Affiliates
Affiliates are online commissioned sales associates. They set up sales pages/sales funnels and promote your products and services. You’ll often see affiliate sites and “review sites” with links to products.
Affiliates receive commissions based on the payout models of CPS = Cost Per Sale or CPA = Cost Per Action. Cost per action can be; Clicks, impressions, leads etc.
Commissions can range from 5% to 30% for physical products, and 30% to 90% for digital products. Commission rates can vary depending on the agreement and the amount of commitment from you. I.e. Your digital marketing spends.
To maximize the return of affiliates, it works best if affiliates have a huge/loyal database of your ideal customers.
Pros: You pay based on results. You can reach targeted audiences.
Cons: Doesn’t work well for Low Margin products or new products that don’t have marketing content or data.
Useful Links / Resources:
Articles (Published)
Articles can be a great way to build brand awareness and build trust with your customers. They are easier to distribute than books, so offer a wider audience. I.e. You can publish your article across 20 different websites.
Pros: Can brand yourself as an expert in your industry. Scalable. Can be cheap to produce.
Cons: Can take time to create. Can require a high level of industry or specialized knowledge. Can take a long time to see results.
Association Memberships
Association memberships can be part of your networking initiatives. This tactic involves marketing your products and services through the membership organization.
Pros: Depending on your membership audience, you could have pre-qualified targeted leads.
Cons: Your product or service needs to be in alignment with your membership’s interests.
Banner Advertisements (GDN)
Banner ads can be a great way to build brand awareness for your products and services.
As shown in the example, banner ads are the advertisements that surround website content. You can target where you want your ads to appear based on Keywords, topics, and interests that relate to your product.
Banner ads work well when retargeting your audience. Ie. When someone visits your website (cookies are embedded). You can then retarget those visitors with specific content and offers.
GDN (Google Display Network) is the most common banner display platform.
Costing Model can be CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions).
Pros: Reach a huge audience with a low budget.
Cons: Can have low Click Through Rates (0.2% – 0.4%). Creative needs to be effective.
Barter / Trade Exchanges
Barter trading is a system whereby you can barter your goods and services within a cashless business network.
Pros: You can increase your network, decrease stock, expose you to opportunities that you didn’t have before. Reduce costs for essential products and services you require.
Cons: You don’t receive cash (cash flow). Can have limited trading opportunities. Ongoing fees to remain a member of a program. Bartering and trading are not tax exempt.
Useful Links / Resources:
Blimps, Balloons, Plane Banners & Skywriting
Blimps, Balloons and large inflatable signage solutions are perfect for grand openings, trade shows and large-scale outdoor events where there are large amounts of people.
Pros: Can be seen by thousands of potential customers at a time. Is great for brand awareness, giving you a wow factor.
Cons: Expensive, not ideal for small business operators.
Blogs / Blogging / Content Marketing
Blogs are a great way to generate organic traffic. However, they can take a long time to reap the rewards. Unlike paid digital marketing that stops working once the budget stops, blogs remain effective for an extended period of time.
They can be a great way to build your authority within the industry.
Pros: They can be inexpensive to create if you do them yourself. Plus, you can use leverage, ie. You can post them on your website, guest posts, LinkedIn or even sell them.
Cons: You need to write the blogs, either yourself or outsourced, blogs take effort. Also, to be effective, you need to keep them updated and create new content to keep readers coming back.
Books (Paperback)
Books can be a fantastic way to develop your brand and authority within an industry. Having a New York Times bestselling book will differently open doors for you.
Pros: Separate yourself from the pack. Books are scalable and can be in audio and multi languages
Cons: Can take a long time to develop (Years). Can require huge amounts of effort and special knowledge to market and sell your book effectively.
Branded Promotional Gifts
Company branded promotional products are a supplementary marketing tactic that is usually accompanied by other marketing initiatives such as promotional events, trade shows, competitions, giveaways etc. As the cost of the promotional products can vary, it’s important that you carefully select who you give these products to.
Pros: It allows people to take something physical away with them after making contact with a sales representative.
Cons: Highly ineffective at creating sales, used mainly for brand awareness. There are minimum quantities for production runs that may be outside your scope.
Useful Links / Resources:
Brochures and Electronic Brochures
Brochures and E-Brochures are standard marketing materials that are used when someone your talking to wants something to take away with them.
There often used at tradeshows or retail stores when people ask after detailed product information.
Brochures can be more effective than simply giving someone your business card.
Pros: Then can be sent electronically.
Cons: When using high-quality printing paper, the costs can add up.
