How to Cash Maximum Benefit from Marketing

Good marketing can sell anything even an average product, and a good product with bad marketing cannot be sold. Nowadays, marketing is not about the product we make, it is about the stories we tell. Customer’s buying behaviour can greatly be influenced by the correct marketing strategies. The biggest tool of marketing is advertising. What people see and adore, they purchase that. Marketing does not only include electronic media like television or print media like banners and newspapers. Rather the best platform to showcase products and lure audiences is social media. According to a survey, social media ads are more effective in selling a product than advertisements on TV. This is the next big wave of advertising, but it is not the only option available. With increased use of the internet, the scope of marketing has also increased. But offline marketing is no less important, so we have two broader categories- online marketing and offline marketing. Offline marketing means hoardings, newspaper ads, pamphlets, TV ads, Radio (FM) ads, word of mouth etc. Simultaneously, online marketing includes- social media, paid ads, native ads, email, in-app ads etc.

So basically, the war is between the paid marketing and organic marketing. Either you pay to be seen or you provide qualitative content such that Google will make you visible. Small businesses or start-ups cannot afford trying everything and examine which one works best for them, neither should enterprises do that. So what should be the correct ratio of time and money investment such that businesses can maximise the benefit from the marketing? There is no one solution for all the businesses. It all depends on the sales funnel of each business.

Sales funnel, you must be aware of the term and probably have one of your own. So how do your sales funnel determine exactly how much time, money and workforce you need to invest in different forms of marketing to get the most out of them. Well, the answer is how it cannot! Sales funnel is all about how to convert potential leads into customers. So, it is the seller journey corresponding to the customer journey. Based on how visitors behave before, during and after purchase, sellers ‘inspire’ them into buying from them. The sales funnel goes like this- Awareness=> first visit=> compare=> return visit=> conversion=> customer support.

Thus, for each step of sales funnel, you need to create a right marketing mix such that the ultimate goal of conversion can be achieved. Let us go through each step and determine which marketing tactic will work the best for it. Let's begin.

1.    Awareness. People don't know about you. They don't know what you do, what products you sell, how can they be beneficial for them. In short they don't know that you exist. So you need to tell people that you do exist and you have an absolute solution to their problems. To be visible, firstly you need to develop quality content that answers the questions of your targeted audiences. Now display the content over the internet with the help of social media. Thus, you can reach to the maximum number of people. Advertisements can boost the awareness. So the correct combination is- content + social media + ads + offline.

2.    First visit. So that, people know about you and visited your site for the first time. But they certainly do not purchase on the first visit. They are here to examine you; about your products and services. To lure visitors, you need to deploy the biggest weapon of them all; SEO. Various professional SEO firms like Houston SEO services can make the task easier. Subsequently, content quality is still important to keep the visitor’s interest intact. Social media presentation works too. Your marketing mix- Search + social media + content.

3.    Comparison. So, now people will compare your products with your competitor’s. Either they know your competitors or they search on Google. So again, you need to invest in SEO to rank better than your competitors. Content is important and display marketing like- native ads, Facebook lead ads, PPC can increase your credibility. Marketing mix- search + content + ads + email + app.

4.    Return visit. This return visit is different from returning customers. Returning customers come at the end of the sales funnel. These visits are from the visitors who didn’t convert the first time. The marketing strategies you can use for these visitors are- search + social media + content + ads + email. 

Now understand, these people know you, but you need to make them realize that you are waiting for their purchase. You need to be at the front of their eyes and what could be the better way than advertisements.

5.    Conversion. In this stage, leads finally convert to the customers. They are making purchase on your website. The marketing that leads them here- search + content + ads.

6.    After sales customer support. The journey doesn't end at the sales or purchase. Customers may face a problem with the product. Customer support is very crucial at that point. The marketing that works- search + social media + content + ads + email + app.

Know your Marketing Weak Points

You cannot excel in all the marketing forms for all the stages of sales funnel. Know where you lack and which areas need immediate improvement. You may be getting a huge volume of traffic but only to teach you that more traffic is not equal to more conversions. Know what you can do for gaining the conversions. You may have best ads for the keyword targeted or best social media representation but you may be ignoring organic searches. Remember, not many people rely on ads they see on the top or side of search engine results page. You need to rank better too, then take a different scenario. Maybe you rank good and people are aware of you. But when they visit your website, your content is not good enough, it is not convincing. So all of your efforts will go in vain, just because you ignored content quality.

A correct balance of every marketing form is very essential. Otherwise, the end of your funnel will become narrow and narrow. The ratio of output to the input will become negligible. Explore the world of opportunities and find out the best marketing weapons.

Evaluate your Marketing Tactics

So you know what to do, how to do and when to do, but it is not enough. Maybe what you are doing is not good enough. You need to look closely how much traffic each of these individual efforts is driving, and whether the traffic is converting or not. Let us suppose you have invested in search engine optimization. Your rank is quite good in terms of keywords. You are waiting for the audiences and Nada! Just because you targeted the wrong keyword. Either this does not belong to your niche or this is not the keyword that people are using to search. So the money, time and energy are all wasted. Same can go for paid advertisement. They are visible, but click rates are very less, even conversions are lesser. What we are trying to say is to measure the effect of every investment. It is said; what is not measured, cannot be improved. There is always a scope for improvement. You just need to watch closely.

Analyse your marketing mix and Redistribute

So, you have been giving more resources to search marketing and least to native ads. PPC ads are bringing you the most of the traffic. But it is very superficial way of looking into things. You need to ask some questions to yourself such as how many resources does this marketing strategy need? Is any of them bringing the wrong kind of traffic? Can any of them perform on their own? Are all of them measurable? Should you start investing less in this strategy?

When you have answers to all these questions, you can achieve a highly customized, highly successful and implementable marketing mix. Investing equally in all of these forms is a big No! Some plans need more while some need less. As per Austin SEO Company, effective allocation of resources is what makes a business successful.