In recent years marketing has moved on in leaps and bounds. Gone are the days of complete reliance on print, radio and television advertising and instead content marketing and new forms of communication with customers have moved centre stage.
If you feel your business hasn’t quite kept up to date with these changes what can you do to bring your marketing into the 21st century?
Visual Appeal
Your website is your shop window on the world and thus it’s important to make sure it’s both visually appealing and offers content which your potential clients will find valuable.
This is achievable whatever type of business you run and it isn’t the sole preserve of high-tech companies. This is clearly illustrated by this infographic from Farm Machinery Online which takes what could be quite dry statistics and presents them via an interesting and dynamic visual which updates continually so you can see real-time changes.
Communication Methods
Innovations in technology and the advent of VoIP providers have allowed both video and voice to now be transferred over the internet easily and cheaply. VoIP has reduced costs for all calls, but especially long distance and international ones, and introduced a variety of methods which means it’s now much easier to communicate with clients.
It is now possible to add click to call buttons on online adverts, on your website and even embed them within emails. This means potential customers can be talking with one of your sales or support staff within seconds, without having to wait for information via email or to have their call returned. Offering this access whilst your lead is warm is more likely to lead to a sale, and it’s less likely that the lead will turn to a competitor.
Online chat makes it possible to communicate directly with people when they are browsing your website. Customer service staff are then often able to help the potential customer make a buying decision by answering questions which might have proved a barrier to sale otherwise. Screen share allows technical support staff to reduce the time they spend on each individual support call and makes a positive resolution much more likely for the customer.
Content Marketing
Instead of reaching out to your target market through expensive advertising, content marketing allows you to draw customers to your own online property, your website. If you can provide your reader with relevant content, which is going to be of value to them, you can often turn browsers into buyers.
When consumers are making buying decisions they no longer want to be sold to, rather they want to gather information and then make a purchasing decision based on who has provided the most valuable insights. If you can provide content your readers trust on a consistent basis, you will build a relationship with them so they are willing to purchase from you and eager to recommend your business to family and friends.
Social Media
The last link in the chain is social media, and it is through the various platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, that you can share your infographics, images and the blog posts which make up your content marketing. With social media the visual appeal is hugely important, and this goes back to what we discussed in the first point.
Images and video are very effective on social media for attracting shares, likes and encouraging people to comment. Research has shown that images will attract the most attention, getting an 87% interaction rate from followers on Facebook. The next best, which was link type status updates, only managed to achieve 4%. This isn’t surprising when you consider it is images that usually attract your attention when you are scrolling through your newsfeed. This is even more important today as most people now consume social media on mobile applications, where it’s much easier to see an image than it is to read small text.
Making innovations in your marketing techniques need not be difficult and nor does it have to prove expensive. In fact costs are now considerably lower because you can attract clients through the free methods of social media and talk to them at much lower costs through VoIP. The internet has heralded a radical change in the way businesses need to reach out to their target market but on the whole it has been a very positive change and one which will continue to evolve.
