Online marketing has evolved into a complex, yet mandatory, necessity for small businesses over the last decade. For most business owners, it isn’t something they are willing or able to commit the time required to learning and executing a good marketing strategy. Many may not even know where to start, or which marketing tactics work and which ones do not. 

In this article, we’ll go through the different types of marketing, what they mean and the benefits of each. 

What Are Marketing Tactics?

Marketing tactics are a series or set of methods or actions aimed at promoting your  goods or services or to reach a specific goal, such as increasing followers or likes on social media. Defining the actions that are required in order to reach your goal of increased followers is how you’ll succeed.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a form of marketing that involves creating and sharing content online in the form of videos, blogs, and social media posts, that provide your audience with useful information that helps them solve some sort of problem.  It’s about establishing yourself or your company as an industry authority and becoming a trusted resource for information.  

Blogging 

The first U.S. company to employ content marketing was John Deere with a publication called “the furrow”, which is still in print today. Content marketing is NOT intended to be advertising and should not try to sell something, but rather should be about helping your audience better understand something in order for them to make an informed buying decision. John Deere has really nailed this concept through a successful and proven model. 

“Blog” is a broad term that encompasses a multitude of writing styles, including well-researched articles on controversial topics, how-to guides, informative or entertaining pieces, people’s opinions, stay-at-home mom’s recipes with commentary, etc. Youtube

Content Repurposing

Content marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing because it has worked through a variety of media for several years. One really good piece of material can actually take several forms and provide fresh content in several different ways, including social posts, tweets, videos, podcasts and written articles such as blogs or press releases. 

Perhaps you’ve recently prepared a large presentation for a client or prospective client. If you record the presentation, you’ll be creating a piece of marketing material that you can use over and over again. You can post the full version on Youtube or Vimeo, create multiple short videos for each section of your presentation, edit the script to create a blog article, use snippets for social posts and tweets, convert it into a podcast and include it in your newsletter or other marketing campaigns. Now, you’ve turned one piece of content into dozens more, without a lot of additional effort on your part.  

Later on down the road, as things naturally progress and evolve, you can update and refresh the old version and repost in all its various forms.  Your hard work will pay off again and again instead just once!

Evergreen Content

Some topics are always relevant in your industry. Creating copy about those topics that you can circle back to again and again can be highly valuable pieces of content. Evergreen content is content that doesn't become outdated. It is relevant, regardless of the current news cycle or season. Examples of places one might find evergreen content is your home landing page on your website, videos, how-to guides, knowledgebase articles, and FAQ boards. 

Evergreen content should use keywords strategically, being careful to not overuse them.  Researching the best keywords to use in your content is well worth the time you’ll put into it, as they will play into your long term ROI. Content that is timeless, needs little to no upkeep and  that is engaging will save you time, energy and resources, as well as continuously drive [free] traffic to your website. 

The first and best place to focus on for evergreen content should be your home landing page on your website. This is one of the most accessible places for people to find your evergreen content. The more accessible the content is, the more valuable it can be to you. This is oftentimes the first time and place that people get a feel for your business and make their decision to do business with you, or to keep looking.

Put some time and effort into your evergreen content and really think about what information you can provide to your readers that is interesting and informative.  Oftentimes, when one becomes an expert in their field, it’s easy to forget that the majority of people are not experts in it, and we tend to take for granted that what is common knowledge to us, is not common knowledge to most. Pay attention to the questions you get asked, ask friends and family if they understand what you do and try to think of your customers point of view when creating content. Steer away from industry jargon as much as possible and use layman terms.  You should write your copy at about a 5th grade level, which makes it understandable for anyone. 

Evergreen content can be very beneficial for your SEO as it ages, which helps your website rank higher in searches, drives more traffic to your website and can help establish you as an expert in your field, with both customers and with your peers. It will continue to be beneficial for the long term and save you both time and resources, while driving consistent traffic to your website. 

Social Media Marketing

Social media helps you connect with your audience, raise brand awareness, drive traffic to your website and increase sales. This is accomplished through publishing quality content, engaging with your follower’s, monitoring the analytics and, for some, running paid ad campaigns.  This is all called ‘social media marketing’.

Community Building

Growing your audience on social media is crucial for driving engagement. You can do this a number of different ways including inviting friends from your personal Facebook and Linkedin pages to “like” your business page. You can all run a paid ads campaign specifically to acquire followers. Joining and participating in groups in another way. Add a link or button to your email signature, template footers and directly on your website to encourage people to like your social pages.  It’s even ok to just outright ask folks to like you on Facebook.  Use a free QR code generator to generate your own QR code linked to your social media to make it even easier for people to find you.  

