Digi Skills Agency

You are here: Home / Archives for marketing

marketing

10 Extremely Effective Marketing Strategies for B2C Businesses

by

Marketing is one of the most important aspects to promoting a business.

It’s therefore important to have extensive knowledge in a variety of Marketing techniques. Research has revealed what sort of Marketing techniques resonate well with Business Consumers. Check out the top 10 most popular techniques.

 

Cause Marketing

Cause marketing is a cooperative effort between a for-profit business and a non-profit organisation to mutually promote and benefit from social and other charitable causes. Cause marketing is not to be confused with corporate giving, which is tied to specific tax-deductible donations made by an organization. Cause marketing relationships are “feel goods,” and assure your customers you share their desire to make the world a better place.

Fact: 64% of consumers want corporations to integrate social impact directly into their business models.

 

Direct Selling

Direct selling accomplishes exactly what the name suggests – selling products directly to consumers. In this model, sales agents build face-to-face relationships with individuals by demonstrating and selling products away from retail settings, usually in an individual’s home. The top three direct sellers in 2015 are Amway, Avon and Herbalife.

Fact: The top 3 direct-sell companies averaged $9 billion in sales in 2015.

 

Co-branding and Affinity Marketing

Co-branding is a marketing methodology in which at least two brands join together to promote and sell a single product or service. The brands lend their collective credibility to increase the perception of the product or service’s value, so consumers are willing to pay more at retail. Secondarily, co-branding may dissuade private label manufacturers from copying the product or service.

Fact: In 2014, 6% of all product launches relied on co-branding.

 

Earned Media/PR

Earned media (or “free media”) is publicity that is created through efforts other than paid advertising. It can take a variety of forms – a social media testimonial, word of mouth, a television or radio mention, a newspaper article or editorial – but one thing is constant: earned media is unsolicited and can only be gained organically. It cannot be bought or owned like traditional advertising.

Fact: Nearly 75% of consumers identify earned media as a key influence in purchase decisions.

 

Point-of-Purchase Marketing (POP)

Point-of-Purchase (or, POP) sells to a captive audience – those shoppers already in-store and ready to purchase. Product displays, on-package coupons, shelf talkers that tout product benefits and other attention-getting “sizzle” often sways buying decisions at the shelf by making an offer simply too good – and too visible – to pass up.

Fact: 64% of consumers making unplanned purchases switch brands when a deal is offered in-store.

 

Internet Marketing

Internet marketing, or online marketing, combines web and email to advertise and drive e-commerce sales. Social media platforms may also be included to leverage brand presence and promote products and services. In total, these efforts are typically used in conjunction with traditional advertising formats like radio, television and print.

Fact: 97% of consumers search for businesses online.

 

Paid Media Advertising

Paid media is a tool that companies use to grow their website traffic through paid advertising. One of the most popular methods is pay-per-click (PPC) links. Essentially, a company buys or “sponsors” a link that appears as an ad in search engine results when keywords related to their product or service are searched (this process is commonly known as search engine marketing, or SEM). Every time the ad is clicked, the company pays the search engine (or other third party host site) a small fee for the visitor – a literal “pay per click.”

Fact: 76% of businesses use promoted posts and search engine marketing.

 

Word of Mouth Advertising

Word of mouth advertising is unpaid, organic and oh-so-powerful because those having nice things to say about your product or service generally have nothing to gain from it other than sharing good news. A recommendation from a friend, colleague or family member has built-in credibility, and can spur dozens of leads who anticipate positive experiences with your brand. It’s important to note that word of mouth isn’t strictly verbal. Leveraging online reviews and opinions are equally effective at spreading the word.

Fact: Word of mouth referrals drive $6 trillion in annual consumer spending.

 

Social Networks and Viral Marketing

Social media marketing focuses on providing users with content they find valuable and want to share across their social networks, resulting in increased visibility and traffic. Social media shares of content, videos and images also influence Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts in that they often increase relevancy in search results within social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram and search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Fact: 54% of B2C companies report revenue generated from social media leads.

