Published on: 22 March 2019
Last Updated on: 30 May 2019
Marketing is vital to every company’s success. Without the correct marketing strategies employed, no one will know about your business. Even if you have high-quality products, no one will care about them since they do not know that your business exists in the first place. It is true especially for small companies that are yet to create a name in the industry.
Allotting money for marketing plans could boost your success. Make sure though that you spend it wisely; otherwise, you will be wasting the opportunity to advertise.
You started marketing without a strategy:
Not all marketing strategies work. Some of them are expensive, but you do not see the results. Others are free, but the tactic could attract a lot of people. The marketing plan is a long process that begins by researching the people that you are targeting. You need to know what they want and what advertising strategy appeals to them. For instance, if you decide to release a video ad online, it needs to be short and concise. Within that short time, you can capture attention if you have a strategy; otherwise, no one will watch it.
You are not spending enough money:
If you think of using a portion of your budget for marketing, you need to go all-in; otherwise, you are wasting the opportunity. Some marketing strategies are expensive and require you to invest a lot. However, you also build your company’s name in the process. For instance, if you want media coverage in a massive event that is going to happen in your area, you need to spend money to be a major sponsor. If you are going to release a TV commercial, you need to spend money on quality production. You still need to be smart in determining how much to spend, but you cannot keep reducing the budget.
You expect quick results:
The problem when some people spend money on advertising is that they expect results right away. It does not work that way. When you advertise, you need to wait for a while before you see things go in the right direction. The reason why it is essential is that some people decide to give up and stop spending when the advertising efforts are still going on. Once you choose to use an advertising strategy, you cannot abandon it in the middle of the process just because you think it is not working.
You are spending everything on one strategy:
It would be a disaster if you invested all your money in one marketing effort, and it failed. Diversifying your tactics will help a lot. If you think that online marketing works, you can invest in it. However, you cannot assume that it will be successful. As such, it also helps if you spend money in other areas like the use of conventional marketing methods. You can try garment t-shirt printing since it is a proven technique that many businesses still use. You may also start giving out flyers and posters.
Be careful in using your money for marketing and make sure you are investing it in the right way.
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If you are looking for a way to reach a larger audience but don't know where to start, you are not alone. Not knowing how to expand your reach is a common problem in the business world, and not everyone knows what they should do to solve the issue. The application of Telemarketing can help you to reach a wider set of audience.
Most people use digital marketing to reach their goals in the modern age, but never overlook the power of telemarketing, which is still a useful approach that lets you achieve your business objectives. This guide explains the top benefits you get when using this method so that you have a clear picture of where to go next. When you use a proven process and keep your needs in sight, telemarketing services offer impressive results.
Different Ways Telemarketing Can Help You To Reach Wider Audience:-
There are multiple ways telemarketing can help you to reach a wider set of audience in a short time frame. It can help you to achieve your goals in the best possible manner.
Inexpensive Marketing:
Telemarketing benefits your business by giving you an inexpensive way to speak with your customers. In the past, you had to pay long-distance fees and other expenses when using telemarketing to expand your reach, but those days have come to an end.
Modern communication systems use the internet instead of standard phone lines, letting you call anywhere in the world. You can reinvest your savings back in your business to grow your marketing campaign, and the large audience you want will be yours. With telemarketing, you take your bottom line to new heights without breaking your budget. Those who use this approach and see the benefits are glad they did, and you don't want to miss your chance to get on board.
Reach Prospects Who Are Not Tech-Savvy:
Most modern approaches to marketing focus on digital platforms, such as social media sites and search engines. This concept makes sense because many people use the internet each day, so you can connect with them without much effort. On the other hand, you still find people who don't use computers or smartphones.
Learn if those demographics are your target audience, and you will want to reach them if they are. While not everyone can use a computer, almost everyone has a phone line. Telemarketing puts you in touch with people you would not have reached with digital marketing. They might not make up most of the market, but people without technical skills are still profitable if you use the correct approach.
