In the last post, we asked the question, “What Are You Prepared to Do?” when it comes to your marketing. In other words, at a time when businesses are competing fiercely over acquiring potential customers, you might find you have to go above and beyond in terms of both effort and attention to detail.
This is where the tactical part of marketing comes in.
When you really think about marketing tactics, you’re really focusing on the buyer journey – either making audiences aware of you or somehow moving them further down the funnel toward a purchase. Elevating your tactical approach, in this way, can help you maximize the number of individuals who convert. Here are five ways we’ve seen companies do this successfully.
No. 1: Make Greater Use of Video
Five years ago, we probably would have made this suggestion but only for those who had some budget to spend, as video production and post-production, in particular, have costs that can run into the thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars. But today, you can do great video marketing on a budget, either on your own or with a little bit of help. As a small business, there’s really no excuse not to do it with the tools available, including your smartphone, an inexpensive ring light, stock video through a program such as Canva ($12 per month), or a mobile video editing app such as Boosted by Lighttricks.
Why video?
Your customers (or potential customers) are likely consuming video online in great numbers – indeed, according to Cisco Systems, 82 percent of all Internet traffic today is video-based. And they likely would consume your content as well if you put it in video form.
What do you produce?
Go back to those audience challenges and do videos on topics that address those challenges or that establish your authority in your particular industry. Think about the 6 content approaches that define a good piece of marketing content (the STEPPS framework we’ve covered earlier):
- Social currency
- Triggers
- Emotion
- Public
- Practical
- Storytelling
One more tip: If you’re the founder or the appointed marketing lead, don’t be shy about getting on camera either. Audiences always welcome putting a face to a business, as it can enhance both trust and loyalty.
No. 2: Adjust Your Messaging to Create Urgency or Take the Next Step
You may come across messaging that encourages you as a customer to take action quickly. Examples include:
- “Limited Time Only”
- “Offer Ends Oct. 31”
- “Two Days Left…” etc.
Typically used with offers, creating urgency is a proven way to get more individuals to buy now because they feel like they’re getting a deal at that moment. The psychology is similar to companies that show an original price with a slash through it, to indicate the cost is lower now during this particular period. But you don’t need to just create offers to do this. There are lots of ways messaging can be created around any sign-up/process, especially on the social proof side. To give you an example, take a look at a company called Backstage, which is pretty well known in the field of helping to cast actors. At each stage of the sign-up process, the company messages little things at the top of each page that update dynamically:
- 5,509 new rolesposted this week
- 643,542 creatorslooking for talent
- 262,942 Backstage members and counting
Marketing amounts to a lot of little things (especially on messaging) and Backstage is doing a really good job here pushing individuals toward registration.
No. 3: Focus on Customers Who Have Already Expressed Interest
A lot of small businesses want marketing to work “now” – especially when it comes to conversions, purchases, registrations etc. And certainly, one way to elevate your marketing in the modern digital age is to target those who have either already expressed interest in your brand/products or services, or those that are searching for solutions in your particular industry. There are multiple ways you can identify those that have expressed interest and target them with marketing promotions:
- Retargeting visitors to your website or those who have already registered and gotten on your email list. All the major social ad platforms and large ad networks allow for you to retarget visitors with various advertising in text, search, and display. You can retarget them using a pixel-based method or you can also upload email lists and match them with what the advertising platform also has in their database of users.
- Remarketing to those who have searched on a particular topic related to your business. What’s the difference between remarketing and retargeting? Remarketing is a broader term and not just limited to marketing to those who visit your website, though that is certainly part of it. Remarketing can also involve those who “search” for a particular topic and then are shown display or other ads as a result of that demonstrated interest. Here’s an example below. I was searching for different website design solutions but never actually visited this website. But then, right after I searched, this ad appeared on ESPN to me. That’s good marketing.
