Are you treating your current situation like a vacation or taking your marketing to the next level? While you relax (or maybe resign yourself to unintentional paralysis) it’s easy to lose focus and chase rabbits.
Meanwhile, successful businesses, and those that are going to win, are using this time to set themselves up for explosive growth. So, if you’re finding yourself in uncertain times, on cruise control or auto-pilot, master these 3 essential business marketing strategies to be more like them and accelerate your business.
Grow Your Email List
No matter what anyone says, marketer, consultant, friend, know this:
- Your email list is the most valuable asset you own.
That’s right “OWN”.
Can you send a message at any time to your social followers? If your business profile disappeared would you be able to communicate with your fans? Without paying? Probably not.
Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and the other social media platforms can change the rules at any time.
Your email list is your permission to deliver your message directly to your customer! What’s more valuable than that?!
Maintaining, growing, and consistently communicating over email should be a top priority. Now that you don’t have any other pressing matters to attend to… do this:
- Audit and segment your list for active/inactive members, customers/non-customers, etc.
- Ensure you have a list growth strategy. (Be sure to you opt-in practices adhere to regional/national laws, like CAN-SPAM or the California Consumer Privacy Act – CCPA, GDPR, etc)
- Send an email now & then do it again tomorrow, then again the next day, and so on.*
*If you haven’t been emailing daily it may feel awkward. Know this. Your customers are not sitting up awake at night thinking about you or your business. I have yet to experience a negative reaction to valuable emails. Segmenting your list and creating an editorial calendar can help ensure emails are valuable, just be sure the planning doesn’t get in the way of starting.
Listen to Your Customers
When it comes to engaging & understanding your customer, their psychology, the best companies know how to listen. There really isn’t a better tool than social media.
Why?
The entire business model of social media built on what we put on their platform. We all share, if not over-share, everything from 1st birthdays, vacation photos, accolades, experiences, and we do it voluntarily! We give it away! And social platforms sell it, in the form of advertising targeting. The best companies know how to take that data and listen.
Can we tap into that and keep a pulse on our customers?
Yes! And it can show us what content to write, products to create, how to position or products and services, and much, much more!
Find where your customers engage on social media and follow along, learn:
- What is shared on each platform?
- How much is getting shared?
- What content gets the most engagement?
Publish Valuable Content
Like I said earlier, your customers don’t stay up at night thinking about your business. Right now you can’t show them your service or products in person so how are you going to show value? Build trust?
Content!
You’ve always said you wanted to start making videos, a company podcast, or publish some sort of content. Now’s the time. When are you going to have more time, or at least the urgency to stay relevant?
In lieu of face-to-face meetings, or store drop-ins, you NEED to show your value. This can be a story about how your product/service has helped a client, articles clarifying misconceptions, product walk-through’s, trends, statistics. Just remember to be valuable, this is for your customer, not for you. (If you’ve been listening for any amount of time I’m sure you’ll be able to identify topics of value.)
How to start:
- Make a list of topics/categories you should write about
- Brainstorm 2-3 specific titles for each category and identify the format it should be created for (video, article, audio, photo/infographic).
- Choose 1, create & publish it, share it.
- Repeat step 3
Publishing your content will have 2 major benefits that make it key to start NOW. First, it will earn you respect and reputation among your customers, because it will be valuable to them. Second, it will boost your SEO and search rank, which will help you during and well after recession.
Are you starting any new marketing initiatives? What are you doing to sharpen your marketing strategy? Be sure to share it while tagging us @mypocketmarketing