Reach a Global Market:
People who grow their businesses often learn that untapped markets exist in other parts of the globe. You don't want to pass on an opportunity to expand your reach, but you don't know how to market in other parts of the world. Telemarketing removes that roadblock and lets you connect with interested prospects no matter where they are.
A simple phone call allows you to reach your short- and long-term goals in more ways than one. Once you hire people who speak the language of the country you would like to reach, your telemarketing system handles the rest so that you won't have to worry about it.
Reach Targeted Prospects:
When you market your products or services, each customer you contact costs time, effort and money. When growing your business is your goal, it's important you search for ways to cut spending as much as possible. Connecting with people who don't care about what you offer is a waste of resources, and businesses that don't contain the issue are at risk of failing.
Telemarketing makes it easier than ever to connect only with people who are likely to buy from you. You can encourage people to sign up for your calling list, or you can buy lists from market research companies. Either way, you save yourself a lot of trouble by only calling the right people.
Use an Efficient Approach:
Despite what many people assume, telemarketing is an effective marketing platform that offers great returns. Rather than asking your sales team to dial each number and keep records, telemarketing software can do it for you. Your team sits at their desks with phones in their hands, and the system automatically dials prospects.
If that is not enough to grab your attention, consider that the system can also keep track of what customers you have called and the ones you have not. The dialing software works much faster than any human, and it removes a lot of manual paperwork from the equation.
Final Thoughts:
Growing your business and reaching a wider audience is not always a simple task, so you need as many things on your side as possible. You can use many methods to try reaching your goal, and you get mixed results when you do. If you want to boost your results and increase your efficiency, never overlook the power of telemarketing.
When you use it the right way, you stay in touch with interested prospects who are ready to buy from you. Your business grows faster than you once thought possible, and you realize you have done the right thing. If you would like to see what telemarketing can do for your bottom line, try it today.
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Online shopping has changed the way people shop. The popularity of the online shopping portals makes two things clear. First, people like the convenience that online shopping provides them. Being able to shop for anything and everything at their own convenient time and from the comfort of their homes or offices is a great plus point for shoppers across the world. Second, with the increase of online shoppers, the number of e-commerce websites is also increasing. This is leading to aggressive competition in the arena of online marketing. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into the picture. SEO can help e-commerce business owners to beat the competition and keep attracting targeted visitors to their website. Here are 8 key SEO strategies that can help e-commerce websites to gain success:
1. Provide unique and impressive product descriptions :
An e-commerce site is all about products and their sales. As such, product descriptions are vital for such sites. Since e-commerce sites have to deal with a huge number of products, sometimes they may tend to use the descriptions provided by the manufacturers for the products. Or, they may want to repeat the same description for similar products. But that is a wrong strategy and must be avoided.
You need to come up with a unique product description for each item you are selling on your website. Though it’s a lot of work to write unique descriptions for each product, this strategy is sure to bring in the desired results.
2. Ensure easy navigation of your website :
Make sure that your e-commerce website is easily navigable. This strategy is important not just for improving your site’s search engine rankings, but also to offer a smooth shopping experience to your customers. Create categories to organize your products and make them easily searchable. Ensure that your sitemap is easy to follow.
Also, the design of your website must be clutter-free so that your customers can continue with their shopping without feeling irritated. Place your menus in a way so that your customers can access them easily, regardless of where they are on the site.
3. Optimize the loading time of your website :
Your e-commerce website is likely to have a large number of images for the products you are selling. These images can slow down your site. Ensure to optimize the load times of your website by reducing the image sizes.
High-quality images are essential for any e-commerce website. But if they slow down your website, it can impact your SEO in a bad way. So, it’s better to include images with small sizes and have a feature that allows your customers to zoom in on the images to see an enlarged version. This will enable you to provide your customers with quality images without affecting the load speed of your website.
4. Go for internal linking of your pages :
Internal linking is an essential aspect of SEO. Even Google prefers sites that opt for internal linking in an effective manner. Your objective must be to ensure that your customers can reach your various product pages within your site with as little clicking as possible.