Useful Links / Resources:
Building Signage, Flags, Window Decals
Building signs are probably the oldest form of advertising known to man.
Every bricks and mortar business needs to have shop frontage with a clear sign that tells people what the store is offering.
Pros: Helps customers locate your business. You can get sponsored signs from companies like Coca Cola.
Cons: Lightboxes and power generated signs can cost money to maintain them.
Bulletin Boards
Local community bulletin boards can be effective at reaching a localized audience. They are especially good if you’re trying to promote a local event.
If your selling things such as firewood, lawn services, or dance/yoga and guitar lessons. Bulletin boards could be useful.
Pros: Free, easy, can be effective depending on your demographics and target market.
Cons: You’ll first need to find them, then test them. You’ll also need to maintain your advert continually.
Business Cards
Business cards are another essential marketing aid.
It’s one of the only ways which allows you to pass information instantly to people you’re speaking to.
Business cards are best utilized when you follow up with new contacts in a systemized manner. Ie. You call or email new connections the following day.
Pros: Cheap, easy and quick to obtain.
Cons: Low conversion rate. You’ll need to hand out hundreds to get results.
Useful Links / Resources:
Business Directory
Business directories can be online or offline.
Offline directories such as Yellow Pages are typically printed once a year.
Online directories such as business.com and yahoo.com can be useful in drive referral traffic to your website. Often online business directories will rank higher than your website.
Pros: Depending on your industry, you could potentially receive many inquiries.
Cons: Can be expensive and offer little in the way of results.
Buy Database Lists
Business owners can buy databases on just about anything. Databases can be a great way to identify your addressable market. You can use these databases to make contact (cold calling) and engage with your target market.
It’s also a great way to identify competitors.
Pros: Works great with B2B marketing
Cons: There are privacy regulations when making unsolicited contact with recipients. Ensure you follow the local laws when it comes to contacting people.
Car Signage
If you have a service business or provide delivery, having an eye-catching vehicle can set you apart.
First impressions matter, so a branded vehicle can be a great extension to your brand.
Pros: It’s mobile signage, it can grab people’s attention, you’ll stand out and be much more memorable.
Cons: If your employees act in a negative way while using the branded vehicles. This will affect your reputation.
Catalogs
When we talk about catalogs, we’re referring to manufactures and wholesalers (not Walmart or Kmart catalogs).
Catalogs are booklets that contain a large range of products that manufacturers and wholesalers provide. They are typically larger size and high-value products that evolve slowly over time.
These catalogs are usually produced yearly.
Pros: Can provide high level and detailed information on products and services.
Cons: Not great for products that have a short product life cycle.
Change / Open More Locations
With any business premises, you lease. It’s always important to assess the geographic and demographics of the location.
Finding out things like the foot traffic, parking, access to public transport, building size requirements and benchmarking local rent rates are useful.
You may want to consider changing your location or adding additional locations, so you can better serve your customers. Your current location may not be big enough or serve your requirements adequately.
Pros: Better serve your customers or a wider range of customers
Cons: Do your research first. Adding fixed expenses can be risky if you have incorrect assumptions.
Cold Calling
Making calls is one of the foundations of sales whether it be cold, warm or a hot lead.
Best results are generated by: Cultivating a targeted list, following a robust sales script and being prepared for any questions that will arise.
Pros: You can explain your service or product in high detail, handle objections and questions, all while receiving immediate feedback.
Cons: Without a targeted list of prospects or warm leads, sales calls can be very ineffective, time-consuming and costly.
Commission Based Salespeople
If you have a business that could utilize salespeople, but you don’t want to take on the additional risk of employing someone, then commission-based salespeople could be useful.
Additionally, this tactic works well if you want to sell outside your geographical area, as you don’t necessarily need to supply an office.
Pros: It’s a results-based model.
Cons: The sales process needs to be monitored very carefully to ensure your brand is not damaged.
Community Involvement and Sponsorship
Similar to association membership. Community involvement is a form of networking that has a long-term focus.
Community involvement can take the form of sponsorship for local sports teams or events.
Pros: It can help build your brand within the community.
Cons: Long term play. Return on investment can be low as it’s a community focus, not a commercially focused investment.
Competitions and Sweepstakes
Competitions and sweepstakes can be a great way to attract prospects to your business as many small and medium business don’t utilize them. To maximize this initiative, you need to think about your audience, the time of year and what would get people excited and talking about your business.
Pros: If the competition goes viral, it can drive a lot of interest to your business.
