Are you looking for ways to increase your presence in the market without having to increase the size of your marketing budget? One great way to do this is to create a strategic marketing partnership.
What exactly is a strategic marketing partnership?
Simply put, it is a partnership you create with another business with the goal of helping you both achieve your goals. In the case of a strategic marketing partnership, it is a simple and effective way for brands to expand their audience.
Why would you want a strategic marketing partnership for your business?
The real question is, why wouldn’t you want one? This type of relationship is one that can be mutually beneficial to both companies involved, because it allows you access to twice as many customers, contacts, and other businesses that could potentially be partnerships as well. By partnering with another company, you double your exposure, because while you are promoting them to your customers and contacts, they are doing the same for you. In addition to being beneficial for you, it is beneficial for your customers as well. They get access to a larger pool of referrals from someone they already trust.
How do you choose a strategic marketing partner?
1. Make a list of products or services that compliment what your business does or sells. What is it that your customers need in addition to your products? Make sure you choose things that are not in direct competition with your business.
2. Find 15-20 businesses that provide the products or services you identified in step one. You can find these businesses through your own personal knowledge or by talking to your customers.
3. Contact these businesses. You know that you hate getting cold calls from people that are trying to “sell” you something, so keep that in mind when contacting them. Try writing a letter instead that outlines what you are trying to do, what the value of it is to you as well as them, and how it will benefit both of your customers.
4. Review the responses you receive back, and determine which business best fits with your company and your marketing needs.
5. Sit down with them and figure out how you can work together and what you both need to do.
What can you do for each other to make this strategic marketing partnership work?
- Share posts on social media.
- Provide content for a newsletter.
- Write a featured blog.
- Make mentions of your partner on social media.
- Create a freebie to give to your customers that features both business.
- Provide coupons/discounts as a way to introduce your partnership to your customers.
- Make a referral to your partner whenever possible and relevant.
- Host an event that features your partner. Make sure it is interesting for your customers.
It may take a bit of work up front, but in the long run a strategic marketing partnership can be beneficial to everyone involved.
Don’t be another statistic, ensure the success of your new business.
Are you in the process of opening up your own business? Many people rush into becoming a business owner, without really realizing what it entails. To run a successful business you must avoid making these common mistakes:
1. Not having clear objectives.
From the beginning, it is important to set clear and realistic objectives. Start by making a list of goals and objectives based on a quarterly timeline. In addition, ensure that all your employees are aware of the objectives. Just think about it, a business without clear objectives is like driving a car without a destination in mind.
2. Identify your potential customers.
Who is going to use your product or service? How will they be using your product or service? It is important for you to know who your customer is, so you know how to reach them and maximize your sales.
3. Test your ads.
Run several ads at once with different copy. By doing this you can see what wording resonates best with your customers.
4. Make a budget!
Budgeting is a must with any business, new or established. You should NEVER run the risk of your business running out of money. This is especially true for your advertising and marketing needs. Sit down and plan out how much you have to spend monthly or quarterly on your marketing. Think about promotions you want to run each month, and set that amount aside. Start small, and see what works for you business.
5. Don’t give up.
Starting a business is not an easy task. On average you need to give your promotions at least 3 months before you decide to scrap a campaign. On that note, some promotions might take longer to drive results. As we said before, test your promotion on a smaller scale before you launch a larger promotion, and most importantly be patient. You need to give your business time to be found and talked about, and that takes time.
It’s important that you find employees that will preserve the integrity of your company at all times. Sure, it could be easy to hire the first person that walks in the door, but think about it, one rude customer service experience can cost you not just that particular customer but all their friends and family. So screen your future employees, and ensure that they truly are the type of person that represents your business at its best.
Overall, to be successful you need to ensure you have an array of advertising mediums. Think a health mix of social media, search and maybe even some radio or print (depending on the nature of your business). In addition, don’t just do one or two promotions and then simply wait for results. Be proactive, find new ways to reach your potential customers, think outside of the box and reach them in a relevant and unique way.
By avoiding these mistakes you can help your business achieve year round success. So plan ahead and get to it!
The Olympics are a time when athletes get to participate in events that showcase the athletic talents and abilities that they have a worked a lifetime to perfect. It is weeks of events that people love to watch, participate in, and celebrate with our athletes. The question is…How can you, as a business, participate in the Olympics, and make it relevant to your marketing plan?
Prepare for the Games
The first thing you need to do is to get prepared for the games.
- Set up monitoring. Set up a monitoring plan that will keep track of what is trending. What is happening? What are people talking about? What are they most interested in?
- Do some research. Focus on areas of the games that are most relevant to your company. What events, teams or athletes align with your brand? Which ones make sense for your brand to comment on?
Compete in the Games
Now you need to determine how you can truly participate in an effective way.
- Don’t post stale content. Posting a congratulations to the gold medal winners is probably not the most effective, as those interested in the Olympics are most likely already aware of who the winners are.
- Post reactive content. Make sure to post content that reacts to the conversations and topics that are trending. The Olympics are quite simply news, so they are constantly changing, and you must be ready to also.
- Prepare themes. Although you don’t want to prepare actual posts ahead of time, you can prepare themes you would like to focus on for your business. Some branded hashtags that are relevant could be a good thing to prepare as well.
Don’t get Disqualified
You want to make sure that you aren’t posting content that will get you counted out by your viewers.
- Stay focused. You need to make sure that you keep your content focused on your brand. Posting irrelevant content will only serve to turn your readers off. Don’t try to force content to “fit” with your brand.