One way to do this is to link every page to other relevant pages within your website. This will also help your site visitors to navigate to similar products in an easy manner and give you a chance to convert them into customers. If you want to know more about customer conversion, you can check out The Ultimate Guide to E-commerce Conversion Funnel Optimization.
5. Make sure that your site is optimized for mobile :
Today more and more people are using their mobile phones to do their shopping at various online stores. This makes it essential for you to optimize your e-commerce website for mobile. By doing so, you will be providing a smooth mobile shopping experience for your users. So, either go for a responsive design for your site or create an interactive mobile application to draw in the advantage of such customers. Ultimately, your objective is to attract more customers and ensure more sales for your website and this is a good strategy to achieve your aim.
6. Assure user security on your website :
User security is one point that needs extra attention in case of e-commerce websites. Having HTTPS encryption for user security on your website is a great way to go about this task. HTTPS encryption ensures that your customers will have an added layer of security when shopping on your website. This will diminish any doubts they may have regarding user security on your site. Also, HTTPS encryption will help Google to mark your site as secured and increase the chances of your site’s ranking on the search engine pages.
7. Include social media sharing buttons on your product pages :
The reach of social media is undeniable. It can take just a few minutes for an image or a piece of information to attract the attention of thousands of users on social media. Incorporate social media sharing buttons on your product pages so that your users may share information and images of the product on the social media platforms. On one hand, this will increase the reach of your products and attract the interest of relevant customers. On the other hand, it will be good practice for SEO as well. This is because Google may perceive the social signals as an indication of authority.
8. Check your website and pages for errors :
For an e-commerce site, it’s not unusual to grow at an incredible speed and have a large number of pages within a short time. But such growth also increases the prospect of having errors on your e-commerce website. It’s not feasible to hinder the growth of your site. So, the next best thing to do is to make sure that your website remains free of errors. Carry out regular checks to ensure that none of the permalinks on your site generates 404 errors. Also, check that the links to external sources or content are in a functional state.
Read More :
9 Ways To Use Pinterest To Promote Your E-Commerce Store
5 Most Common Challenges Faced Bye Commerce Businesses Today
How To Get Product Ideas For Your E-commerce Business
Every marketer would tell you that there are reasons why text marketing continues to become a mainstay in marketing agencies.
In fact, both conventional and modern companies highly rely on their efficacy when it comes to reaching out to their target audience. Because when you think about it, every person checks their text message inbox every time they receive a ping.
Leveraging communication strategies like an effective SMS marketing campaign allows you to grow your brand more, target more audiences, and even build closer relationships with prospects.
There are a lot of things that SMS marketing can help you with in terms of achieving business goals. But before you partake in this marketing tactic, it’s important to understand the concept behind this marketing practice. Use this guide to make successful SMS marketing campaigns.
What Is SMS Marketing?
It’s crucial to understand first the concept behind this old but gold marketing strategy. SMS marketing refers to a short message service you send to your customers to build relationships with them. It’s important for text marketers to communicate with their target audiences in a respectful and compliant manner.
No matter what your business goals are, SMS marketing puts you one step ahead of achieving them. For instance, you can drive more leads, introduce new products, lead them to check your website, and so on. The ideas that you can do with this marketing method are limitless.
Compared to email or push notification marketing, SMS marketing has several advantages. For instance, every person who receives an incoming message in their phone inbox will surely take the time to check and read them one by one.
While some people might check their emails at least once a day regarding text message inboxes, people often check them as soon as they receive a message.
Your message can be concise and clear with SMS marketing. There’s no need for lengthy advertising messages. With brief sentences that can take up less than 160 characters of the SMS limit, you can already deliver what you want to say to your prospects.
Choosing The Right SMS Marketing Tool
Now, it’s time to understand the tool to use for this marketing strategy. With the advent of technology, there is now text marketing software at your disposal. For one, you can take advantage of Drop Cowboy Ringless Voicemail service and some other brands that offer reliable text messaging as marketing services.