Cons: They can be expensive to run and involve a fair amount of time. You may also need a lawyer to run over the fine print to ensure you’re running your competition ethically.
Coupons
Coupons can work well if used correctly, especially if your target market is thrifty. Coupons work best for lower value items, with customers who are time rich and cash poor. They can help with increasing your conversion rates. But be aware, it may lower your brand value.
In recent times coupons are all the rage online. Markers often use them in conjunction with email marketing to help drive the call to action.
Pros: Can increase email response rates and conversions. It can encourage customers to spend a little more, ie. The coupon works if you spend over $50.
Cons: Can lower your brand value, as you become a “coupon product”. If you use coupons to often, customers will see the “Special Price” as the norm.
Courses
Online or offline courses can be a great way to extend your brand and showcase your offerings.
By teaching a course in your particular field, it paints you as an “expert” within the industry.
Online courses are very easy to put together. With the likes of Udemy and others, entrepreneurs can leverage off their platform and quickly put a course together.Another added benefit is that they can provide some passive income.
Pros: High-quality courses require expert knowledge, skills and time to implement, thus, creating barriers to entry. You can set up referral programs to drive more students to the course.
Cons: If the learning material is poor. It will have a negative effect on your brand and business.
Useful Links / Resources:
Demonstrations
Demonstrations are a form of secondary media. Once you have created the audience, demonstrations can be very effective at generating sales.
An example of this is an infomercial. They are basically demonstrations followed testimonials.
The prospects are shown in great detail the benefits of the product or service.
Pros: Demonstrations can be cheap (not the infomercials) and easy to implement. You sometimes see these at hardware stores.
Cons: The person doing the demonstration is an extension of your brand. Ensure they are key staff and not minimum wage temporary labor hire.
Direct Mail (Physical Mail)
Direct mail is another traditional method of marketing. It has since died off some, but is still very effective if done correctly.
You can expect a response rate of between 1-3% depending on your message and audience. Extremely targeted lists can provide results well over 10%.
For best results, personalized mail will give you the greatest results. Sometimes putting something lumpy in the envelope will create intrigue.
Pros: Can be cheap, easy, scalable and have great results if done correctly.
Cons: Requires expert copywriting and a highly targeted audience.
Distributors
Using a distributor can be a great way to grow your business.
Distributors can have hundreds of distribution centers all over the country, with each center servicing thousands of retail outlets.
By selling your product through a well-established distribution center, you can get your product in hundreds of thousands of retail outlets.
Pros: If you have a physical product that is sold in retail outlets, using a distributor might be one of the few ways that will enable you to get your product on the shelf.
Cons: Distributors work on scale. You’ll need to have the funds to scale up in order to work with major distributors.
Door Hangers / Flyers
Doors hangers and flyers are largely ineffective. They can offer some help, if, for example, you’re a real estate agent, and trying to build up your profile in a particular neighborhood. You can drop your flyers every four weeks continuedly.
Pros: Cheap, easy and quick to produce.
Cons: Will produce low results. Highly dependent on the copywriter. Not scalable/local areas only.
Drop Shipping
Drop shipping is a method by which the “Seller” does not stock the goods, but instead makes the sale; then transfers the order to the manufacturer/wholesaler, who then directly ships the product to the customer.
Drop shipping although not a direct marketing tactic per se, it allows businesses to offer a much wider range of products without having the inventory required to do so.
Pros: You can offer a much wider range of products. You can start drop shipping with only a website. Scalable (sell worldwide).
Cons: Low margins, highly competitive, low barriers to entry, no control over the supply chain. Difficult to build a brand.
e-Books
e-Books can be a great way to educate and build authority. They are typically used as lead generation magnets on a website. For e-Books to be effective, you need to address the core issues and questions that customers have. To do this; It’s best to survey or interview 200+ prospects (backed by keyword research) and ask them what their burning questions are. Then develop an e-Book that addresses all these concerns.
Pros: Scalable, builds authority, can be used as a “freebie” for a sales funnel. Once made are free to produce. You can use a ghostwriter to help you if needed.
Cons: Requires time, effort and skill to make a great e-Book.
Useful Links / Resources:
Elevator Pitch
An elevator pitch is a 30 second to a one-minute sales pitch about your product or service.
It should be extremely compelling, and fully explain what your offer is. People should have a clear understanding of the value your product provides.
Pros: Can be powerful providing you get in front of the right people. Works best at networking events.
Cons: Not scalable, works best if you are the business owner (not an employee).