 

Storytelling

Brand storytelling uses a familiar communication format to engage consumers at an emotional level. Rather than just spew facts and figures, storytelling allows you to weave a memorable tale of who your company is, what you do, how you solve problems, want you value and how you engage and contribute to your community and the public in general.

Fact: Brands that inspire a higher emotional intensity influence consumer purchase intent 3 times more often than less emotionally connected brands.

 

Every Strategy Requires an Effective Marketing Plan

Regardless of the strategy you choose, marketing effectiveness is most dependent on how you execute. Create yourself a Marketing plan and devise yourself a structure to follow in order to utilise these marketing techniques to their full potential in which both your business and consumers will benefit from. Good luck!

If you already posses knowledge and experience in Marketing? Check out our latest marketing role by following this link. It may be just right for you!

 

 

24-Steps to becoming a Marketing Prodigy

by

Content marketing has become a big part of consumer engagement and attracting the attention of the right audience online. That means that a lot more companies are doing it, and it’s getting increasingly challenging to stand out amid the sea of audio, video, images, documents, blogs, and more.

To make matters worse, virtually every marketer and business owner have found themselves in a rut trying to create enough marketing content, get the desired engagement, and find interesting ways to innovate.

Research shows that that 70% of B2B marketers are creating more content than they were the year before, and 54% find it difficult to produce engaging content.

There’s a distinct difference between B2B and B2C marketing, and each comes with its own unique challenges. Despite that, you can still benefit from these tips to get out of that rut and start to churn out something new and exciting.

 

Here are 24 content marketing tips you need to know in order to become a ‘Marketing Prodigy’:
  1. Use your content to gently guide your customers through your buying cycle. Don’t treat it like a speedboat, full-throttle through to conversion.
  2. Use social ads as a way to amplify the reach of your content marketing when you push it out through your social channels. A slight budget boost on Facebook can go a long way.
  3. Promote your content through a .com domain as often as possible.84% of top-ranking pages use .com as their top-level domain.
  4. “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing,”says Tom Fishburne of Marketoonist. If you have to force your audience to see the value in the content, or hard sell it, it won’t work. Build content around a takeaway for the audience.
  5. Don’t write short posts just to get the job done and over with. Write long-form content of 1,000+ words to help improve your search rank, traffic, and value to the reader.
  6. Create a buyer persona before you start planning or producing content. That way you have a better understanding of who is reading it and the answers they’re looking for. That leads to much higher conversions.
  7. Guest blog on popular industry sites and put a link back to your site within your byline or bio. This builds traffic as well as personal brand authority.
  8. Avoid verbose headlines and go with short, simple, optimized titles that get the point across. The closer you get to looking like click-bait, the more wary your audience may become.
  9. Never skip an opportunity to leverage email in your content marketing.80% of businesses report that email is directly tied to their primary revenue.
  10. Blog consistently, not sporadically. According to a recent survey, 82% of marketers who blogged daily reported acquiring at least one customer via their blog, compared to 57% who were only blogging monthly.
  11. Share your own content and use the social sharing buttons next to your content. You can use a plugin to make this process even easier.
  12. Re-purpose old content in a new way to bring something fresh to users who may not have seen it. “In the end, the re-purposed content needs to provide some level of unique value to people, or it’s not worth doing,” says Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing.
  13. Syndicate your content to reach a new audience and drive referral traffic back to your site.
  14. Always create a content strategy. The most effective content marketers are more likely to have a documented strategy in place.
  15. Create a strategy for content promotion. Use a checklist for each post that lists all of the social channels and applications you’ll use to promote your content.
  16. Always have a plan for building your audience. Use time-saving content marketing tools that work with you to help organically grow your following.
  17. Make reference to influencers by linking to their content or quoting them within your content marketing. Then reach out and let them know when you’ve mentioned them, either through manual social notifications, via email, or with an online marketing tool.
  18. Don’t generate one-off pieces of content. Create series pieces to drive repeat traffic.
  19. Remember to use the basic principles of conversion optimization so that all of your content, on every channel, has a higher chance of generating leads and sales for your team. Think about headlines, visual engagement, content layout, and call to action, just to name a few.
  20. Pay close attention to your analytics so you can keep track of the most popular topics and content types that are bringing in or driving traffic to your site. Do a lot more of what works, and cut the dead weight from your strategy.
  21. Trending content is important, but remember to include evergreen content that will continue to product traffic month after month, year after year.
  22. Always keep the focus on your audience when you produce content, no matter the type or channel. “Don’t focus on having a great blog,” says Brian Clark, Founder of CopyBlogger. “Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.”
  23. Talk and write as if you were having a conversation with a friend. Your audience is far more likely to relate to and engage with content that is conversational in nature. Speak on their level. You’re not a textbook.
  24. You can’t force good writing. Try different conditions, influences, and times of day for writing. Find the conditions that are most conducive to your creativity. If you can’t manage, you can always turn to freelancers to help you produce the content that your audience is hungry to find.