Text message delivery depends on the tools and services you choose. Such software comes with pricing plans that fit your marketing budget and goals. Unlike any other conventional marketing promotions like print ads, TV ads, and billboards, this marketing campaign is priced reasonably better. Also, consider partnering with the best SMS marketing service provider to automate your text messages to your target recipients.
How To Maximize On SMS Marketing Campaigns
As mentioned, a high percentage of people open text messages every time they receive one. By sending promotional messages via SMS, you ensure your customers will read them because they will arrive directly in their inboxes.
Check out these ideas in which you can maximize your SMS marketing campaigns.
1. Limited-Time Promotions
You can use an SMS marketing strategy to encourage your customers to avail of coupons and discounts or even redeem incentives or gifts. Offering these incentives for a limited time makes them even more effective.
Announcing that the campaign only runs on a promo period is an effective call-to-action strategy so your customers won’t miss out on such opportunities. It’s one effective strategy to get your business to high ranks.
Considering SMS marketing's high open rate, it’s the most effective way to communicate time-sensitive offers with customers. As a result, you ensure your customers don't pass up a good deal. This yield win-win situations for both the customers and your brand. They get discounted rates, and you could convert your sales funnel more effectively.
2. Reminding Customers
One good purpose for SMS marketing is when you could send notifications regarding the recent actions of your customers.
For instance, whether they checked your website, changed passwords, or linked different payment modes, an SMS notification will be sent to inform them that the activity is successful. Sending notification messages is essential for many businesses, and they’ve realized how effective it is in retaining customers.
By relaying notifications about their recent purchase or online activities, the customers will grow their trust in your brand. It could lead to continuous patronage. Also, they will feel at ease by getting reminders of how your brand is already dealing with their orders or purchases. Receiving reminders is valuable, especially for customers who are always busy with other things and obligations.
Make sure your brand is always at the top of your customer's minds. It’s a job that SMS is best suited for. With SMS marketing, you can remind your customers about everything from their most recently liked products to the purchased ones that are going to arrive soon.
3. Order Updates And Confirmation
An SMS is also useful for customers to receive updates regarding their orders. Once they make a purchase, a message will be sent regarding the successful transaction. It ensures peace of mind for the customer.
Also, the confirmation messages sent via SMS will allow them to use them as proof or evidence regarding their purchase. If products don’t arrive as planned, they can refer to the SMS notification.
4. New Product Release And Launches
SMS advertising is also useful for announcing new product releases. It’s the most cost-effective way for marketers to advertise new product launching. Without paying for the expensive talents of celebrities to promote new products, a large number of users will discover your new product offering through the message they can read in their SMS inbox.
Using this method will generate buzz and interest, and you could even entice old customers to come back and check out what's new. You can also use SMS campaigns to drive traffic to your website or storefront. Thus, you can simply include a link they can visit to check your new product or any offers.
5. Send Welcome Messages
Send your customer a welcome message once they subscribe to your SMS marketing campaign. Companies must start building relationships with their customers. As a result, you will be able to communicate with them right away, as they will know they have been subscribed.
It also alerts them to expect a few messages from your end every now and then. There’s no need for lengthy or complex welcome messages. Sometimes short but sweet thank you message about their subscription are already enough for your customers to remember your business.
6. Customer Service Tool
SMS is not limited to being a marketing tool; it’s also a customer support tool. In this era where customer service should be at the forefront of any business, SMS strategy can be used to ensure customer satisfaction.
It’s imperative that your work processes are as transparent as possible, and you can achieve this by constantly sending them SMS in case necessary. After all, a text message is the easiest way to communicate with pre-sale customers and post-sale tech support.
7. Collect Customer Feedback
It’s essential for businesses to receive customer feedback to determine what they are doing well and what they need to improve. And it’s something that’s being offered with SMS marketing. You can send out surveys through SMS, and customers can answer them timely and convenient.
There are many ways to create survey forms for them to easily fill out. The key is to attach the link to your SMS. Another option is to ask customers to rate you using a ranking system that’s easy for them to use.
