How Outsourced Marketing Can Help Grow Your Business
The world of marketing may have changed utterly in the internet era but the need for strong lead generation remains unchanged. Few businesses can grow without some form of marketing. It is not usual to find business owners and managers who are brilliant at designing and delivering product, and naturally, at closing that sale. After all, their business is up and running well. However, many will readily admit to a haphazard approach to new lead generation - the very element that is core to business growth and ultimately, success. Time, know-how and resource constraints are the principle reasons. We discuss how outsourced marketing can help grow your business.
Lead generation is vital
For your business to grow, people who don’t know about you today, need to know about you tomorrow. At a minimum all those people in your target market, who are not yet your customers, must be introduced to your business over time. Increased sales will only happen when you consistently raise your brand awareness, target specific prospective customers and grow your market share.
The best approach
The digital age brings incredible opportunities. You can promote your business in a highly targeted way and for a much lower spend relative to traditional marketing formats. Very few people make any buying decision without first researching online. We know that buyers, whether consumer or B2B, have a huge appetite for relevant and engaging product and service information. What then is the best approach? It is always the one that best suits your target audience. If it’s students, then go heavy on the digital side but don’t forget the power of a clever and targeted bus shelter. If it’s over 50’s, often a good mix of digital and traditional work best.
Great marketing planning
Knowing who to target and how requires time, effort and skill. Get your marketing strategy right and execute it well, and you’ll reap the benefits. You’ll need to think about and specify what your business goals are and translate them into marketing objectives such as raising awareness, prospect targeting, increasing sales and growing marketing share. Once you know what you are aiming for, you need to identify who you are trying to reach and what their interest is in your product or service.
Who to target
The first step is to outline your top customer profiles, or buyer persona’s. This information can be gathered from existing customer analysis, sales team interviews and customer market research. It tells the story of your customer, for example, their age, gender, location, salary band, occupation, interests, lifestyle, purchasing habits, likes/dislikes (B2B), online orientation and more. This understanding determines how, where and what to attract each customer type. We provide a handy buyer persona template below to get you started with this step.