In order to grow your business, you need to grow its target audience, and the only way to do this is through an extensive marketing effort.
Crafting a proper marketing campaign is not a simple thing. It requires budgeting, strategy, and efficient execution. When it comes to budget, the majority of companies assign 10%-50% of their average annual revenue for this (depending on the nature of their industry and its competitiveness).
As far as strategies go, here are the top six tips that can help you out.
1. Offer something of value for free
People are always interested in what you have to offer them, rather than how you can benefit yourself. So, start considering your options to offer some value for your audience for free. There are several ways to do this.
For instance, on your blog, you can post reviews and tutorials, which can be useful learning materials for your audience. Giveaways and contests are another way of attracting an audience and generating value for them at the same time. Budgeting for this kind of contest/giveaway is also quite important.
Related: Why Online Reselling Is The Best Female-Oriented Businesses Idea
2. Invest in sleek web design
A professionally-made web design may have a drastic impact on your overall marketing strategy. A sleek design will make people stick around to see more, which decreases your bounce rate and boosts your retention time. Both of these are search engine algorithm metrics, which means that they affect your SEO rank quite drastically.
Other than this, a sleek design improves the first impression that your business makes (the majority of people will interact with your business in the digital environment for the first time). A good design also makes you seem more trustworthy and professional.
3. Increase the output of your content
The majority of people are focused on the quality of content as the most important thing in content marketing. Well, quantity can be just as important. First of all, it affects the credibility of your blog. Even if your posts are best-written, if there are only two posted on the entire blog or if you post twice a year, the chances are that you’ll lose people’s interest.
After all, they can consume all your content in 10 minutes, and they won’t hope for anything new anytime soon. In order to establish a lasting connection with your audience, you need to increase your content output.
Related: 10 Marketing Ideas for Increasing Your Blog Traffic
4. Recycle your content
One of the ways to increase your content output is to recycle your content. How do you do this? It’s fairly simple, you take an old piece of content, and you update it. A lot of people are looking for up-to-date statistics, so if your post is from 5 years ago, the chances are that it’s no longer valid.
Also, some posts can be transformed into a different format. A text-based post can become a video or an infographic. Another great idea is for you to make comparison posts. All you need to do is take two separate reviews and merge them into one comparison post.
5. Interact on social media
Previously, we’ve discussed the importance of posting on a regular basis. Social media posts and shares can somewhat help in that regard. Sure, you can use it to promote your own brand, but there are other uses for your social media presence.
Sharing other people’s content is a way to earn favours and expand your own reach at the same time. Moreover, liking posts shared by your target audience and commenting on them can be a great way to establish a personal link with your target audience.
Related: 7 Fundamentals Tips of Running a Successful Lifestyle Blog
6. Start refer-a-friend program
Starting a refer-a-friend program is one of the simplest ways to turn the majority of your audience into brand ambassadors. In the first section, we’ve talked about how you need to provide your audience with some value. This way, you’re allowing them to earn points that can be converted into rewards or discounts.
It allows you to gamify the experience of interacting with your brand (which is a major perk on its own) while simultaneously increasing the number of your audience. Keep in mind that you need to calculate the cost-efficiency of this method. Giving away too many valuable rewards can put you in a bit of a tough spot (financially).
In conclusion
In order to promote your business, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. What would make you give a business a shot? What would make you come back for more? What kind of traits do you value from other brands? Finding answers to these several simple questions is essential for your efforts to grow your business’s reach.
A bigger audience means a bigger profit, even with the same conversion rate (10% of 100 visitors and 10% of 1,000 visitors are not the same).
With the above-listed six strategies, you will simultaneously grow your reach and nurture brand loyalty.