Lesser-Known Marketing Strategies You Can Implement to Stay Ahead of the Competition
Traditional marketing tactics remain effective; however, think outside the box with newer strategies in order to keep pace with competitors. Here are a few lesser-known approaches you could employ in order to stay ahead of them:
Infographics can be an inexpensive way to build brand recognition among target customers, and furniture retailer Early Settler uses them effectively to highlight the quality of its products while simultaneously drawing in new audiences.
1. Guerrilla marketing
Guerrilla marketing is an unconventional form of promotion designed to generate publicity for a business at minimal expense. Guerilla tactics take the form of low-cost strategies with creative, eye-catching methods meant to stand out amongst competitors and draw passersby into paying attention.
Guerrilla marketing often takes the form of street art. Stencil graffiti uses stencils to create repeated works of art on a surface; Reverse graffiti uses dirt and grime instead of paint to mark spaces as part of its marketing tactics.
Volkswagen used an unconventional tactic known as piano staircase guerrilla marketing to convince commuters to opt for stairs over an escalator in a subway stop, while Discovery Channel reminded beachgoers to watch out for sharks by placing “bitten” boards at public beaches.
Guerrilla marketing can be an effective way to engage customers with your brand through innovative means such as street art, flash mobs and other unexpected stunts. By harnessing social media’s potential reach and reach, guerilla campaigns can go viral quickly without spending a great deal of money – although be wary as it can easily misfire or misinterpret what was intended by customers.
2. Social media
Social media is a broad term, covering anything from Facebook pages and Instagram accounts to Usenet (unless, of course, you are into 80’s subculture or frequent Internet chatrooms) but more broadly includes any kind of web content and online communities; including websites dedicated to social networking; microblogs/blogs; photo sharing platforms/platforms; wikis; bookmarking communities/bookmarking communities/bookmarking apps/private messaging apps/video sharing websites and podcasts – etc.
Social-media marketing goes beyond simply increasing website traffic or increasing brand recognition; it’s about humanizing your business to your audience and building trust through following, engaging with and even collaborating with influencers who already have established audiences, while simultaneously using targeted ads to directly reach potential customers.
Departments should carefully consider their audience and goals when developing social-media strategies. If your target market primarily utilizes Instagram or YouTube for research before making purchases, promoting your business there could make sense; but be wary not to spread yourself too thinly: multiple active platforms could compete with each other for attention and dilute results.
3. Content marketing
Content marketing entails producing and disseminating informative, valuable information that delights current and prospective customers, such as blogs, newsletters, podcasts, infographics and social media posts. When done successfully, content marketing establishes brands as experts within their industries while decreasing reliance on paid ads to generate traffic and leads.
Undertaking top-of-the-funnel efforts through content strategy is an ideal strategy for businesses that prioritize understanding their audiences and providing answers without overtly selling products or solutions. Such strategies might include helpful FAQ pages, educational how-to videos or eBooks with solutions tailored to these audiences.
B2B companies can use content marketing to expand their audience and brand recognition. Ahrefs uses content marketing techniques such as publishing guides on SEO and online marketing that attract visitors while simultaneously positioning itself as an authority in its field.
Many businesses leverage content marketing to increase online presence and generate leads. Crunchyroll, an anime streaming service, combines their popular content with promotions and ads online to form an effective content campaign that keeps it at the top of search results and engages fans while driving subscriber leads for its subscription service. Their YouTube channel Crunchyroll Collections hosts clips and compilation videos of most searched anime moments; these clips help drive engagement while simultaneously promoting Crunchyroll Catalog’s catalog and driving leads from viewers on YouTube.
4. Email marketing
Email marketing is an online promotion strategy which involves sending promotional emails directly to current and potential customers via email. Email marketing helps businesses foster customer loyalty while simultaneously expanding sales or raising brand awareness.
Email marketing requires companies to have an existing list of contacts who have consented to receive emails from them – this means offering multiple means for people to subscribe – including through social media and websites. Companies should avoid purchasing or procuring email addresses from third parties as this could lead to spam complaints that harm deliverability reputation.
Email marketing campaigns typically consist of newsletters that inform recipients about new products or services, discounts and special offers for customers, company updates and company news. Emails can also be used to keep existing customers engaged by offering add-on products related to what was initially sold them, for instance through add-on subscriptions. Other types of email marketing include welcome emails, reactivation emails for inactive customers and announcements of upcoming seminars or events; each email must be tailored so as to be of genuine interest to the recipient, not ending up in their spam folder or being ignored by them!
5. Cold-emailing
Cold emailing is an effective strategy for building relationships with new prospects and establishing professional ties with them. This form of marketing involves sending personalized emails that target specific prospects, then regularly following up until either they respond or become customers. For effective cold emailing to be successful, first step should be identifying your target audience’s needs and interests so you can create compelling emails which resonate with them; additionally it’s also vital to use a verified and clean list so your emails won’t get flagged as spam by recipients’ inboxes.
Cold emailing may be less intrusive to recipients and simpler for senders to scale; it should still avoid using an overtly promotional or spammy tone and only contact those likely interested in your product or service.
Reply rates are key in measuring the success of any email marketing campaign; they measure how many responses per 100 emails sent and are typically set at 10% or so, which can be increased through personalizing messages, using relevant subject lines, and following up with recipients. You can also increase response rates with automated follow-up emails like Saleshandy that automate follow-up messages.
6. Facebook ads
Facebook provides businesses with an array of advertising solutions, enabling them to target specific actions such as link clicks or app installs with ads tailored specifically for that action. In addition, tracking tools allow businesses to evaluate the success of their Facebook ad campaigns.
Companies that employ remarketing (also known as retargeting) as part of their Facebook ads strategy can increase both ROI and chances of conversion by placing a tracking pixel on websites or post-click landing pages to track visitors, then creating audiences for remarketing ads.
Facebook allows marketers to create Lookalike Audiences – groups of people similar to your source audience such as Custom Audiences, post-click landing page data or mobile app data from apps – in order to expand ad reach and cost. You can select a size for the Lookalike Audience that may impact reach and cost; your ad campaign budget then allows you to reach those that match up best with it. Furthermore, in addition to Facebook’s advertising tools there are testing capabilities which enable advertisers to compare performance against one another and find which ads work best.