- Setting up abandoned cart emails as part of your e-commerce checkout process. We’ve talked about this quite a bit in our post on conversion-rate optimization. With the average abandoned cart rate ranging roughly from 69 to 80 percent – it’s almost a no-brainer to set up an abandoned cart email to those who fail to checkout. But a lot of companies surprisingly don’t’ do this. Assuming you’ve captured your site visitor’s email, we recommend up to 4 abandoned cart messages that can be set up:
- At an hour.
- At 24 hours.
- At 72 hours
- And at 1 week.
- Setting up abandoned cart emails as part of your e-commerce checkout process. We’ve talked about this quite a bit in our post on conversion-rate optimization. With the average abandoned cart rate ranging roughly from 69 to 80 percent – it’s almost a no-brainer to set up an abandoned cart email to those who fail to checkout. But a lot of companies surprisingly don’t’ do this. Assuming you’ve captured your site visitor’s email, we recommend up to 4 abandoned cart messages that can be set up:
If you think about it, these are, after all, individuals who were interested enough to put something in a cart while in your e-commerce store. If that’s not demonstrated interest, we don’t know what is!
- Finally, run search ads for those who search for your brand or your products/services by name. These ads will often convert the best because the searchers are already what you might call middle-of-the-funnel buyers. They are aware of your brand and often are wondering what specific solutions you have for them. Now, of course, there’s a debate in the marketing community that such branded ads constitute “cheating” in a way in that the thinking goes that your organic result will do just as much to convert if you didn’t have the ad. But we would argue such ads allow you the opportunity to do a couple of things:
- Dominate the real estate for that search query in Google. In addition to the organic results, you also have a paid ad with your brand prominently displayed, which is great if competitors are bidding on your branded term.
- Allows you to create urgency with a headline or a better call to action than your organic page title. In the end, the goal is to convert and that’s what these ads will generally do.
- Finally, run search ads for those who search for your brand or your products/services by name. These ads will often convert the best because the searchers are already what you might call middle-of-the-funnel buyers. They are aware of your brand and often are wondering what specific solutions you have for them. Now, of course, there’s a debate in the marketing community that such branded ads constitute “cheating” in a way in that the thinking goes that your organic result will do just as much to convert if you didn’t have the ad. But we would argue such ads allow you the opportunity to do a couple of things:
No. 4: Create a Consistent Brand Look and Feel
If you really want to elevate your marketing, impose some rigor on what you do. For starters, create a brand guidelines document. It doesn’t have to be long but it should include some core things, defining your logo use (both horizontal and vertical options), as well as the colors of your logo and any variations that are approved (or not approved). You should also set the colors and fonts that are generally approved for use in your marketing. Finally, you might also consider imagery, tone, and word usage that is acceptable or unacceptable. Doing so will allow you to project a consistent presence and set expectations with your audience about who you are and what you stand for. It will also keep you from deviating from that, which can severely dilute your brand’s value.
No. 5: Up Your Impression Share / “Touches”
It’s funny when we use the term “elevate,” we often think of refinement. But this tip has really nothing to do with that. It’s really more of a blunt instrument – in this case, staying in front of your potential audience as much as you can. Indeed, what we find with a lot of small businesses is that they are often reticent to seem so aggressive when it comes to their marketing. That’s because either the impressions cost additional money (in the case of ads) or they believe that audiences will tire of seeing them all the time so instead of emailing audiences on their list once per week, they’ll do it once per month.
Certainly, fatigue is a real thing. But if you think about it, the average number of impressions it takes to “make a sale” has stayed consistent for many years – that number is about 14 touches. That’s a lot of brand impressions. And you know what? The companies that are most aggressive will, more often than not, be the ones that customers remember because they stay top-of-mind.
That doesn’t mean you have to send 8 emails a day (as we literally get from so companies) or increase your ad impressions to some crazy level. But we would recommend that you err on the side of putting yourself out there more. It won’t hurt you in the long run and you’ll often be rewarded more times than you won’t.
Conclusion
We hope this has been helpful to you. Contact us anytime for a free consultation about any marketing challenge you’re facing. We’ll help you think through your marketing options and provide you with recommendations, regardless of whether you ultimately go with our services or not.
