Many people are trying hard to understand how best to market their businesses in the easiest way. I’m sure you are also one of them. Despite the fact that most of the tricks and information there are pretty much the same, it is very hard to find the ones that truly connect all dots. I know, I’ve been there.
It took me more than 15 years to really understand marketing and the ecosystem around this complex subject. I spent countless hours of reading, observing and testing all sorts of theories before I finally see the pattern, and clearly see all dots being connected by it. On that day, I feel like Neo. Remember the last few moments of The Matrix where he woke up from being ‘dead’ and see the lines of dropping green codes reflecting that resembled three agents trying to kill him and what how the Matrix really looks like?
Image | The Matrix (1999)
As a seasoned marketing strategist, I’ve helped many brands from global conglomerates to small businesses with all sorts of strategies that deliver ROIs. Today, it is your turn. It is so simple, you can even start to work on it as soon as tomorrow.
Here goes.
Use any of these awareness tactics
I am going to assume that first, you have a great product or service with all the relevant processes already in place and people responsible for each of the roles set. Second, you have your brand name sorted out too. And third, you also have settled down all the content development part as well. These are the three caveats that I am not going to touch on in this article, and I am assuming that everything here is done and dusted.
I am going to share with you the awareness part only. And it is very crucial. At the awareness stage, there are at least 8 ways you can choose from. There could be more, but these are the main ones.
- Social Media, such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn and all.
- Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. Google and Bing are the big ones.
- Email. Usually, it is sent in a form of a newsletter.
- Influencers or some would call Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs).
- Out Of Home or OOH, such as billboards and vehicles.
- Media, such as television, radio, magazines and newspapers.
- Traditional, such as merchandise and stickers.
- Instant Messaging. For example, WhatsApp and Telegram channels.
If you have all the time in this world, you do not need to use any sort of advertisement to speed up the process. On the other hand, if you are desperate to get the results quickly within a certain stipulated period of time, then using advertisements is highly recommended. Usually, ads can produce a decent result in just a matter of days instead of months.
You can market your products and services for monetisation, or simply run informative content to build awareness about your brand for future consideration by using those methods, but you need to know one thing. For monetisation purposes, you can bring them to a website or any landing page where you can get them to order those products or services. This part is easy.
The not-so-easy part is when the audience is not ready to buy yet. Or, if you run a normal awareness campaign without monetisation, you would need them to go somewhere so that you can collect certain information about them. This is where you need to bring them to a landing page. A landing page is a page within your website or a built-in form on social media that allows you to encourage your audience to fill up information about them.
To entice them to come and fill up the information, you may consider giving them something in return. Stuff like free reports that can be downloaded, or digital goodies that you can courier them will help spark their interest to do it. This method is called a lead magnet.
Collect email addresses and mobile numbers
Among all information you ask them to fill in, there are two important ones you must not skip. One is their email addresses and two is their mobile numbers. You need to collect these data, populate them accordingly and grow them into a database to be kept safe.
Communicate with your community directly after that
One good thing about having a proper database of information, you do not have to be dependent too much on other platforms too much for future awareness campaigns. Social media and search engines are too expensive if you wish to play using them in the long run. They are a pay-to-play platform, and they have algorithms you need to know how to manoeuvre too.
For email, you can start to send the audience a periodically-timed newsletter that shares about your future promotion or perhaps just a few informative articles to keep your brand memorable. Try not to send your newsletter too frequently. They might feel offended and eventually opt out of it.
For mobile numbers, encourage them to join your Telegram or WhatsApp channel for future promotions and educative information. Similar to the newsletter, the frequency of information-blasting is crucial too. Keep it simple and don’t send text too frequently.
Conclusion
By communicating directly, and with subtlety, you might have a better chance of converting them from just an audience into paid customers way higher than social media and SEO. I remember reading an article sometime back that compare the conversion rate between both newsletter and instant messaging channels versus social media and SEO. The former has a conversion rate of 33 per cent while the social media and SEO only have a rate of 0.75 per cent which is way lower.
Like I said, this 3-step minimalist method is proven and tested. If you wish to see how it performs for you, give it a shot.