 

We hope you have found these 24 tips useful. Explore different ways of utilising them in your marketing strategy to see how they can work for you! The difference in traffic generation could be astounding and prove to be worth every effort. Good luck!

Are you interested in careers in marketing? We may have the perfect opportunity for you! Check out our latest Marketing Manager role by following this link.

 

– Sujan Patel

7 Excellent Marketing Strategies for Growing Brands

by

7 Marketing Strategies which should be taken into consideration for new businesses wishing to expand their brand awareness.

In marketing your brand, it’s important to find a balance between the cost and the results. Particularly for a new brand that’s trying to grow, the goal is to maximize your ROI (Return on Investment), by finding the most effective strategies for the least amount of money. Here are some of the best and most cost-effective marketing strategies to explore.

  1. Blogging

One of the simplest and most effective ways of driving traffic to your site is to have a blog. Google’s search algorithms favor websites that are updated frequently and provide high quality, relevant content to their users. A regularly updated blog serves both of these purposes.

According to one source, sites that post 16 blogs per month (roughly 4 blogs per week) generate 3.5 times more web traffic than sites that blog four times or fewer. The more high quality blogs you post, the more opportunities your audience will have to visit and interact with your site, and the better exposure you’ll get for your brand.

  1. Mailing lists

“No matter what kind of customers you encounter,” says John Matson of TopCreditCardProcessors, “Get them on your mailing list, to build up your contacts.” E-mail lists have developed a bad reputation in recent years. But used correctly, they can be a very useful tool. If you’re spamming random strangers to tell them to buy your products, your brand will become annoying and unpopular.

So instead, you need to build a list of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer, and provide them with regular updates about what’s going on in your company and why it’s of interest to them. You’ll see much better results and generate real, qualified leads that can be nurtured into sales.

  1. Online companies

One of the best and most cost-effective ways to reach new customers is by using online sites to market you company. Depending on your business, there are a number of sites that can help you reach new customers through search results and networking. A Yelp profile can increase your visibility to potential customer. It also gives you an opportunity to encourage loyal customers to leave you positive reviews, thus boosting your reputation. TripAdvisor provides the same opportunities for hotels, restaurants, and other tourist-centered businesses. And Mogul provides a platform for female business owners to show potential audiences what their companies are all about.

Social media can be a helpful tool in this regard as well. Ty Crandall, CEO of CreditSuite says, “Some of the most effective and cost-effective marketing strategies for growing a new business now come from social media. Platforms such as Facebook now make it easy to test headlines, images, concepts, ads and more for investments of less than £10 per day. Once you know what works, then it’s easy to apply that to other platforms that might cost more. This type of strategy can save you a ton of money and help you figure out what works quickly, even if you are only working with a shoe-string budget.”

  1. Calls to action

“The key to growing your business is understanding how your target market is looking for your service, and then maximizing efforts in those marketing channels with relevant and strong calls to action,” explains Spencer Kirk, CEO of Extra Space Storage. Believe it or not, many sites don’t include a call to action in their content. Every on your site, every blog you post, and every e-mail you send, should suggest the next step for interested users.

