and, thereby, the relationship is the first step.

 

Offer Your Help, Be Of Service

One way to win the trust of your potential clients is to offer them something for free that will be helpful; it could be a downloadable PDF guide, links to your website with information they need, and a free mini consultation.

Whatever freebie you can offer, always have an upsell, a clickable link to move them on to the next stage, whether to book a call, buy a product or download something else.

 

Follow Up 

Create a follow-up system and keep in regular contact with your potential, so they don’t forget about you, but don’t do it too often, so you become a nuisance. 

Why not ask for a freebie or share the latest blog post you have written, which you know will benefit them? Sharing 3rd party content can be valuable to building your relationship.

 

Move The Conversation

The follow-ups have gone well. The potential client is getting warmer. They are showing interest but have not yet converted to a client, but you use your judgement to gauge whether they are ready to be moved to the next stage of the sales and marketing process. The next stage in the process could be asking to have a 5 min call to outline the product benefits, meet up for a coffee to discuss your services or ask to send a product sales video. If your potential agrees, they now become a lead for your sales team, and if you are sales too, then it’s time to start selling; this potential has now become an active sales lead. If you are unsuccessful, keep going with the touch points and monitor their interest over time.

 

Posting on LinkedIn 

In tandem with the 1-2-1 engagement on LinkedIn, messaging or email Posting content is another way to attract potential clients you have not yet engaged with and demonstrate your knowledge and expertise to those you are building a relationship with. 

Ideas for posting: Use content already created on your website and post excerpts of your blogs with links to your website. Identifying clients’ pain points and how you can solve them are great ideas for posts. Sharing 3rd party relevant content is also essential, demonstrating that you are keeping up to date in your field and possibly the industries of your potential clients.

Video Marketing For Success

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If you are not considering using video in your online marketing strategy, you are missing a powerful tool to connect with your audience. Scary though it may be to get in front of a camera, the more you do it, the easier it gets. It is highly effective and efficient in producing engaging content to build relationships with your potential clients. 

How simple it can be, for video marketing, you need a phone with a camera and you or a colleague. Create a ‘top tip for the day, teach your audience something they don’t know. Behind-the-scenes video with ‘what we are doing today, ‘ ‘ what is our most popular product’, ‘recent conversation with a customer which was interesting because…’, ‘advice for a client problem that keeps occurring. Pose questions to generate conversation, and ask viewers to leave comments and opinions to encourage engagement and rapport with the audience. Keep your videos short and sweet, don’t waffle or take ages to get to the point. People switch off very quickly. Better to pack a punch than to fizzle out slowly. 

So keep it short, simple and easy. It will be more engaging and easy to film a month or a couple of months of content at a time. Simple editing software can help you cut out any bloopers and drop in a logo or title. 

There are so many benefits to using video for marketing your business that you will be putting it to the top of your marketing strategy before you’ve finished reading this post. 

 

A few of the enormous benefits; 

A video is much more effective than an image in every aspect, Take a look at any Instagram account, and you will find the views for videos are far higher than static images.

Video is an excellent tool for helping to build relationships with potential clients and is brilliant for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and impressions (eyeballs on content) and ultimately converting potential clients to actual clients.

Having video on your website keeps visitors on your page for longer and improves your engagement statistics, which will increase your website’s overall ranking.

People share Video content more than any other content. Think about what type of content you share or your friends, family and colleagues. It’s usually a video or GIF, and it is either funny, informational or shocking. 

People watch videos to educate themselves, including when looking for information on products and services they want. 

It helps your audience get to know you and your brand, products and services and make a deeper connection. Having you or other people from the company helps – people connect with people.

You can post your videos on YouTube and give them full SEO for relevant keywords to rank on YouTube and on Google search platforms.

In the name of efficiency, the Buffer platform makes it easy to schedule videos across social media platforms, so you don’t have to move through Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn Ectera. You can manage your videos through social media quickly and efficiently.

This list of benefits is not finite; there are many more. 

If you have benefited from using video to marketing your business and it isn’t in this blog, please comment below and share it with us all!