Email Autoresponders
Email autoresponders are emails that are set up and delivered over a predetermined sequence. An example of this could be: When someone signs up to your subscriber list, will automatically receive five emails over the space of two weeks. These emails will provide the prospect with information, free tools, answer questions they have, build you as an expert authority and lead them further down your sales funnel.
Pros: Once set up, they have a high return on investment.
Cons: They can take time to implement. You need to do a fair amount of A/B testing to get it just right.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the cheapest and most effective forms of digital marketing as the people on your email list have already engaged with you at some point.
The effectiveness of email marketing is growing with 5.5 billion email accounts by 2019, and 61% of consumers like to receive promotional emails weekly.
There are many email marketing platforms that can help you track your subscription list, open rate, and click-through rates.
These platforms also offer ready-made templates to make life easier.
For best results: Produce expert copy, build a relationship with your audience with a mix of information, free tools, and sales offers.
Note: Familiarise yourself with your industry email benchmarking and compare yourself to that.
Pros: Cheap and effective. Can produce a high ROI.
Cons: Needs expert copywriting skills. Ensure you abide by the privacy laws of each country.
Useful Links / Resources:
Email Signature
Email signatures are a must have for all members of your business. They may be the first piece of branding colleterial that a prospect or customer will receive.
Not having an email signature can be annoying for the customer if they want to contact you directly.
Email signatures should include all your social accounts, website details, phone number etc. Ensure these are all “buttons” and “click to call”.
Pros: Quick, easy and free to produce.
Cons: Ensure you keep your details up to date.
Useful Links / Resources:
Event Marketing
Event marketing is the designing and developing of a themed event, activity or exhibit. These include: Sporting events, festivals, fairs, concerts, trades shows, sales and motivation events.
They typically involve direct contact with the brand’s representatives, thus allowing you to build direct relationships with customers.
Pros: Can work well with social media campaigns, as you can generate a lot of engagement. Not to mention, creating competitions, giveaways, and demonstrations
Cons: Can be expensive, very involved and require lots of planning. It can also take time to see results.
Explainer Videos
Video content has been rapidly increasing in popularity and is one of the leading marketing initiatives. The reason is that it delivers a high engagement rate with prospects.
Explainer videos are the most popular form of videos for small and medium business because they are cheap and easy to produce.
Videos help explain a company’s products and services in a way that can be much more digestible than copywriting along.
Pros: Cheap, easy, quick to implement. Can be used across multiple platforms.
Cons: Can look cheap and nasty if done incorrectly. Thus, hurting your brand. Relies on a good script and storyboard as a base to produce something effective.
E-zine Advertisements
E -zine advertisements are; adverts in electronic magazines.
These can work really well if you’re targeting a specific niche or group of people.
Pros: Can be cheap and provide a high ROI. You can reach your niche in a fun and direct way.
Cons: Works best for niche products and services, so not necessarily a scalable marketing channel.
Facebook (Page, Ads, Groups, Marketplace)
Facebook is the leading social media network with over 2.27 billion monthly active users.
In recent years, with changes in Facebook’s algorithms, there has been a decrease in the effectiveness of organic posts from company pages, which is driving more businesses to use Facebook paid ads.
Facebook ads allow detailed targeting and a variety of ads types which enable you to tailor the campaign objectives (such as reach, clicks, landing page views, and lead generation).
Using a wide range of ads layouts like video, carousel and product feed, can help your ad become more attractive.
Pros: Enables you to target your audience in a really detailed manner, ie. Age, gender, life status, income, interests, followers, and friends of followers, retargeting and building look-a-like audience.
Engagements rates can be high, as people usually use Facebook in their downtime.
Cons: You’ll need to have a high level of skill for paid ads to be effective
Useful Links / Resources:
Festivals & Trade Shows
Festivals and trade shows can be a great way to introduce the market to your new product range. They go hand in hand with demonstrations.
An important part of trade shows is collecting contact details of prospects, then following up with them after the event.
Pros: If you book your stall position well in advance, you could obtain a great stall location that is next to the entrance way (on a corner) where you can get the majority of the foot traffic.
Cons: Can be expensive to hire a stall, plus you’ll need to buy and build a stand to go with it.
Forum Boards
Forums and discussion boards can be a great way to interact with your target market. It allows you to find out about their challenges and needs.
Providing you give helpful advice to others in the forum, you can brand yourself as an industry expert.
Pros: You can encourage people to contact you by adding a signature at the bottom of each post.
Most forums are free to use.
Cons: You need to investigate which forums will give you a fair ROI of your time before committing.
Useful Links / