Marketing is an ever-changing aspect of business, with trends that go in and out in the blink of an eye. Whether you’re a small business, a big one, new or old, sometimes it’s simply time to take a new approach to your brand’s marketing. You could have had success with one strategy and now plateaued, or you could still be looking for the strategy that will just get you off the ground. Fortunately, finding a new approach doesn’t necessarily require tons of resources or a steep cost. Rather, you can do the leg work yourself, turning to free advice available from marketing and SEO experts like Kevin Miller of GR0, the fastest-growing SEO agency in the U.S., or even employing an agency’s services if you have the funds. But if we asked Kevin Miller for a few helpful tips today to get you moving in the right direction, I’m willing to bet some of these following options would make his list.
Do Your Research
One of the first steps to revamping your marketing strategy is analyzing your brand, your customers, and what aspects of your former marketing strategy did and didn’t work. Thanks to modern technology, you can get a pretty good idea of all of these things with data that’s available from google searches and visits to your website. You can find out who’s visiting your web pages, where they’re spending the most time, and what keywords seem to be generating traffic. Google analytics can provide a plethora of information like this, as can other marketing and SEO tools that are available for free online. These tools can give you an idea of how successful you are in attracting and advancing potential customers on your web page, what keywords are generating traffic, and more. Without identifying the areas that need improvement, how can you create a strategy moving forward that will be better than what you’re already doing?
Utilize SEO Best Practices
If you want more visibility online and more page visits, SEO is something you’ll want to get familiar with. This is one tip I know Kevin Miller would vouch for. Optimizing your webpage to stand out to search engines will help you rank higher on those search engines, giving you significantly more web traffic and brand visibility. Consider the last time you searched for a product or service and made it past page one of the search results. Statistically, very few users ever click onto page two. So ideally, you want your web page to show up on that first page, and thanks to SEO, there are plenty of ways to get there. If you’re looking to revamp your marketing strategy, diving into SEO, from keyword research to on-page optimization is a great way to get yourself much more traffic. And going back to the first point, doing your research, SEO provides plenty of data to let you know how you’re doing as you go.
Get Creative and Take Risks
A cheap, creative, and even fun way to potentially find success in marketing is to take a crack at guerilla marketing. Guerilla marketing can use any kind of advertising channel, from social media to content marketing, to evoke intrigue or surprise among potential customers. A successful guerilla marketing tactic will catch people’s attention. It will get people talking, thus raising awareness about your brand or product. Guerilla marketing doesn’t necessarily cost money – but it takes a lot of creativity. It’s a chance to think, how can I place a representation or connection to my brand in a space that will catch people by surprise? Think displays in public places. Think internet campaigns where people least expect it. Think social media accounts that interact more like a personality than a brand. Guerilla marketing is cheap, and if you hit the nail on the head, it could be the best way to get everybody talking about your brand.
Be Consistent With Your Style and Branding
If you want to be memorable, you need to present one look that stays consistent throughout. Whether you need to change your branding to something more eye-catching or whether you simply haven’t developed your look enough, it’s important to go with one appearance and stick with it so that customers will become familiar with it and remember it each time. And not only does it help with familiarity, it also helps build loyalty and trust. If you’re presenting a consistent appearance and style and you stick with that, customers know what to expect. There’s a level of comfort that comes with that consistency, and that level of comfort will help foster the loyalty you want customers to feel for your brand.
Have A Plan and Communicate
Regardless of which route you decide to take moving forward, it’s important to have a plan before you begin. This goes back to the first point of doing your research. Your plan should circle back to that research to target the areas that need improvement, and you should be able to outline in that plan the ways in which your new strategy will help with those areas. Don’t attempt to revamp without these ideas outlined. Moving forward blindly could cause more damage than good. Additionally, once you’ve developed that plan, share it with your employees and those involved. If you’re taking a totally new approach to your marketing, make sure everybody’s informed. Linking back to the point on consistency, if you don’t have everybody on the same page, that consistency will be difficult to achieve.
In Conclusion
This list is just a few ideas on where you can begin as you embark on your new marketing journey. There are numerous free resources out there to get you started, and if you have the means, consider hiring help for expertise on the more technical parts, like SEO. But in short, take inspiration from other brands, do your research, get creative, and make a plan to move forward. With patience, research, and a little innovation, the results will follow.