It may be, “Contact us for more information,” or “Download our white paper,” or “Subscribe to our newsletter,” but there should always be an opportunity for those who want to know more to further their relationship with your company.

  1. Press releases

Distributing press releases is a great way to keep people in your industry apprised of important updates from your company. You can create press releases to announce new products, award or accolades you’ve recently received, changes to your company structure, and more. It may take time to build up the right press contacts to gain your announcements real exposure, but the longer you persevere and the more effort you put into it, the better results you’ll see.

  1. Coupons and discounts

One thing is guaranteed to get your audience’s attention: telling them how they can save money. Offer discounts and coupon codes on your products or services. Make them seem exclusive, like the customers who are getting them are part of an elite few. By offering a few dollars off of your regular price, you can bring in customers who will stay loyal to your company for years to come.

  1. Using videos

Videos are one of the most effective tools to use in your marketing campaign. You can either create them in-house or outsource them to another company that specializes in creating high quality video content. Whichever option you choose, videos are a great way to engage your audience visually and increase your brand’s visibility.

 

These are just a few of the strategies you can use to grow your business cheaply and effectively. Do some experimentation, and see what strategies work best for your company, and have the biggest impact on your customer base.

 

Are you interested in careers within Marketing? Be sure to check out our latest range Marketing Job Roles on our website by following this link!

– Steve Olenski

Mobile Payment Applications: An effective Marketing Strategy?

by

Mobile payments are exploding. With the number of users forecast to grow by 62% to almost a fifth of smartphone users in the US this year, according to eMarketer, the value of proximity mobile transactions is expected to surge in 2016.

The mobile payment boom has been a long time coming. But now vendors are finally overcoming the technology hurdles to in-store deployment.

But the greatest potential of mobile payment will not be in, well, payment. There is little that is transformative about simply replicating a payment card in a smartphone app.

Whilst the bank and tech sectors have focused simply on launching transaction technologies, what retailers and brands are still waiting for is a mobile payment experience that provides solutions that address their concerns.

For many, that means marketing and its propensity for ‘spray and pray’. Fortunately, there is enough potential in mobile payment technology to enable consumer outreach that is more powerful than targeted ads through Google and Facebook, for example.

Think for a moment about the kinds of data collected at the moment of transaction. When you checkout using your smartphone, your mobile wallet benefits from intimacy with the vendor; it knows and collects detailed stock keeping unit (SKU) codes of the individual products you buy.

Whilst your bank may only know you spent £13.49 at your favourite cafe today, a retailer-connected payment app knows you bought one Coke, two espressos, one chicken sandwich and a Mars bar.

 

How do payment apps beat ad platforms?

This doesn’t just beat the banks – it also bests the ad platforms.

This general search intent has no real sight of eventual purchase and is not granular enough to glean product-level insights that could inform really powerful campaign messaging.

That is why marketing, traditionally thought of as the means with which to drive an end goal of product sales, is now becoming one of the key outputs of the sale itself.

The kinds of marketing powered by mobile transactions goes beyond the benefits bestowed by advertising on many counts:

Campaign insight: When you know the specific products consumer’s purchase, you effectively learn their pattern of consumption. This gives a window into the effectiveness of an ad campaign, in whatever medium. Did your ad buy move the needle for product X with consumer Y? If so, respond with additional messaging next up

Loyalty points: Although adoption of in-store mobile payments by consumers has been somewhat lagging, research by Opinion Matters for Kalixa showed consumers would make more payments if offered loyalty features or incentives on top. Integrating loyalty and rewards to a mobile wallet, for example, will drive wallet adoption, thereby producing the two wins of additional sales and new customer data for brands and retailers

Pre-buying products: Incentives come in many forms. Discounts offered for repeat purchases can be put to great effect, whilst beating the queues at high-traffic stores is another way to help consumers. The ability to reserve products in a mobile wallet is, therefore, something we are likely to see much more of

Mobile first interactions: Mobile payment takes the purchasing insights on consumers and through push notifications, in-app messages and emails, turns them into highly effective marketing drivers. It’s why push notifications are the most effective marketing channel on the market currently, and why, according to Urban Airship, targeted push notifications are three times more effective than the non-targeted.