Content for Audience Acquisition

When you’re creating posts and updates for social media, ask yourself if it is interesting and engaging content.  Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and think about what your reaction would be to the post.  Would you ‘like’ it? Share it? The more likes and shares a post gets, the larger the audience will be who actually sees it.  If one of your followers shares your post to their own page, then their followers will see it.  Occasionally, you’ll get a notification that someone liked your post (who isn’t currently on your friends list) and that you can help them see future posts by inviting them to like your page.  Always invite those people to like your page! 

It will take time for your audience to grow, but if you continue to do the aforementioned things, you’ll be able to watch it steadily increase

Social Communities Drive Engagement 

Your followers are just one portion of your social community. Both Facebook and Linkedin also have thousands of different groups you can join and participate in.  From local small business groups to national marketplaces, there are groups for everything.  Finding a few that are relevant to your business and regularly monitoring and participating opens up a whole other audience you might not reach otherwise.  You can even start your own group, specific to your niche or interests. The key is to engage with others.  They will engage back, giving you the opportunity to cultivate new relationships, spread brand awareness and increase your following. 

Data Analysis

Leveraging the data that social platforms provide will help you understand what content resonates with your audience.  Regularly analyzing the data and learning from it will help you generate higher quality content in the future that will draw more and more engagement.  It will also help you understand what wasn’t popular with your audience so that you can avoid posting more content your audience is impartial to.   

You can find data such as how many followers you have, likes, reach, page views, actions on page, view your recent posts, events, videos and stories.  You can even add your competitors pages to “watch”, which can help you see what is or is not working for them.

Use this valuable information to build an ads campaign that works.  A little research and data gathering goes a long way in paid advertising.  Being able to target a specific look-a-like audience, versus a general one, with content that you know will resonate with them, will aid in generating more leads with the highest ROI possible. 

Spending time analyzing insights on your paid campaigns will help you understand your audience even better.  This knowledge will put you leaps ahead of your competitors, giving you the market advantage. 

Email Marketing

If we’ve learned anything about COVID’s impact on digital marketing, it’s that email marketing became even more important than ever in the past. Statistics from 2019 vs. stats during the ongoing pandemic show a huge increase in audience engagement including opens and clicks, and a decrease in unsubscribes.   People across the globe are consuming huge amounts of data with little else to do, and email is certainly included in that. 

If you aren’t sending your customers and prospects regular emails and newsletters, now is the time to start. If you’re not sure on how to begin, we recommend the SeoSamba email marketing platform.  Its cost effective, user friendly interface with ready-to-use email templates and unlimited contact storage makes it a no-brainer for the novice to the highly experienced marketer. 

Personalization

Sending personalized emails increases engagement, builds trust and makes your reader feel special.  This doesn’t mean that you must send everyone an email individually.  That would be extremely inefficient.  Luckily, technology has evolved so that you can send mass personalized email campaigns. SeoSamba’s email marketing tool allows you to personalize a number of different fields for name, address, website, service area and so on, using dynamic links. Plus you can personalize it further with your information by adding your headshot and actual signature, instead of a generic typed name at the bottom. Your headshot makes you real to your audience, especially your prospects who may not have ever met you.

Mailing List Segmentation

Since SeoSamba allows unlimited contact storage, you can add all your contacts and organize them into different lists.  Afterall, you probably wouldn’t send an existing client the same email as you would a prospect.  Segmenting your lists gives you the opportunity to design audience specific campaigns that are much more effective in reaching your goals. 

When To Send

When you send your email campaigns is just as important as what you send.  Believe it or not, there are certain days and times of day when people are more likely to open your email. Every audience is a little different, so you’ll want to tweak your strategy as you learn more about your audience, but generally Tuesday and Thursday mornings are good, as well as Friday afternoons right after lunch.  Experts and statistics all agree that Mondays and the worst days to send marketing campaigns, and weekends are hit or miss. 

About SeoSamba 

Digital media distribution has a competitive advantage in today’s fast-paced society, especially during the ongoing pandemic. It is the primary component of every great marketing plan. Since results don’t appear overnight, investing in it may feel risky for some. 

Media distribution is about finding, developing, and nurturing your audience to increase brand loyalty, connect with them across multiple channels and stay front of mind. Finding the right platform or digital marketing agency to partner with can ease your concerns and give you guidance when in uncharted territory.  

SeoSamba has partnered with thousands of small businesses around the world and helped them reach new goals and implement winning strategies with measurable ROI. 

SeoSamba’s hybrid, open-source framework is built around the Marketing Operating System dashboard and the SeoToaster CMS with a built-in CRM for an all encompassing centralized digital marketing solution.

SeoSamba offers turnkey franchise development with a franchise sales CRM, and franchise brand marketing solutions for emerging brands.   

For more information about SeoSamba’s services, visit www.seosamba.com, email info@seosamba.com or call: + 1 (877) 450-9894.