Success in business in this day and age is as much about tooting your own horn as it is about offering a stellar product or service. Fortunes can be made overnight on the back of savvy marketing campaigns and effective marketing ideas, as HubSpot can tell you.
Essentially, you need to pull up your socks and market skillfully to grow, whether you’re a startup or an established business. Here, the Business Growth Hackers team offers the best, most tried-and-tested ways to successfully market your business in 2021 and give you effective marketing ideas to do it:
Give your brand a personality that’s in keeping with the times
Before you start planning a grand marketing campaign to take the business world by storm, make sure you have a firm foundation in place by giving your brand a relatable personality. It’s what will anchor your marketing efforts and stick your business in your audience’s mind, as Marketing91 can confirm. Marketing is more than standing out – it’s also connecting with your customers. A solid, consistent personality across all your channels can be your greatest asset in this regard.
Make sure the personality reflects your values, your company culture, and your beliefs – and evokes positive emotions in your audience. Your online presence – like your website and logo – should be modeled after it. Furthermore, it should guide every interaction with your audience.
Narrow the marketing scope 
You are doubtless aware your product won’t appeal to everyone – grandmas don’t need bodybuilding supplements, for instance. Too many businesses cast too wide a net with their marketing efforts, resulting in wasted time and money. For the best results, create a suitable persona – the ideal customer who needs your services or products – and then target them with your material.
Produce appealing content with an eye on the future
What you say is just as important as who you say it to. You will need an assortment of quality content to spearhead your marketing efforts, from the ad copy in newsletters to educational content in your business blog, and everything in between. The content is your voice – make it appealing, useful, and authoritative. Spread it across multiple channels (the ones your customers use) and optimize it for search engines.
Content isn’t a one-and-done thing. It will take time for you to build a sizable, high-quality repository, not to mention have it feature high in Google’s search engine rankings. But keep at it – it’s a worthwhile use of your resources, as with time it will become a reliable source of leads.
Ask for referrals 
Referral marketing is powerful – customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate and are 16% more profitable. Make referral marketing a priority. It can be as simple as asking favored customers and associates to refer you to their network, or as complex as an incentivized reward campaign to encourage your existing customers to publicize your products and services.
Cross-promote with non-competing businesses
Cross-promotion allows you to tap into someone else’s customer network. In return, you share yours. With the right strategy, you can double, triple, or even quadruple your reach. Zenbusiness offers some recommendations. For the best results, you partner with businesses that don’t compete but complement you in some way. If you’re selling a music player, for example, you can partner up with a music software maker that caters to audiophiles. Make sure your values and audience align before committing to a business arrangement with a potential partner.
Video blog on YouTube and related channels 
People have short attention spans, which makes videos a great way to capture and hold their attention. With short video blogs, you introduce your business and promote your products and services, and offer helpful tutorials for customers if they get stuck. Also, videos allow you to practically demonstrate your product or service – it is always more effective to show than tell. Successful businesses are active on YouTube and frequently partner up with social media “influencers” on related platforms like TikTok.
Advertise online
Advertising online always works and is easy to implement and manage. Some forms of online advertising that offer excellent results are social media ads, display advertising, mobile advertising, email marketing, digital signage, retargeting, and free promotions and discount campaigns. The nature of your business will determine the advertising avenues best suited to you. It’s always a good idea to try out a mix of advertising strategies, measure the ROI, and adjust your efforts accordingly.
You can use social media platforms, like instagram, to improve your ecommerce or promote your services. It is important to understand that these channels are always changing, so to be on trend you must know all the upcoming updates.
Advertise locally
Local advertising is often underestimated, but shouldn’t be. If you play your cards right, you can find a ton of business this way. All you need are effective
marketing ideas. Some ways to target your community include billboard ads, live demonstrations, telemarketing, direct mail, flyers, and guerilla marketing tactics. Besides directly drumming up business, local ads also allow you to network with other companies locally and give you extra word-of-mouth publicity, which is incredibly important.
Have a verified Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is a must. 46% of all Google searches need local information, and 97% of search engine users look up local businesses. With a Google profile, your business will show up too. You can optimize your listing further to make it rank higher for certain keywords by getting a Google business account (it’s free). Also, the customer reviews you garner here can showcase your business in a positive light.
Feature on other business directories
There are other business listings besides Google Business that customers regularly visit. These directories are seen as a trustworthy reference for business listings. Put your business on the major business directories like Yelp, Better Business Bureau, Foursquare, Yellow pages, and Bing for extra visibility and free marketing.
Conclusion
Whichever direction you go in your marketing efforts, make winning your audiences’ trust a priority. At the end, people want to connect with businesses they can trust with their time and hard-earned money. If you can come across as reputable and reliable, half your battle is already won.
Get an experienced partner to help you with your effective marketing ideas and run more successfully. Contact Business Growth Hackers here
By: Sharon Wagner of seniorfriendly.info