Don't throw your Online Marketing dollars to the dogs- how to get a worthy ROI for your business

As a business owner, you can be certain of one thing: time is scarce.

It can be a struggle to devote a fair share of your day and week to loved ones, let alone to the company. Whether it’s employees, management, meetings, and increasing quarterly sales quota and any other day-to-day issues, we’re often drained.

Many owners leave one thing out though, marketing. Some actually don’t think it’s that important and those who do sporadically devote huge chunks of their budget only to be burned by a lack of results. 

Marketing can but doesn’t have to be expensive. Businesses need to understand it is not spend, but the return on investment (ROI) that matters.

To get the most out of your time and resources, you need to be strategic about it.

Here are a few tips to ensure your company reaps the most benefits out of its marketing efforts

Determine which platforms suit your business and brand best

After a long day of work, it can be really taxing to even find the time and energy to look after a family and yet alone your business's online presence.

This often ends up in a lackluster effort as this doesn't remove the need to be creative and proactive to bring in more customers and increase brand awareness. Hence a lot of owners give up often out of a lack of patience and skill. 

Also one of the main reasons is trying to marketing on all online platforms at once. Whether you have a team or not, it is always better to focus your efforts on the few platforms that are most appropriate for your brand and give you the most return on investment (ROI).

Even if you have a team or a dedicated marketing professional in your business, at first it still makes sense to focus on as few platforms a possible in the beginning.

While there is actually lots of variability as to which platforms work best, generally YouTube, Instagram and even Pinterest give the best ROI for website traffic.

For B2B businesses, LinkedIn, Instagram (yes, Instagram), and YouTube is most effective.

It is mostly due to the ever-growing popularity of these platforms and the emergence of video.

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Don't focus on all platforms when you're starting out

Social media and the factors that influence reach and engagement change constantly.

It is becoming quite a task for social media managers and online marketers to keep up and consistently provide satisfactory and overwhelmingly meaningful results to clients to keep justifying their fees.

Especially if you're a one-man team, it's just not a good use of time. Each platform is unique and you must be on top many nuances to really stand out and deliver results.

You need to focus on getting a return on your time, energy, and money rather than being everywhere.

Focus on building a marketing funnel and an email list

Even with decent success on a platform, one shouldn't become solely dependent on it.

Algorithms change, people get banned for very very subjective and debatable reasons.

The more reliable way is to focus on building out and getting traffic to your website and increasing your email subscribers.

As scalable as it can be if you know how to do it well, you don't want an algorithm to control how much sales you make, people you reach, or even what and how you promote to your audience. 

Instead you need to focus on building out a marketing funnel that channels your readers from hearing about your brand and service to buying raving repeat buyers. 

A marketing funnel can be broadly defined as a model and series of steps created to guide a reader through to becoming your customer over time.

Plus with so many platforms competing for buyer attention, it is more feasible to use multiple marketing channels such as messenger bots YouTube to reach and make more brand touches with your ideal customer.

This is commonly referred to as an omni-channel marketing approach.

Use a marketing calendar to plan and schedule promotions

This one is so important. Not even I, at first realized how crucial this is. A marketing and promotion calendar can keep you sane especially when you're busy running or working in the company.

You need an outline of your key promotions and when they're happening.

You need to plan out the important events in your business you would like to promote to your audience and when. Also weekly types of content your post should be listed so you can prepare them ahead of schedule.

This will allow you to create content ahead of time and even miss a few days if you need to.

That way, you're in much better control of your promotions rather than scrambling and being haphazardly reactive every time you need to “put something out”.

It also allows you to be more methodical about your promotions and run even more complex marketing campaigns.

Batch and Schedule out your content

Doing this removes the need to be stressed and reactive every time important messages need to go out to the public.

Your company can better focus not just on what you're posting but how you convey that message. It also ensures that you post regularly rather than when something important comes up.

In business, time is already scarce, and social media scheduling tools can be a great time saver.

Invest in proper branding for your business

When it comes to your brand's online presence, you need to treat your company like a shop that people go to get what they want and need.

From the visuals to your copyrighting, your branding next to your product/service quality is key to standing out and building a rabid customer base.

With a lot of review websites like Caribbean Biz Connection, Trip Advisor, and others an impressed customer has all the platforms they need to say great things about your company or even hurt your brand if you really didn't meet their expectations.

People are judgmental and won't care if they haven't visited your place of business. Even those who have, we can all agree they’re a lot braver behind the keyboard.

You need to invest in the proper expertise to brand yourself and remain relevant online and back that up by providing a quality product/service.

Let's put it this way, even if you're pretty, well dressed, and just look good, would your date have a good first impression if your teeth are rotten because you don't take care of them?

You need to take your website as seriously as you take your home and company premises.

Most people who encounter your brand may never even visit and with the expectation of convenience with buying online on the rise, they shouldn't have to.

This just means that you have more chances to impress them and also more people who may rule you out to go to the competition if they don't think your product/service matches their needs. 

If you need help with your website design, branding, copyrighting, and other marketing tasks in your business, fill out our contact form and we’ll be in touch for a free consultation.

Post your successes (testimonials, customer reviews, etc)

In the wake of a multitude of platforms that allow customers to leave online business reviews, it is absolutely critical to post their success stories and testimonials.

Your business should proactively be looking to get them.

You cannot completely control what someone says about your company but you can do your part to give the right perception by posting the good experience customer have.

Video testimonials work best. They can also be displayed on your website and can be used a social proof further validating your company to potential customers.

Further, most platforms have their own self-interests at heart and sometimes can even hide reviews due to their policies.

Posting your own material that you gather from customers allows to take some of that power and ensure your customers are getting the right message.

Retarget your website visitors

Another very useful promotion tactic that can be used is to retarget your website visitors. People often are distracted and forget to return to blog posts, contact you or just return to check you out. 

Thus, you need to make it easier to re-engage with your brand by retargeting your visitors. You need to place a Facebook pixel on your website.

Email Marketing

Contrary to popular notions, email is not dead.

In fact, with the rising costs of gaining the attention of customers through digital advertising, many businesses are being budgeted out of it.

What is more effective and free is forming a relationship with your customer over time.

You do so by providing them a valuable piece of information your target customer would want.

You simply request their email address to send it to them. This is called a lead magnet.

From then through daily or weekly emails, you can begin sending them viable and relevant information that will improve their brand and respective businesses. 

Although it isn’t completely free since you have to pay for an autoresponder such as Convertkit long term it is way cheaper in the long run instead of paying for a click or spending hours creating social media graphics barely 100 people will ever see.

There are many more benefits of email marketing that you can download here but the point is it can be a very powerful tool in a business owner’s arsenal if you know how to do it right.

Conclusion

You need marketing to stay in business. There isn’t any other way to slice it.

Even if you may not have the budget of a Fortune 500 company, there is still a lot you can do to attract more customers.

Your company needs to be strategic in determining the platforms and advertising and publishing, which means they can reach their customers easier and where will provide the highest return for money and time spent.