Just 22 percent of business owners report that they are pleased with their conversion rates.
The rest continue to implement marketing strategies with little or no results.
Maybe they’re implementing the wrong strategies. They could be expecting overnight success and aren’t committed to putting in the long-term work required. Or their overall promotion strategy could be lacking.
Whatever the reason, it’s clear that most businesses need new marketing strategies and skills.
But what happens when your business is supposed to be helping others with their marketing? If you own a marketing business but are struggling to grow your audience, it’s time for a chance.
Keep reading to learn how you could streamline your marketing plan. We’re breaking down a few ideas for a promotion strategy that could take your marketing business to the next level.
Start with a Solid Website
Before you can start developing a strong promotion strategy, you need a solid foundation.
Think about some tactics that direct visitors back to your site. If your website isn’t running properly or has poor navigation, the boost in traffic to it won’t do much good.
In case you’re launching a new site, now it’s a good time to invest in professional web design. This is a great way to create a solid foundation that will need much less work later on.
If you already have a website, an update may be in order. In case you’ve had the same web design for a while, consider whether it’s still serving the needs of your growing business.
Are you offering more products than you used to? Additional menus could help make navigation easier.
Has your client base changed interests? You may need to update your content and copy to keep them engaged.
Making these updates now will ensure that when you start a new promotion strategy and gaining traffic, your visitors will stick around.
Build Your Brand
Once your website is ready to go, it’s time to start developing your brand. This will gain customers’ trust and give you a competitive edge.
If you haven’t implemented a brand, go back a step and make some changes. This includes choosing a set of colors, fonts, and an overall style that you’ll use on your site. Be consistent on all social media platforms, print ads, and any other materials produced for your business.
In case you already have an established brand, start implementing it across other platforms.
First, address your social media pages. Check if the photos you post and the captions you write look and sound as though they share a style.
You’ll want to keep your brand and style in mind as you utilize the other promotion strategies on this list.
Develop a Plan
Because each business is unique and has different needs, develop a plan that outlines the steps you plan to take. Determine which strategies you’re going to launch each step of the way.
For instance, if your business and website are new, building a customer base should come first. You’ll want to focus on promotion strategies that help create brand awareness rather than necessarily translating into big sales.
If you’ve already launched and grown your business, you have an existing customer base that you can target with a specific promotion strategy.
With a plan in place, it’s time to implement a new promotion strategy.
Creative Promotion Strategy Ideas
Now that you have a solid foundation, it’s time to start putting promotional strategies to work.
Below you’ll find a list of possible promotional strategies that could help grow your web traffic. These can also boost brand awareness and increase your social media following.
Some strategies work better for certain types of businesses than others. For instance, if many of your customers aren’t on social networks, then holding a social media contest might not bring new customers.
As you read these ideas for promotion strategies, consider your client base and which strategies might work best.
Create a Sales Funnel
One great promotion strategy is to create a sales funnel. This is a set of steps that a customer is taken through.
The steps happen automatically. This means that the website or business owner has to do very little once the funnel is set up. This frees up your time so you can focus on other promotional tactics.
To create a sales funnel, you’ll need to find a way to turn casual web visitors into subscribers. This is usually done by creating an email list. Next, add a form that allows web visitors to join that list from your website.
Simply adding a form that visitors can fill in to join your email list isn’t enough. While it may bring a few subscribers, most visitors will want something in exchange for their information.
Consider what you could offer that would be useful for your clients. Maybe it’s a newsletter that you’ll send out weekly, which would include industry news. Perhaps it’s a guide teaching your followers a new skill.
Offer this item for free in exchange for a person’s name and email address.
The next step of your sales funnel should include a way to inform your subscribers of what you’re selling. Avoid coming right out and asking them to buy something. This will end with many subscribers choosing to opt out.
Instead, use the free resource that you offered as a way to introduce what you’re selling. Add in subtle references to how your product or service could be useful to them.
Regular emails and reminders of your product will help lead to sales. You’ll want to plan to remind subscribers of your products over and over again. Studies show that customers need to see a product at least seven times before they’ll buy.
Automating a sales funnel on your own can be tricky, especially if you lack marketing experience. If you want a funnel that draws traffic and then converts it into strong sales, you may want to bring in professional help.
