8 Unique Marketing Tactics To Grow Your Business
The Census Bureau U.S. recorded a whopping increase of 24.3% (around 4.5 million) in new business applications during 2020. Not surprisingly, the economic crunch and rapid digitalization due to the coronavirus pandemic forced people to rethink their careers. It drove many towards a creative entrepreneurial approach. Many people turned their leisure activities into businesses or came up with new ideas. The self-reliance and easy access to digital spaces made it easy for almost half a million new businesses to start their journey in January 2021.
But running successful beings isn’t like walking in the park. Several hurdles can crush your dreams. The office of Advocacy, Small Business Association (SBA) has estimated that 21.5% of small businesses fail to prolong their journey ahead of their foundation year. In a research conducted by SBA, it was found that poor marketing is one reason, along with other contributing factors. Approximately 14% of small businesses fail every year for not adapting a user-focused approach.
Though creativity is crucial, it is also necessary to market your business properly to ensure long-lasting success. So if you’re a newbie business owner looking for some unique marketing tips, we’ve listed some below to help you get started.
Know your target audience
Are you unfamiliar with what your target audience is? If yes, then no other piece of advice might be valuable to you. So start by researching who your target audience is. Let’s say you’re selling dresses for women. Do you know how many of your customers will buy them? How old are your customers? Where do they live? How many plus-size sets will you have to stock? Knowing your audience will help you develop a sound marketing plan.
If you feel under-equipped with the right know-how, consider upskilling yourself. A Marketing Master of Business Administration degree will enable grasp marketing concepts and develop a proper plan. Ignoring customers’ problems and requirements is a significant obstacle to a budding company’s marketing goals and revenue stream. So, ensure that you possess the correct knowledge of identifying your target audience.
Provocative advertising
You need to break the traditional marketing culture to attract more people and expand your customer net. Be provocative and shock your audience through deliberate appeal. Try to produce creative chaos like the Aquafresh Milk Teeth Toothpaste ad did through animations, showing the fight with little kid cavities. Or look at the way RLR advertising urged people to recycle through trashy burger ads for their ‘heal the bay’ campaign. Using out-of-the-box ideas in your campaign will get your target audience talking about your product.
Go live
In the age of microblogging, you can use live streams to connect with your customers through your social media pages. Live streaming is among the fastest-growing marketing tactics. Cisco has estimated that by 2022 video steaming will comprise 82% of internet traffic. Live streams give you lucrative opportunities to build your brand through real-time connectivity and responsiveness. It will increase your visibility and help in authenticating your social media presence and brand image. It will take away the fear of the unknown, and your customers won’t consider you a scam. Subsequently, people will feel easy to contact you through their mobile devices.
Initiate referral programs
Referral programs help to excite people about your business. Besides, who doesn’t like freebies? So ask your initial customers to spread the word by referring you to others. Incentivize them by handing out gifts or discount coupons. You can also ask satisfied customers to tag a certain number of people in the comment box of your content or share your page’s link on their social media accounts. This activity will increase page traffic to your website and expand your customer base.
Launch interesting polls
Another excellent way to reach more people is to start different polls. People like to express their opinions even more when they know businesses value them. You can ask your customers what improvements they want to see in your products. Or use polls to A/B test your products. There is a chance that the poll results might help you ideate a new product line or a new brand.
Initiate a contest
Online competitions help develop the interest of your followers. You can ask people to share their experience with your product through a unique picture or video. The picture/video that gets the most likes will win the contest. So indirectly, your clients will be marketing for your company as your clients will also share their visuals on their accounts. The picture sharing will create a ripple effect. Their followers will take this as a positive shopping experience and want to try your product. Plus, you’ll also be generating a lot of user-generated content you can use later on.
Watch your competition
To win a battle, use your enemy’s eye. This means thinking about your strategy from your opponent’s perspective. Generating a loyal customer base in this era of consumerism is a tough job. To increase your customer base, do adequate research on what your competitors are up to. For example, if you’re a traveling business and your competitor offers a low-priced travel package for Thailand, see how you can provide more value in terms of cost-effectiveness. Competitive research allows you to identify gaps in the market and fill them up with your products/services. There are plenty of online tools to research and scrutinize your competitors’ marketing activities.
Produce viral content
Look at Buzzfeed and Upworthy; both are constantly producing content that goes viral. Their content niche might be different from yours, but learn from what they are doing right. Creating viral content has no formula. But if you stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the world, you can quickly stir up a storm on social media sites such as Twitter. Viral content will have exponential effects on your marketing efforts.
Conclusion
Marketing your business is essential to reach out to potential buyers and increase traffic to your business front. This article mentions some unique, cost-effective ideas you can employ. The internet has many tools to enhance your marketing know-how and streamline your marketing efforts. Use them to your advantage when implementing the suggestions mentioned above for growing your business.
