We believe truly effective marketing comes from companies being creative and innovative with the resources available to them.

Here, we give our top tips on maximising your marketing potential, without breaking the bank.

With the expansion of online and guerilla marketing, getting your company in front of millions has never been easier. The key to effective marketing on a small budget lies with imagination and successful audience targeting.

Gimhani Gunasinghe, Head of Marketing at the LSM commented: “When it comes to start ups and grassroots firms with small marketing budgets, it is important to be smart and imaginative to make the most of each marketing campaign.

“By effectively targeting audiences for optimum conversion, these smaller businesses have proven that by being marketing savvy, they can transform business performance.”

1. SEO ­ Optimise your website for search engines

Having an online presence in the business world is becoming increasingly important so your website should be the number one priority. However, having a website without optimisation is of no use at all.

Make sure you post interesting and relevant content on your website so it gets picked up by the bigger search engines. A basic understanding of content management and copywriting skills can do wonders for a brand’s online presence.

2. Create a blog and keep it updated

Blogs are a fantastic way of creating interesting content on your website and promoting your brand.
Blogs are now largely considered essential mediums for driving traffic to your website, as well as providing a chance to showcase your brand’s services or products.

Regularly updating your blog with links to other websites, images will also get picked up by search engines and social media sites, contributing to your SEO.

3. Social Networking

Social media and networking sites are one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your audience without going into the red.

By having a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (to name but a few) you can promote your brand to customers in an interactive way. All feedback can be tracked and a direct connection established via “followers” or “likes”. What’s more, it’s all free.

4. YouTube

Producing and distributing video content can get very expensive if you go through a professional film firm but the online video streaming service YouTube provides a much cheaper alternative.

A brand can create a channel and stream videos demonstrating products or services for next to nothing. Like social media, monitoring followers and comments can also track the success of these marketing campaigns.

5. Content strategy

A successful content strategy starts with a consistent approach, no matter how diverse your audience may be. That is why defining your brand’s tone of voice (TOV) is more important than ever.

A well-defined TOV will guarantee that your brand’s voice is distinct from that of your competitors, extending beyond your brand’s look and feel, and into the way words are used to communicate all that it stands for.

6. Transmedia

Customers today are the ones deciding what advertising they will respond to and how. To reach them, businesses need to tell brand stories that target audiences want to hear again and again. A transmedia approach is simply good marketing, managed strategically, with more innovative and personalised tools in place to deliver it.

In layman’s terms, with transmedia, each medium that your audience interacts with should serve a very specific purpose, while allowing your story to unfold like chapters in a book. And like a good book, more of the narrative of the story is shared over time, allowing for a deeper connection with its characters.

For example, at the end of a blog post, you should continue the story by giving a link to download a whitepaper on the same subject. At the end of the whitepaper, you can direct the reader to watch a video on your YouTube channel on the same subject.

7. Hypertargeting

Hypertargeting’ as a term was coined by MySpace in November 2007 to refer to “a new advertising solution that enables online marketers to tap into self-expressed user information to target campaigns.” Social media is clearly the ideal platform for hypertargeting due to the abundance of personal information voluntarily provided by the users.

The implementation of social media hypertargeting has greatly aided marketers in reaching their intended target audience while reducing overall budget and increasing ROI. The methodologies used by hypertargeting will continue to change as social media networks evolve and the ability to collect vital user data increases.

Social media hypertargeting, coupled with buyer personas, will provide an ideal way to reach target audiences in a personalised manner, providing highly effective marketing content which will result in a higher conversion rate.

 

By the London School of Marketing (LSM)

PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.

comments powered by Disqus