Tips and Techniques for Better Marketing Practices

Marketing is never an exact science. Although there are common guidelines that all marketers and companies should follow, every audience and every business is different. The best way for the latter to interact with the former depends on many different factors and can often change over time.

The eventual result of this is that every company, even the firmly established and successful ones, has room to improve on their marketing practices.

The following quick and easy tips any company can apply to their own marketing endeavors, whatever their marketing plans may be.

Opt for Original Content Over Reposts

When it comes to online marketing, content is king. This is especially important to remember when it comes to social media marketing, a major trend and powerful tool for businesses everywhere that is only going to get bigger.

As Forbes online marketing writer Jayson DeMers asks, why would a company want to share another brand’s content when they can share their own? As DeMers points out, research on online content marketing has shown that “created posts – as compared with shared posts – receive far more viral reach, organic reach and engagement than those that are simply shared.”

This, of course, does not mean that companies should take credit for content that they did not create. Instead, it means that companies that take the time to create their own blog posts, photos, social media messages and so on will experience drastically improved marketing attention as a result.

If you’re not sure what content to create, you can still take pointers and ideas from other companies’ content. For example, if you read a breaking relevant news article on a news website, don’t just repost it. Instead, write your own take on the story and reference the site that you heard it from. Your audience will appreciate a fresh voice on a subject more than they will your ability to copy and paste.

Follow and Favorite Content Sharers

Once a company has created and released social media marketing content to their audience that does not mean that they are done and can forget about it. Companies need to keep track of how their target audience reacts to, and shares, this information.

One great way to do just this while also gathering more followers for the company is to follow individuals who share and repost the company’s content. As content crafter Belle Beth Cooper explains, taking the time to show appreciation to marketing audience members is a great way to entice them to follow the company even closer in the future. It will also help boost a company’s reputation amongst audience members as a business that pays attention to them and takes an interest in what they have to say.

Double Check Consistency

With any type of marketing endeavor, online or offline, consistency is an important consideration. A lack of consistency is also one of the easiest marketing mistakes to make without noticing, which is why all businesses should take extra care to make sure that they are presenting a steady marketing image.

To help companies with their marketing consistency, Bozeman Daily Chronicle marketing writer Doug Weber advises companies to double check that they are using the same tagline throughout all of their promotions and a color scheme that is consistent across their brand. It is also important that companies use the same logo, or family of logos, in each of their marketing efforts. The more consistent the marketing, the better idea customers and other audience members will have of who the company is and what it does.

Stop Marketing to Unprofitable Customers

At first glance this can sound like counterproductive advice. After all, ignoring customers to chase profits is an easy way to paint a company as cold and uncaring, a reputation that will definitely not help their marketing efforts.

But on closer inspection, this advice proves sound. After all, if a company stops spending time and money marketing toward customers who do not respond well to their advertising, then they will have more resources to direct toward those customers who do.

As Atlanta marketing consultant Michael King told Microsoft’s Business Hub, “More than likely, 20 percent of your customer base is contributing 150 percent to 200 percent of total annualized profit (TAP).”

A remaining 70 percent of customers are “breaking even,” while the final 10 percent most likely cost a company between 50 and 100 percent of their TAP, according to King.

What this means is that companies should take a closer look at how their customer profitability stacks up. Premium marketing services should only be directed at those customers who are most likely to return with a boost in profits, not those on whom this marketing will most likely be wasted.

Naturally, there are many more ways that a company can improve its marketing endeavors and draw in more and more interested customers.

Bottom-line, marketing can be daunting, but the important thing is to focus on the audience and the most important marketing tasks while trimming away inefficiencies and unnecessary costs.