The top marketing strategies and tactics of the last decade have had one feature in common; they used everything in their arsenal and tried till the last straw to gain brand visibility. Of course, there was something effective and charming in these marketing campaigns that made them so successful.
The purpose of any marketing strategy is to rise above the competition in the industry both at a national level and eventually at a global level in the long run. This is the top marketing technique of all big giants; however, the small and newly established businesses should follow in the same footsteps.
It is imperative to channel one’s creative side to draft state-of-the-art marketing strategies and campaigns. This is a sure-shot way to build a loyal clientele and repute in the market.
Right from social media marketing to content advertisement to securing citations in top business listing sites in the USA, the possibilities for marketing strategies and tactics are endless. To help you gain momentum in 2021, here is a list of the most effective marketing ideas to boost your business.
Ready to boost your Instagram following? Let’s begin.
1. Ideas for Social Media Marketing
Publicize your social media handles
Are you impatient to boost your Instagram followers? Want to get that Twitter following that every business dream of? Then do not be afraid to go bold.
Post your social media handles on all pamphlets, business cards, conference intros, and practically any place you think consumers can see. Offer incentives if you have to, but get all those people to follow you!
Hop on the weekly hashtag bandwagon #ThrowbackTuesday
There is no shortcut around building a social media fan following. You got to be creative and active. Laziness and a disappearing act will do you no good. Actively participate in all the social media competitions and traditions.
The purpose of a marketing strategy is to fetch clients. So put your face on all places where your target audience is present. This will help you fetch viable leads.
Get those fun-filled vines rolling
Vines are short, quick, and crispy videos, usually six seconds long. This is a social media marketing strategy and tactic that many businesses ignore. However, it can instantly help any business gain momentum. You just need to be creative and get your message across using those six seconds!
Post those images now and every day ahead!
Do not ignore the power of picture sharing on all social media. Hire the best graphic designer and infographic expert and post them around with your hashtags to get that traffic running on your site.
Keep an eye out for your competitors
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Does this phrase ring a bell? For businesses, this means that one must keep an eye out for their competitors, particularly their marketing campaigns. Find out what is working for your competitors? What is your competitor doing that you are not? How are they gaining all those followers per day? Find out and adapt.
2. Ideas for Urban Marketing
Go out on the streets
There is no harm in going a little old school with your marketing strategies and tactics. Print those colorful flyers and do not be afraid to paste them around the city walls and cafes. This can prove to be great for local businesses that cater to local consumers.
Invest in a mural painting
Get permits to paint a mural on any side of the street where it is prominently visible.
Be creative with your surroundings
Get that imagination and creative side rolling. Take a look at your urban environment and think about how you can use it for your next marketing strategy and tactic.
Get into creative sponsorships
One benefit of urban marketing is that there are endless untapped marketing opportunities you can avail. Just be creative with everything you do and monetize these opportunities.
3. Ideas for Contest-Based Marketing
Post Picture Contests
Picture or photo contests are ideal for marketing for multiple reasons. Anyone can easily enter these contests, in fact, anyone with an Instagram account can participate. This is also a great way to offer sponsors user-based content that can be used anywhere online.
Post Short Video Contests
Even if fewer people enter the video contest, you will get high-quality content since creating a video is an easy job for the user if they use a video editor like InVideo. Such a form of valuable content is like gold for businesses over time, especially if you post a condition for all filmmakers to enter a contest. This is definitely a win-win situation.
The Caption Contests
Post a picture on your social media account, and tell users to come with a caption and then post a reward for the best caption. This is fun-filled as well as a great marketing strategy and tactic.
The Vote Submission Contests
The voting contests us one type of contest that gets the maximum submissions. It is easy to enter with a simple click. The company can use the collected data to draft a research study and then tailor the marketing strategies accordingly.
The Classic Sweepstakes
The timeless, traditional, and most effective contest-based marketing idea remains to be the giveaway or the sweepstake entry. They are simple to participate, besides you can ask your participants to fulfill your requirements such as sign-up for subscriptions etc.
How to promote the contest: Marketing Ideas
Social media marketing strategies & tactics – hashtag to your contests
Do not forget to attach a hashtag to your contests. This will help you track the number of submissions, and will provide you an organized way to scan all the entries. Besides, there is no fun without the hashtag game.
Allow the contests to be easily shareable
You can add a custom “share the contest” button if you are receiving entries through a form on a website. You can also in general ask your users to share the contest as much as they can on different social media platforms. The more people are able to see your content, the better the results.