8. Announce VIP Programs
By offering a VIP program, you can encourage loyalty among your subscribers and customers. If you want to make your VIP customers feel special, offer them VIP-only discounts. This sense of exclusivity allows your customers to treat your brand with more respect and value.
Also, use this program for customers to gain early access to sales and other promotions. One way for them to qualify for your VIP list is to encourage them to fill out a signup link. However, since it’s VIP, make it seems more challenging for them to enter this list. The harder it feels to qualify, the more special and valued they would feel.
Tips To Apply Effective SMS Marketing Strategies
Applying SMS marketing strategies require effective implementations. When done right, they can produce the best outcomes for your business. Here are some tips to apply effective SMS marketing strategies for your brand:
1. Ensure That Your Customers Opted In
Your customers probably already provide you with their phone numbers. However, one common courtesy is to get their approval to start receiving SMS from your brand. Mass texting them without their consent is ethically wrong and will only lead to adverse effects on the customer. Ensure to get your customer’s clear opt-in before starting to send out text message campaigns.
Your website or other online channels can allow customers to opt-in to receive text messages. However, you should get a text confirmation before you send them anything. There are ways to get their opt-in consent. One is to make them reply Yes or No to your single SMS regarding SMS subscription. Another way is through your website.
They can press a CTA button regarding their receiving SMS messages from your brand. When the user clicks the link in the offer, they can fill out the subscription form and enter their number so they can start receiving your SMS campaigns.
2. Take Time To Introduce Yourself
A good practice is to take the time to introduce your brand in any of your SMS campaigns. Chances are your customers don’t know where the messages are coming from. Failing to include your company name or brand name on the message will only forfeit its purpose. Hence, it’s important to include your company or brand name in that short message that you’re sending.
3. Make Messages Fun And Short
It’s common for people to use SMS messages to communicate with friends and family informally. Texting should remain fun in your SMS campaign in the same way as a fun communication tool between people. Be friendly and personal with customers to build trust.
Use local trending words that are popular with your target audience for the time being. It ensures to catch their interest and make them read your text message completely. The maximum number of characters in an SMS message is 160. With an opt-out option and the need to identify yourself, that's not much to work with. Don't waste any characters, and go straight to the point of what you want to say.
4. Don’t Forget To Use Target Keywords
To encourage users to connect with you, you should select contextually relevant keywords alongside simple messages and shortcodes. Using such keywords will allow them to easily remember anything about your brand or company. If they want to research you online, they can use the same keywords found on your SMS.
5. Give An Option For Customers To Opt Out
All marketing communications should follow these standards and rules. Much like getting their buy-in, you should also give them the option to opt out and unsubscribe from your SMS campaigns. You are more likely to lose customers if you constantly text them when they do not want to hear from you.
Your messages should come with the unsubscribe option, so your customers can freely opt out anytime they want. There are some viable reasons for them to do this. But it doesn’t entirely mean that they won’t be good prospects for you in the future. It’s just that not everyone prefers to get this kind of information via text.
SMS open rates tend to be much higher than those for email, so you should also expect a higher unsubscribe rate. After a message is sent, unsubscribes may spike and treat it as a normal occurrence.
6. Be More Informative Than Promotional
You should be extremely considerate of your buyers' inboxes since promotional SMS messages can easily be turned off. Therefore, staying informative and interactive is best, and not focusing too much on sounding sales or promotional.
A good rule of thumb is to focus most of your communication on order, whether a status update or a request for feedback. Schedule your promotional messages and send them at least only twice a week at a minimum. No one wants to keep receiving promotional messages that are obvious that they want to make money from you.
Conclusion
You can increase engagement with your target audience by using SMS marketing. Keeping your customers' attention is easier if you market to them where they are most active.
Therefore, if your target audience is always in their phone’s SMS inbox, it’s worth considering SMS marketing as part of your marketing mix. Use this guide and wait for results to reflect your bottom line soon.
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