Hold a Contest or Giveaway
If you don’t have a large amount of web traffic, even a great sales funnel might not create sales. In this case, you’ll need strategies to boost traffic to your site first.
One promotion strategy that can help with this is to hold a contest or giveaway on social media.
This method works even when you don’t have a large social media following.
To implement it, choose an item to give away as a prize. You could offer one of your products, a gift card to Amazon or another major (non-competitor) site, or local products. This about what your clients would like.
Next, determine how you’ll structure your giveaway or contest.
You could choose to create a raffle. Tell your followers that in order to enter the raffle, they need to like your page and share your post with their followers.
This is a great way to boost your social media following. When your current followers share your content, it will reach a huge audience who may never have heard of your business or site.
Another promotion strategy is to create a contest.
Have your followers post a picture or suggest a caption for a photo you provide. Tell them that whoever gets the most likes on their photo or caption wins. This is a good way to get your content shared over and over again, reaching a massive audience.
Once you’ve grown your social media following, make sure that your social strategy is strong. You’ll want to craft regular posts and interesting content that turns those followers into traffic to your website.
Boost Your SEO Strategy
When it comes to using Google and other search engines to boost traffic to your website away from social media, you have two options.
The first is through advertisements. These help to get your website to the top results on search engines for a fee.
But keep in mind that web surfers will know that you paid to get there. Many will scroll right past your result to get to the sites that got to the top spots organically.
That brings us to your second option – organic strategies for growth.
An organic promotion strategy helps land your website in the top results of search engines like Google for your target keywords. This promotion strategy is called SEO, or search engine optimization.
Organic links get more than 70 percent of all clicks on search engines.
To implement an SEO strategy, you’ll need to choose a few keywords. These should reflect the searches that you think your ideal customers would type in when looking for products or services like the ones you offer.
For instance, if you ran a bakery that sold wedding cakes in New York, potential keywords would be “New York bakery,” “wedding cakes New York,” or “best bakery for wedding cakes.”
You’ll then need to implement these keywords on your website. Add them to your existing content and anything new you produce. This promotion strategy can boost your visibility online and help expand your reach.
Be sure to keep it natural. If it sounds as though you forced these keywords into your content, it will end up sounding like spam. This will drive customers away and make you look unprofessional.
Add a Blog
One great promotion strategy that can help boost your SEO strategy while also drawing customers in is to add a blog to your site.
Blogging gives you a chance to naturally implement your keywords. At the same time, creating high-quality, useful, or interesting content that your customers will enjoy gives them a reason to visit your site.
Write engaging content regularly to give visitors a reason to come back. Plus, they will share your content with others, which leads to more traffic and sales.
One idea for content for your blog could be recaps of news stories related to your industry. It’s a good promotion strategy to build your reputation and authority.
If you offer products or services for other business owners, offer them tips for growing their business or attracting new clients. Provide financial advice or other tips that they would find helpful.
When you’re busy running other elements of your business, squeezing in time to produce regular, high-quality content can be a challenge. This is especially true if you’re trying to learn and implement SEO strategies at the same time.
If you’re struggling, don’t give up quality or reduce the amount of content you produce. Instead, it’s a good idea to invest in professional content creation.
Not only will this ensure quality, but it also gives you the chance to create more content without taking away from other elements of your business.
Choose the Right Promotion Strategies and Grow from There
Any of the promotion strategies on this list could be a great way to boost traffic to your website. When done right, they will grow your social media presence and increase brand awareness.
But trying to implement too many strategies at once is a mistake. You’ll end up giving less attention to detail for each strategy, which will reduce your chances of success.
Instead, choose one promotion strategy to focus on at a time. Once that strategy is in place and performing well, then you can consider trying something new.
Layering the strategies in this way will help ensure that each is performing the best it can.
If you’ve been struggling to grow your marketing business without success, it might be time to get professional help.
A marketing professional will be able to take an unbiased look at the promotion strategies that you have in place. He’ll be better prepared to see where it’s lacking, and how you could improve it to boost traffic and increase conversion.
If you’re ready to see how professional marketing services can help your business, contact us today! We’re ready to share more information about the services and skills we offer.