- Avoid political statements. There has been a large amount of controversy surrounding the Russian Winter Olympic games, and that is probably a topic you want to avoid. You want people to look at your brand in a positive light, so focus on the positives rather than the political negatives.
Stand on the Podium
The Olympics are a time for countries to celebrate their athletes and all of the achievements they accomplish. It is a time full of pride. If you keep this in mind, be respectful, and show your pride along with the rest of the country your audience will appreciate it, and you should be able to effectively market your company throughout the Olympic games.
How Do You Make Your Business Customer Centric?
It’s easy to claim that you are all about your customers, but it’s difficult to actually be customer centric. Just because you say and think your company is customer centric doesn’t actually make you customer obsessed.
What does it mean to be customer centric?
To truly be a customer centric company you need to understand who these people are. How do they discover your product? Why do they want to buy your product or visit your store?
When customers make purchases today it’s no longer the straight line of times past. Instead now they want to build relationships with businesses and companies. In addition, they do research, talk to friends and family about your company, look you up on Facebook and Twitter, read online reviews, and then, if your business passes all this, then they might buy something from you.
So what’s a business to do? Become obsessed with understanding this process. By understanding exactly what your customers’ purchase process is you can help influence their behavior along the way. Being customer centric doesn’t just mean that you value and appreciate your customers anymore. It now includes the task of knowing your customers as well as they know themselves.
How can you become customer centric?
One of the biggest competitive advantages your business can have in today’s market is your company’s relationship with your customers. Not sure if you’re building these relationships? Here’s how you can grow and maintain these relationships:
Keep Track of Your Customer
Do you have a database with your customers’ information? If you do, great, but are you taking advantage of it? Are you sending out reminders to customers that have bought certain products/services? If you aren’t, you really should be. These are instances that can make your customers into repeat and frequent customers. If you aren’t, what are you waiting for! Give your customers an incentive (maybe 10% off their next visit) to hand over valuable information such as their name, email and date of birth. Then use the information to keep them informed about new inventory arrival or an upcoming promotion. Just make sure it is relevant to them.
Reach Your Customer Across ALL Channels
Now you know who your customers are, so start talking to them. Did they give you their email? Send them a newsletter once a month. Do they like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter? Make sure you are keeping your social media channels up-to-date with your company’s latest news, promotions and products.
Measure It
One of the most important things to do is keep track of what is working. Did you see an increase in in-store traffic when you were running a Facebook offer? Did you have more phone calls sales leads during your Adwords campaign? Keeping track of what is working and what is not working can help you determine what advertising mediums works best for you business.
The above-mentioned are just stepping stones to help your company become customer centric. If you really are interested (which you should be) in learning exactly who your customer is and what their purchasing process is, you should think about doing a little market research answering questions like:
- How do your customers hear about you?
- Where do they do their research?
- When do they usually buy your product?
Want to learn more about your customers, or are you ready to start building a relationship with your customers? Give us a call. We could help.
Welcome to 2014. It’s that time of year again…time to evaluate your business. You’re probably asking yourself questions like… What went well last year? What needs to be improved for this coming year? What do I need to do to make those improvements? Most often, the answers to your problems come back to marketing…what type of marketing you’re doing, what your message is, and how you’re delivering that.
1. Content marketing will be king
Although this is not a new marketing trend, it is something that will continue to grow this year. Content marketing is one of the main ways a company can establish it’s presence and authority in their field. According to the Content Marketing Institute, the top content marketing strategies are social media, articles on your company website, eNewsletters, and blogs. Effectively implementing content marketing into your marketing plan for 2014 is a must. To learn more about content marketing click here.
2. Social media will need to be more diverse
Not too long ago, businesses were limited by the number and types of social media outlets available for them to use…Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Now, it seems that social media networks and apps are popping up all over, and networks like Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube and Tumblr are growing in popularity. Due to this, it is more of a necessity than ever for businesses to find, experiment with, and use social media. Click here to learn more about the various social media.
3. Content focused on images become more important
Our customers are bombarded with advertisements from the beginning to the end of their day. If you look at the social media networks I mentioned above, you will see that most of them have one thing in common…images. Some of the most successful social media campaigns and blogs are image centric. With very little time and a deluge of content out there, it is easy for our customers to skim over it, so it is important to include enticing images to break up and enhance the text you’re putting out there.
4. Simplicity will reign
We’ve all heard the saying, “Less is more,” but how does that apply to this year’s marketing trends? There is a lot of clutter in all of our daily lives, and it is easy for messages to get lost. Your customers want to know what you’re doing, what’s new with your company, and how it is good for them, but they want it to be simple. The time has passed for writing long-winded posts and advertising messages. Short, simple, and to the point is the best way to make sure your message is paid attention to.
Maybe the best way to summarize this is with a quote found in an article by Forbes, which said, “There is a sense that from the hyper-connectivity of our highly-digitized lives to the bright, flashy, complicated sensory input we’re fed everyday, there is no way to continue at this pace. As a result, 2013 is likely to be a year where the most successful marketing strategies will be ones that are not only simple in nature, but promote goods and services that serve to simplify the consumer’s life, or even just their customer experience.”
5. Mobile optimized content becomes more necessary
Have you taken a look around lately? How many people do you see walking around looking at the phone or tablet? How many mobile devices does your family own? The answers to these questions, most likely reveals something that most of us already know…Mobile devices reign. It is increasingly more important that all of your business’ content be mobile optimized. You can learn more about that here.
During the next few weeks that you are examining last year’s marketing strategy, making evaluations and developing your marketing strategy for 2014, remember to keep these marketing trends in mind.
