From small businesses to solo entrepreneurs to major brands, growth is always a goal. It may be the top goal.
Of course marketing is part of that discussion; it’s a major building block. Whether you call it lead generation, inbound marketing, digital marketing, growth, or some other buzzword, the root of it is marketing.
Marketing is essentially starting a conversation with an ideal prospect, in hopes of turning them over to sales.
While there’s a lot you (or a team) can do on your own, sometimes partnering with an expert in the field can help you put your growth into hypermode.
The question is, where do you concentrate your efforts? Which marketing services will help you truly build your business?
The list is long, but it’s better to start somewhere. Below you’ll find 10 marketing services to help you build your business. Even if you pick one or two, you’re making progress.
What are you waiting for?
10 Marketing Services to Help You Build Your Business
Website Optimization / Design
Not every business needs a new $30,000 website. That shouldn’t automatically be the answer from a marketing agency. Instead, they ought to look at your current website and your business goals, and see if there’s an opportunity for optimize your current site for conversions.
Strategically adding calls to action (CTAs) to your home page or most-visited pages can begin the process of optimizing your website.
Also, making smaller changes to the design like a hero image, cleaner navigation, and new images could go a long way to giving your site a new feel. And you wouldn’t have to blow everything up and start over.
This is why a website assessment is important. You should find out what’s working, where you can make minor adjustments, and where you can really dive in and make bigger changes. It’s time to work smarter, not harder.
Video Marketing
Your customers are human, right? Well, then they’re probably watching videos. And beside face-to-fact interaction, video is one of the most powerful tools to help you to connect with them on a human level.
This appealing and authentic medium gives businesses a longer reach, higher engagement, increased conversion rates and ultimately, more sales than many other marketing tactics.
Like websites, video has quickly become a requirement of doing business in the digital age. In fact, almost 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before making a purchase. Fortunately for businesses like yours, video is more affordable and more accessible than ever before.
When you’re ready to go beyond a cell phone video and make remarkable videos to get remarkable results, finding the right partner for video marketing services is key.
Look for an agency who will teach you, who will work with you collaboratively, who will fit with your culture, and who will bring you the quality you’re looking for in your videos.
Conversational Marketing
Direct, one-on-one messaging is bypassing our clogged inboxes and unanswered phones to become the world’s preferred way to communicate. And better communication means a faster, more efficient buyer’s journey in which you’re uncovering the right questions and tactics to deliver the most relevant message possible to potential customers.
That’s the world of conversational marketing. It includes chatbots and live chat, but goes beyond just the tools. It’s another strategy; it’s a mindset.
When a potential buyer is ready to talk, we have to be ready. When they want to use a social messaging platform, we need to be there. When they’re just browsing, we shouldn’t go in full-force for the close.
Adding conversational marketing to your business growth plan can help set your brand apart from the crowd.
Content Strategy
The magical cornerstone of inbound marketing is this: deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. When it comes to crafting that message, you’ll have to know what to say, and how to say it, for every different buyer persona. The right content creation crew should help you say what you really mean, while sounding like you belong, for maximum impact in every conversation and medium.
The web is full of valuable information. How will yours stand out? Think of a downloadable resource created for your ideal customer. Maybe it’s an eBook about DIY plumbing, a software training video or a mortgage calculator. Premium content is a free, downloadable offer that prospects trade their contact information for. But they have to see value in it.
That’s where content strategy shines. Then, from setting the strategy to executing on the plan, your marketing services partner should be there to ensure the ship is headed in the right direction.
Customer Lifecycle Mapping
Maybe you don’t need new leads. Maybe you need to connect with your most valuable (and often untapped) market. It’s the one you’ve already mastered– your current customers!
Not only is it possible to retarget and sell to your current customers, but it’s also faster, easier and more cost-effective than finding new ones.
They’ve already made a purchase. So what?
It’s time to map your customer lifecycle, and see how you can continue to serve them. It’s for your benefit as well as theirs – after all, they liked you enough to do business with you before! The average customer spends more in their third year than their first. So why are you spending five times more to acquire new customers?
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be mysterious.
As a business owner or someone working on a business, SEO can feel overwhelming. Working with the best marketing services partner on SEO could include setting up and maintaining an SEO strategy so that you don’t have to worry about it.
By using the right keywords for your customers and business, you’ll get more exposure, more traffic, more leads and more customers. Keeping a current SEO strategy allows you to maintain an advantage over your competitors.
Sure, it’s tempting to try it yourself, but it really does take an expert. The landscape of SEO changes daily. You need the right tools to analyze it and adjust. That level of hands-on work is an agile SEO strategy that maintains your competitive advantage.
Let our team of SEO experts help you set up and maintain a successful SEO strategy.
Buyer Persona Development
Before you can successfully craft any marketing message, you have to know who you’re talking to.
If you’re getting discouraged by poor response rates, no conversions and few results, it’s because you’re shouting your marketing message out of a megaphone, to no one in particular.
Well-defined buyer personas turn ideal customers into real human beings, making it easier to locate and talk to them effectively. Drive revenue for your business by knowing how to speak to people about what they’re interested in, when they’re interested in it.
Email Marketing
Even today, email is one of the most effective marketing tactics, when it’s done right. Email isn’t dead, just bad email practices. Plus, there’s simply too much of it that it’s hard to be heard through all of that noise. This leads to frustration and lazy practices.
Instead, crafting an email strategy that serves prospects and customers well can set you apart and help you grow your business.
The strategy behind successful email campaigns isn’t always apparent, but a precise and strategic message is vital for cutting through inbox clutter. It’s your most important tool to nurture prospects into customers with both intent-based and time-based marketing.
Landing Page Creation
Landing pages can be powerful in helping you grow your business. Even in the anti-form era, landing pages can be one of the most important marketing tools in the digital world.
A well-optimized landing page can have conversion rates of 25 – 50%, compared to the .5 – 3% conversion of most web pages.
These conversion powerhouses have a single purpose: to convert site visitors into leads by exchanging personal information for valuable content. Although they seem simple, with streamlined copy and a simple contact form, these pages require experience and strategy to succeed.
Harness the power of landing pages that convert to make them work for your business.
Pay Per Click Marketing
Find your tribe. Faster.
When pay-per-click ads make sense for your goals, they hypertarget the exact customers you’re searching for.
Want to advertise only to 30 year old stay-at-home moms in rural Oklahoma that have recently purchased a new car? You can do that.
Pay-per-click marketing on Facebook, Google and even Bing can deliver fast results and instant traffic to your site. It’s the perfect way to boost promotion or market a product launch with incredibly trackable results.
Unfortunately, you can waste a lot of money if you’re not considering your whole conversion strategy, or constantly testing and adjusting your campaign.
Working with an experienced, creative marketing services partner can help you supercharge your growth strategy when it comes to pay per click marketing.
Building Your Business with the Right Marketing Services
You need to build your business. And you need to do it without the budget of McDonalds or Bud Light.
Choosing the right marketing services to build that business is critical. These 10 services above are a great place to start.
An even better place to start is to see how your current marketing – and your website – stack up. Run your numbers through our conversion report calculator below. Let’s see how you’re doing, and how you begin to improve.
Building blocks photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Camel conversation photo by Kawtar CHERKAOUI on Unsplash
