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Owning and running their own businesses is a dream that many people have. It allows them to follow their passions and to practically be their own boss. But passion and freedom are truly not enough. A business should be profitable in order for it to be sustainable. Because of this, a good business owner must be strategic in every step that they take.
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Marketing is a very significant part of any business cycle. Without a marketing campaign, the market will not have any idea that a company is offering a product or service that it needs. Because of this, it should not come as a surprise that a sizeable chunk of any company’s annual budget goes directly to marketing.
Surely, marketing is not something that can be done haphazardly. Because of its importance, every marketing campaign must be well-calculated and ultimately well-executed. Through the years, a number of marketing strategies have been developed and tested. We discuss three such strategies here.
Content Marketing
In the past, advertising and other marketing efforts were replete with images and text that directly talked about how good a product or service is. The aim, of course, was to provide enough arguments to persuade the consumer to buy the product or service. While we still cannot do away with this strategy at least for some products today, hard selling, as it is called, has lost its once lustrous appeal to many. A lot of people now are so sensitive to suggestion, and they react negatively to it. Any attempt to tell them what to do is met with animosity and resistance.
In the chaos of such reactions, the concept of content marketing was born. In this strategy, the marketing content being propagated does not talk about the product or service directly. Instead, it talks about topics that are only remotely related to the product or service. For example, a seller of sports shoes might opt to continuously release commentaries on basketball players and other athletes, giving out only subtle references to what they really sell. This way, the suggestion is not made directly. There are even cases when the message is so cleverly crafted that the consumer is not even aware that they have just been influenced!
Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing, though very successful, is best applied in industries where the products and services for sale are quite complex. This strategy involves reaching out to high-potential accounts (companies or groups of people) and treating them as markets of one. What does it mean to be treated as a market of one? Basically, a client is a market of one if a certain level of customization and customer service is given to that client, making them feel that what they receive from the supplier is special and unique only to them.
Search Engine Optimization
Establishing a stable and reliable online presence is a must nowadays. People are most of the time hooked up to the Internet so it’s right to join them there if you are to earn money from their buying behavior. Search engine optimization or SEO involves developing and implementing strategies that are aimed at making your website more accessible through the search engines. This can be applied to almost all business out there, as long as they are based around concepts, products, or services that can be represented well by keywords.