The problem with mobile payments today is that there has been insufficient incentive driving repeat usage.

Using Apple Pay may seem like a novelty the first few times – but there is little benefit over using a contactless card, which is perhaps even more straightforward.

But, when mobile payment is thought of as the glue binding together customer marketing data, a retailer can go from the dark ages of knowing little about customers to making targeted offers based on a detailed and growing consumer profile that is based on actual purchase behavior, not just vague expressed intent.

 

– Alain Falys

If you found this interesting, make sure you check out our latest Marketing Executive role by clicking here!

The Future of SEO, Online Advertising and Social Media

by

What does the future hold for SEO, online advertising and social media?

Today’s marketing landscape reflects predictions made in science fiction films from the 80’s. We have predictive technology, machine learning and computers that can perform complex actions at nothing more than a voice command.

Put simply, we are living in a new age of internet capability where every discovery leads to more endless possibilities than the last.

The impact this is having on the marketing world is immense as brands look to keep a pace with their customers, the adopters of this technology.

In this 140 character and 15-second video era, it is evident that consumers’ attention spans are decreasing and with it, so are the windows of opportunity for brands to connect with them. It is no longer about “sell sell sell” but “engage engage engage”.

So what does the future hold for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), online advertising and social media and how can marketers effectively use these tools in order to continue to engage audiences?

Why SEO will continue to boom

Given the advances in technology, it’s hard to look more than a few years into the future with huge predictability. However, it’s likely that SEO will continue to grow in popularity, in one form or another.

According to a recent study by Borrell Associates, companies are going to spend $65bn on SEO in 2016. What’s more, the same study found the SEO industry will continue to grow to an estimated $72bn by 2018 and $79bn by 2020.

It’s not hard to see why. There is more of everything. There is more searching as older generations, averse to technology, are making way for younger generations, who use it regularly.

Brands have moved from trying to make their content go viral to focus on creating content that resonates with their audience

There are more users as the internet becomes more affordable and available to different demographics. There are also more outlets for search visibility. When traditional advertising methods finally cease to exist altogether, businesses will have no choice but to look to inbound marketing campaigns in the online world.

Although it won’t all be plain sailing. We’ll see competition increase as more people get involved, which is likely to put up costs.

SEO will adapt with the times and so will how people using it. In the short-term there is much out there to help businesses keep up to date and incorporate a best practice SEO strategy – we do it regularly to support our users.

Looking further ahead, technologies such as self-driving cars will give users more time to perform searches at times when they previously couldn’t. These changes will make it possible for almost anyone to search for anything at any time.

Digital assistants will bridge the gap between online and offline search and as more and more brands get to grips with big data, we can expect to see search engines specific to individual platforms like the app store.

Social Media

While all of this is going on we will see a new age of social media that goes beyond the consumer dominated landscape it is today. It will become a business battleground, particularly centered on metrics and engagement.

Metrics such as likes, followers, retweets, unique views, total story completions or even screenshots, but most importantly click-through rates and the actions taken after that are what marketers will be looking at in more detail.

The goal of every marketer is to have a reliable social ROI (Return of investment) in order to be able to connect social efforts with real world results.

Alongside with metrics comes engagement. Brands have moved from trying to make their content go viral to focus on creating content that resonates with their audience, particularly video, and we will see a lot of developments in this space.

By producing content that is valuable and interesting to their audience, the most likely it is for it to be shared. This might seem an easy task, but it’s not. The only way to get it right is by constantly learn and understand what your audience expects from your brand and your business.

– Li-at Karpel Gurwicz

If this is of interest to you, be sure to check out our latest marketing roles here!

© 2025 Digi Skills Agency Ltd. All rights reserved. Sitemap

Website Design by Yellow Marshmallow.