By Emma Griffith
The Mishra Group
WALTHAM, MA–Your products and services are important. But so is marketing, because it will educate your potential customers about the value you and your business bring to the table. If you do it right, your products and services will sell by themselves. That is the goal of marketing.
The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends spending 7 to 8 percent of your gross revenue if it does not exceed $5 million annually. But what should you spend that money on to maximize your marketing outreach? If you want to increase your revenue, customer outreach and position yourself as a leader in your marketplace, you need to have the right marketing tools in your company’s toolbox.
Any marketer’s digital toolbox will include the following essential items for any digital strategy.
Website & SEO Analytics Tools
There are many tools to help track your customers’ behavior on your company’s website and more- the most popular option being, of course, Google Analytics. Google’s comprehensive analytics suite provides the tools to measure everything from your advertising’s ROI to tracking where your customers are searching from.
If you are using a website platform such as WordPress, there are numerous add-ons and extensions that can help you track your audience as they interact with your company’s website, such as Jetpack and the Google Analytics extension.
Email Database and Marketing Tools
Email marketing is a powerful tool in any marketers’ hands! After search marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), it is the tool that will get the most out of your marketing strategy. Creating a database (or even just a spreadsheet) of your past and present customers, as well as emails of people in your target audience will help you bring your brand into the eyes of your past, present and future customers.
Web tools such as MailChimp and CampaignMonitor are popular choices for managing your new email database and creating attention-grabbing emails that your customers won’t forget.
Social Media
Even if your company doesn’t have a large social media presence or a dedicated social media strategy, having a presence on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is essential for digital marketing success!
A well-maintained social media suite will help you control your company’s image and interact with your customers, as well as provide a way for them to find you on the websites and platforms they’re already familiar with. Social media accounts are also an important factor for SEO and can serve as a way to bring in customers to your website.
While there are many social media networks out there, it is not necessary to join them all! The ultimate goal for social media is meet your customers, and your target audience, where they are. If you know where your customers congregate, that’s great! But even if you don’t, then there are still things you can do to reach out to your customer base. A good first step for any company to take is to create an account on the following networks:
Traditional and Digital Advertising:
Don’t underestimate the power of a well-placed ad! Even if there are a million and one new ways that you can reach your customers online, that is no excuse to forget about traditional print and digital advertising. Make sure that your company has visually-appealing ad copy that can be submitted to the papers, magazines and websites that your customers read or visit, and keep your brand in the public eye.
(Emma Griffith is a marketing associate at The Mishra Group, a Waltham, MA-based integrated marketing and PR firm. For more information, visit: www.MishraGroup.com)
