How to Choose The Best Marketing Techniques?

July 8, 2011

A Guide for What You Need to Consider In Order to Make The Best Choice

”What should I do?”

This is what most of us ask ourselves whenever we are encountered with making a decision for marketing techniques or plans. The reason is that there are hundreds of them and many of us make huge mistakes while choosing an option.

It is not easy to create a marketing plan for your business. Many of the times while searching for the best marketing techniques over the internet, you encounter techniques which are termed as ”must” for every business. This makes you wonder if those techniques are really going to help you in a positive manner.

If you talk in the sense of traditional marketing then there are more than 50 techniques and over 30 techniques which can be applied in the sector of internet marketing. So the question is how to find the most powerful and best marketing techniques out of so many to bring in the best possible results and rankings?

Whenever I design a marketing campaign for my clients, I never let go some important things or questions out of my consideration.

What are the Goals and Objectives of Marketing?

It is very important for a business to know about objectives and goals they are looking forward to achieve with their marketing. This can help to a great deal in choosing the right technique. Basically, marketing is implemented to achieve these four purposes:

  1. To tell your target audience about your brand and how they can know more about your brand, product or services. In textbooks, this is known as Brand Awareness.
  2. To build a pre-sales relationship with your target audience in order to talk about the sales or make them request information about your product or services. The textbook term for this purpose is Lead Generation.
  3. To allow your target audience to consider your brand as one of their short listed choices. This is known as Brand Consideration.
  4. To perform direct sales with your target audience.

Target Audience

You should select those techniques to which your target audience will respond to and pay attention to. But, did you properly identify your target audience? If yes then you should know that there are some people in your audience who will not buy from your business unless and until they get to know you very well. For this, you will have to make your audience aware of the brand by making use of a marketing technique such as public speaking. Then, for lead generation, you can either use SEO where Google Adwords can be useful or by providing your audience with free offers. Finally, when you are confident enough about the trust of your audience, use email marketing to achieve direct sales.

Services vs. Products

This is one of the biggest and most destructive problems that many of us face in internet marketing: the application and implantation of same marketing techniques for both products and services. The effects of such blunder can only be poor results because there are different mixes of marketing techniques for both services and products. The purchasing pattern of people is different when it comes to services as compared to products. Therefore, a single marketing mix cannot be used.

What Else To Consider?

Your timelines and your budget are also very important things to consider. By budget I mean both in terms of money and time. You will see that some marketing techniques can be implemented for free but they require a huge amount of time to spend.

If you know your audience, your budget, your objectives and your time along with the regular testing, you will be able to figure out the top marketing techniques to use for your business over and over again.

Posted By: Zia Ul Aein

4 Comments | Internet Marketing, SEO - Search Engine Optimization, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Best Marketing Techniques

Top Marketing Techniques – It’s All About The Customers

July 5, 2011

Marketing is one of the most important aspects of a business. Without marketing, it is not possible for any business to gain ranking over the both offline and online world. I have gone through a number of texts and articles and came up with some common and important conducts they share about marketing.

According to my experience with marketing, I believe that these 5 aspects can be termed as the best marketing techniques which should be implemented in order to build a strong base of any business.

1.    Most Profitable Clients and Advertising Focus

For many companies, this fact is of a great surprise that it’s the small percentage of their clients out of which they make the majority of their profits. It might be that you are focusing your advertising on 95% of your customers whereas half of your profit is coming from left out 5%.

Would you find it useful to focus your advertising on non-profitable clients? Not at all, therefore focus your advertising and efforts on finding out the most profitable clients, even if they comprise of a small percentage. If the percentage of your profitable clients is 20% then spend 20% of your advertising budget on them.

2.    Most Profitable Clients and Consistent Advertising

Once you are able to know about the most profitable clients of your business, direct the advertising of your company on those clients and not just once but on regular basis. To build both trust and recognition, make effective use of your advertising. Stay in a regular contact with your clients along with a proper allocation of your advertising budget.

3.    Positioning of Your Company

If you can see that your targeted customers are happy with the service or product of your competitors then position your company in such a manner that it serves as the second choice for them. Many other competitors would like to brag positive things about their companies and spread negative things about the competitors but you should avoid this. This is because whenever clients would require a backup or replacement, your company will be perfectly positioned for that. Many of the companies and businesses avoid this strategy even though it is one of the top marketing techniques. You can achieve long term results with this strategy.

Every company’s greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company (Michael LeBoeuf)

4.     Advertise. Stay In Contact. Ask For Feedback.

There is nothing better than your existing customers. They trust your business, they know how your business works and they show their loyalty. Always keep the maximum focus of your advertising on your current customers because they always buy more from you and cost you less in return.

Don’t forget: ”A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”

5.     Advertising is Familiarity – Familiarity is Trust – Trust is Customers

The relation between you and your customers is solely based on trust. Your customers will only do business with you if you are trustworthy. But, building trust takes time. A strong advertising campaign would help in making people get familiar with your company, the type of business or services you are offering. This consistent familiarity building will lead to trust building and finally you will achieve your goal of having loyal customers.

trust building cycle

Cycle of Trust Building

Remember: There is no shortcut to building trust.

Posted By: Zia Ul Aein

1 Comment | Internet Marketing, Marketing, Traditional Marketing | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Best Marketing Techniques

Common Mistakes in Traditional Marketing

June 30, 2011

What Makes It Difficult To Achieve Best Marketing Techniques?

What is the main reason for little success in traditional marketing?

Why businesses fail to implement a good offline marketing strategy?

Let’s answer these questions after going through an example. You are preparing to spend your two weeks holidays in Hawaii and there are definitely so many things to pack but you are not really sure where to start. For this reason, you take a pen and a paper and start writing whatever comes in your mind. So basically you draw a sketch of things you have to pack in the form of a list. Keeping in view the example, that list serves as a plan for you because everything is on that list which you have to pack for your holidays and eventually you will need them during your stay in Hawaii.

Common Mistakes in Traditional Marketing

Same is the case with offline or traditional marketing. I have explained below the common mistakes which are made while marketing products and services in the offline world.

  1. First of all, the biggest mistake is being without a marketing plan. You should know what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it.
  2. I have seen many businesses which are having no sense of target market. Such businesses target everyone thus making it more difficult to achieve the best marketing techniques in a proper and efficient manner. Define your target market or audience and market your product or service accordingly.
  3. If you think that making unrealistic and inexperienced claims would give you more benefits then you are wrong. Only state or tell your audience what you can do and nothing more than that.
  4. Do not ignore or forget your existing clients. Give them as much value as you are giving to your unknown and new audience or even more.
  5. Pay attention to the feedback you are getting from your target market. Listen to every single piece of feedback you are getting and improve your business, product or service in accordance with that.
  6. Be unique and create your own place in the market. Many of the businesses make this mistake of only and only following the competition.
  7. Never underestimate your customer service because it is one of the most important aspects of your business. Your customer service is one of the best marketing techniques for you because you are able to generate word of mouth through a good customer service.
  8. Keep your business card always in handy with you. Business cards act just like online contact form which people can use immediately to maintain contact with you.

Keeping your business away from all of these common mistakes can bring a significant improvement and uniqueness in your marketing campaigns.

If you are interested in reading about online marketing mistakes, click here.

Posted By: Zia Ul Aein

3 Comments | Traditional Marketing | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Best Marketing Techniques