Traditional marketing methods, such as billboards, flyers, and TV ads, are gradually declining. The various outbound marketing methods, such as cold calls, were never very popular among customers and digital marketing is clearly the way forward, as there’s hardly anybody without an online presence. Businesses are constantly looking for ways to engage their customers without spending too much while remaining effective in the process. Finding the gold standard can be challenging, but some paid solutions are well worth the investment. However, there are also some methods that don’t require you to fork over your hard-earned cash.
Register a Google My Business Account
Signing up for Google My Business costs nothing whatsoever and creates an online reference to your physical location. Your business will show up on Google Maps following the registration, and potential customers will see your business when they’re in the area. Admittedly, a lot depends on luck at this point, but optimizing your Google My Business profile – by verifying ownership, for example – can increase your chance of being visited by customers. In just a few steps, your potential clients are more likely to notice your business.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the most widely used strategies of online marketing. The way it works is that you create your brand and then start producing content about it. For example, if you run a cybersecurity business, it’s not enough to come up with the best internet security software; you also have to sell it by making customers realize they need it. To do this, you write articles about cybersecurity threats, create guides on how cybersecurity software works, follow up on the latest data breaches and publish the latest statistics. Show your customers that you know what you’re doing by providing reliable advice via writing, video, and infographics. Do this with simple, everyday language and by taking advantage of the various content marketing tools available, so that your potential customers don’t get bogged down in the details. Creating content isn’t expensive, but it does require time and experience. So, hiring either a full-time content creator or a freelance copywriter is recommended.
Ask Websites To Review Your Product
Speaking of content creators and freelance copywriters, you don’t have to do everything yourself. Quite a few review websites are more than happy to create content for you, either by writing up an article about your product, creating a video about it, or anything in-between. Expert reviewers always stay objective while highlighting your product’s selling points. And even if they find your product lacking in some areas, their focus will always stay on its positive elements.
Email Marketing
With the unstoppable march of social media, you might think that sending emails would become obsolete. But it hasn’t, as emails are still one of the most common methods to contact existing and potential clients. While a social media post easily gets lost among the many others, emails send a notification when they land in someone’s inbox. Moreover, emails are more personal, which helps show your customers that you care for them. Newsletters are the perfect way to share interesting information – such as special discounts and service updates – sending more traffic your way. By leading clients to your website, they’ll find the enticing new content, making them eager to return for more the next time they receive your email. It’s possible to do all this manually, but email marketing software lets you automate the process of sending newsletters, offering subscriptions, creating email sequences, and much more. Especially when paired with other marketing software, email marketing can easily become your ultimate weapon to show and sell your product.
Webinars
There comes the point when your clients want to get in touch with you directly. Customers will want to see who you are and what kind of person they’ve been supporting. Organizing a webinar doesn’t take much of your time or resources, and hosting it is a simple way to let loose and show your personality. So far, you’ve been identified with your product. Now, they can put a human face on it. Remain informative while incorporating some humor, and be ready to answer challenging questions. Webinar software makes the process child’s play, allowing you to host webinars for thousands of attendees.
As always, it’s up to you which methods you choose to engage with your customers. But whatever you do, be sure to show confidence and belief in your audience. Whenever you reach out to both new and existing clients, show them that the product is secondary to the person buying it. After all, they need to feel that this product has been designed with them in mind.