If you want to acquire leads, get referrals, or keep loyal consumers, it is imperative that you establish awareness for your business and remain on top of the audience’s mind. Whether it’s clothing or food delivery, you will lose the competition if your brand isn’t remembered more than the next company.
Luckily there are plenty of ways to stay top of mind! Marketing tactics are strategies that help you advertise your brand and items to your target market. The purpose of your marketing tactics is determined by your company’s strategy and goals. You can use a variety of marketing tactics to promote your content, generate leads with landing pages, and advertise for free trials.
Marketing Tactics vs Marketing Strategy
The main difference between these two is our marketing strategy is often considered the master plan and highlights the desired outcome of the strategy. Marketing tactics however, are the things you do to help make that plan come to fruition.
Simply put, in order to implement your marketing plan, you use marketing tactics. A few examples of digital marketing strategies include posting curated content on social media, writing blogs to increase website visibility, using backlinks to boost search engine ranking, and running Facebook advertisements that target specific buyer personas. Companies can also implement tactics within tactics. However, all of these marketing tactics are a part of a single marketing strategy.
Marketing Tactics You Should Try
While companies may have similar objectives, they employ vastly different methods to accomplish them, as you might expect. One business may use solely print ads to target their audience whereas the competition may be using social media ads to reach the same audience in a different way. There is no one size fits all approach so many companies try different tactics to find the best way to reach their audience.
Let’s take a look at some marketing tactics that have been proven to work:
1. Establish Emotional Connection With Audience
This concept may seem straightforward, but it isn’t as widespread as you may imagine. It is a common misconception that not enough promotional content will lead to stagnation in sales. By engaging with your social audience in a non-promotional manner, you build ties with your audience, which helps you sell indirectly. People buy with their hearts rather than with their money. When the time comes to purchase, your users will line up to buy from you because they have developed emotional ties with your brand.
2. Advertising Helps You Be Seen
On-page SEO takes months to rank in search engines, but advertisements get you noticed right away. Try using Google Ads or Social Ads to help you reach your target audience where they spend their time.
You can target users based on location, interests, income, jobs titles, and much more. This is a great and easy way to get your ads in front of the right people for your brand.
3. Retarget and Remarket
This goes hand and hand with #2. After a person visits a product page a cookie is placed in their browser. As long as the retargeting software is part of the advertising network, the cookie instructs retargeting software to display ads for previously-viewed products on each subsequent site the user visits, if the user leaves the site without making a purchase. This is a great way to stay top of mind for your audience.
4.Gift Cards and Freebies
The free samples at the grocery store, the free trials, the free apps, the free estimates, the free downloads, the free advice, and so on are all popular ways to interact with your target audience and build a relationship with them. A freebie is a good way to see if a potential buyer likes and trusts a company.
5. Host Events and Meetups
Like Wells Fargo sponsors tons of events and festivals, your company can do the same! Consider sponsoring an event, meetup, local sporting event, or something else to help increase your brand awareness and visibility.
6. Use An SEO Strategy
An SEO strategy is a great way to get free visibility and establish yourself as an expert in your industry. By creating well written content about your business and services you can establish yourself as an authority and increase your rankings on Google’s results page. By getting your content on the first page of Google you are already way more likely to get new users than anyone on the second page.
7. Customer Service
One tactic that is often slept on is providing good customer service. By treating your audience and customers like humans rather than numbers that lead to more revenue, you’ll establish a better connection with that customer and increase their loyalty. Humans love interaction, so by being kind and helpful, you’re able to establish a connection and keep the trust of your customers.
8. Hire Influencers To Help You Advertise
Consider collaborating with an influencer to help you market your product. Influencers usually have a niche following so if your product aligns with their audience, you may be able to successfully market to them through their favorite influencer.
9. Branding
Branding is one of the most key tactics as it gives your business an identity. No one ever mistakes the golden arches at McDonalds – be sure that your branding is unique enough to stick out but not so overwhelming that it turns people off to the thought of interacting with you.
10. Beta Program
This is mainly for software and application companies, but allowing users and influencers early access to your program can help it build anticipation for those without access. People want to be in the know and on the cutting edge of technology, so providing only a select amount of people early access can build up FOMO and get more people ready to buy when it finally releases.
11. Content Is King
Blogging and content is a great way to share your views and observations about your field. Topics of interest can be explored through blogging and even communicated to a wider audience by focusing on your niche market. The more you establish your voice, the more likely you are to show up in Google and Social Media networks.
12. Create Video or Live Stream
One great way to market your business or product is through video. You can showcase what your product is, how it works, what it looks like, and more through a short video or live stream. It’s a great way for audience members to get a demo of the product and see all the ways to use it. This is also a great way for businesses to control the narrative of their product to entice more people to buy it.
The Takeaway
The main takeaway from this is that there is no right or wrong way to employ marketing tactics. They are all able to help improve your business and reach your target audience. As a marketer you just want to be sure that your audience will react positively to the tactic you choose. For instance older people likely won’t watch a live stream, however they may read your case study on how your product solved a problem. Be creative in your tactics and try different options to make sure you’re getting the most out of your marketing strategy.