Offer those free deals
There is hardly anyone who would say no to free items. Some may be more enthusiastic than others, but everyone loves free stuff. So, people who are actively searching for deals and discounts tend to comb the offer sites every now and then. You can always find a contest corner on every website you visit.
There are sites that get more than 90% of traffic due to the offered sweepstakes. Even if these leads don’t qualify, but if you wish to get that traffic, then this is the way to go by. Start by offering food-based deals and then pick up speed from there. People love free food.
Inform users about the contests via email subscriptions
Use your email subscription list to your advantage. You know that your subscribed users absolutely adore you and your offers. Let’s say you are offering free software for a year, email your subscribers and let them know as they register!
Do not forget to share the contest on all your social media
Let’s say you are running a picture contest through Facebook, do not forget to share it on other social media accounts such as Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat! Of course, you want all your followers to know about your contest and you want everyone to participate in your marketing strategies. So, get those sharing ideas rolling.
4. Content Marketing strategies and Ideas
Do not forget to attach a visual piece to every content post you publish
It is easy to get bored with words only. In order to keep your users engaged, it is important to break your content with visual elements in between paragraphs. You will always find pictures even on blog posts that are heavily based on text.
Direct your content towards your audience
The most successful content type is the one that is drafted for the target audience. What is it that your audience wants to hear? What will get them all hyped up? What are they looking for? On-point and creative content caters to the needs of your audience and answers their queries.
Ever Heard of The Infographics?
Now that you know that users want to see and read visually appealing content, you must not skip creating infographics guiding users about your service or product.
The idea of developing an on-point and creative infographic is not easy, but it is not impossible if you hire an expert. You do not even need any software or graphic device; you can create an infographic using a simple PowerPoint slideshow.
Make use of ready-made infographic templates and get going.
Artistic templates
Templates have made everyone’s lives a lot easier. They allow businesses to create infographics easily without any hassle. You can use custom pieces and tailor them to your needs by doing the necessary edits rather than creating them from scratch.
You can even find templates for landing pages that contain the basic blueprint of where your content should be placed and where it will grab the most user’s attention.
Video-Based Content
There is no content marketing technique without promoting video-based content related to your new service or product recently launched in the market. Video can grab instant user attention. Did you know that video-based content has user retention of more than 65% while text-based content has a retention of only 10%?
Consumers who can view the videos related to the product are more likely to buy it than just reading about it. Hence, video-based content is a useful tool in your arsenal that you must use to your advantage for creating brand awareness.
Use Graphs as Visual Elements
Infographics are inspired by the traditional charts and graphs that are still quite impactful if you know how and where to use them as visual elements. They may not be as visually appealing as an infographic, but they require knowledge and skill to be shareable. So, use them everywhere and do not forget to actively share.
If you want to visually guide the users, a graph is easy to read than a table thrown in with big numbers. Whatever you do, make sure your content is easily understandable for your users.
Get That Controversy Stirring
You will agree that the more the controversy, the more the user attention. This is because controversial content gains instant attention and everyone wants to read what’s crooking out of the ordinary.
However, you have to be smart about posting controversial content, do not get harmed in the process. Present any controversial knowledge with your own opinion. That is a safer road to adopt.
Build Your Stats List
A quick marketing fix is to assemble all the statistics on a topic that is relevant to your business, and simply create a post and publish it on your website. You can create huge stats lists instantly and make is shareable everywhere. Try to include the extreme stats that will gain the most user attention and will help you remove the writer’s block.
Post future trends
Do you know there will always be an endless queue around someone who is predicting the future? Go around and post future trends of your business industry, however, back up your claims with substantial data.
PowerPoint slide show
Create user-friendly PowerPoint slide shows and post them on your website. This is a great and unique way to share your brand message in depth. PowerPoint slide shows are timeless and will never run out of style.
Host various webinars
Create and host a free of cost webinar or you can sign a partnership with another entity so that the promotion is collaborative and there are higher chances of getting maximum qualifying leads. With a partnership, your marketing game will also double up.
One of the marketing strategies & tactics – The search engine searches!
You can use various keyword-generating tools to your advantage to build your content around. Keyword searches will help you understand what users read and look for the most on search engines. Type a few keywords into the Google search engine bar and hit Enter. Then be amazed by the magic.
Also do not forget to submit citations for the top business listing sites in the US.