There are a few basic principles that all businesses should follow to ensure their strategy is cost-effective, drives sales, and gets your business noticed. Whether your marketing strategy includes digital, personal, or more traditional marketing methods, or even a combination of all three, these pillars will generate leads and get you noticed by your customers in no time.
4 Pillars of an Effective Marketing Strategy in 2021
The four most important pillars on which to build a solid foundation for your marketing plan are: 1) Vision and Brading, 2) Identifying customer pain points, 3) Generating Demand, and finally, 4) Building Meaningful Relationships with your customers.
1. Have a Clearly Defined Vision and Brand
The first, and arguably the most important component of your strategy should be your vision. Ask yourself in which direction you want your business to expand. What are your goals, and what will it look like when you achieve them? Whether it’s a particular profit margin, a targeted number of customers, or a particular geographical reach, defining a clear vision of who you are as a company, and who you would like to be seen as in the future.
The Importance of Developing an Effective Brand
While your overall vision for your business is important from the inside, your potential customers will only see what you put out there: your brand. Having a well-defined brand will help you build your profile and affect your position in the market and defines the expectations of your potential customers. The success or failure of a particular branding can be very difficult to quantify, as it can be hard to set effective metrics for it; but it is still an essential part of any marketing program.
Don’t be afraid to consider rebranding your business if your overall strategy changes and doing so can be extremely helpful if you are in the process of a pivot to a new market. Design trends change over time, and businesses should always be willing to update logos and copy to suit emerging trends and avoid appearing outdated.
2. Identify Customer Pain Points
Just because you are offering a particular service doesn’t mean customers will come running! Make sure you identify the key factors driving demand for your services, what it is that your customers need, and how your business can stand apart from the competition. This is where industry data can come into its own, as can researching organic keyword search demand to see what your customers are really searching for.
Make sure that you are aware of the types of pain points your customers may be experiencing. For example, a particular customer may want to improve their internal processes by streamlining their systems, while another may be looking to reduce spending and are looking for a decreased-cost solution that doesn’t compromise on efficiency.
Form Customer User Groups
One of the best ways to identify your customer’s problems and needs is to form Customer User Groups, allowing you to leverage those who already benefit from your services. This can help you tailor your marketing to particular customer groups; IT companies may, for example, be experiencing the pain point cloud security more acutely than other groups.
There are several methods to employ during this process, including conducting groups in person, via video call software such as Zoom, or by building surveys to uncover unique or unexpected pain points that customers may have experienced before they found your solution. This can allow you to adapt your marketing strategy to target these pain points in other potential customers earlier and stay one step ahead of your competition.
3. Generate Demand for Your Service
Demand for your business’s services is the bedrock upon which all marketing is built. Building leads and connecting with both potential and existing customers is what most people would define as the very essence of marketing, but it may well not be that simple especially for complex and sometimes intangible services such as those offered by MSPs. Building and measuring demand can also be complicated by products and services that are particularly expensive, as potential customers will have to carefully consider their budgets before making a purchasing decision.
One of the most important aspects in this regard is identifying customers who while, for a variety of reasons, may not want to buy immediately, may, in fact, want to buy later. You should even be looking out for those in your target market that might not initially wish to buy anything but may decide otherwise after they have seen what you sell, and how it could help them solve a problem or eliminate a pain point that they may be experiencing.
Integrate a Long-Term Strategy
Generating demand often requires a long-term view that integrates well with the rest of your branding strategy. Effective approaches often focus on developing a community of customers, potential customers, or simply people who are aware of your business and the problems you can solve. The latter two groups may often enter your customer base further down the line, or even grow your business by word of mouth.
4. Build Trusting, Meaningful Relationships
Last but not least, building trusting relationships amongst your network of current, prospective, and potential customers is one of the best ways to ensure your business spreads by word of mouth, as current customers become advocates for your brand, helping your message spread further, while those who have only just begun to consider your service will gain confidence in coming onboard. Building this network can take some time but will pay off in the long run as word of mouth carries your business and brand to new horizons.
Use Inbound Methodology
Inbound marketing involves aligning your marketing efforts, especially your digital marketing, with the new decision-making process that buyers in 2021 have begun to adapt. This is a response to mass marketing, especially digital marketing such as unsolicited emails or banner ads, that buyers have largely learned to ignore. They still have their place as part of an integrated marketing strategy but are largely being phased out by modern marketing departments as apathy towards these methods grows.
Inbound methodology largely relies on passively directing customers towards your business. This could be by using keywords to increase website traffic from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) while letting potential customers do their own research. With methods like this, it’s especially important to convert anonymous website visitors into tangible, known leads, largely by social media content, calls to action, and finally through email mailing lists and similar strategies. Businesses can then capitalize on this earned trust, and turn customers into enthusiastic business promotors, helping your message to spread without your direct input.
These pillars represent the most important aspects of marketing that face companies in 2021. While every business will have specific marketing needs depending on the product or service that they offer, every modern marketer should be focusing on these four paradigms when developing their strategy. If you’re looking for a trustworthy marketing agency who pride themselves on offering a personal touch, thenschedule a consultation with us at Cwell Marketing today.Not only will we help you automate your lead generation systems, but we will also take real pride in helping you overcome your marketing problems.
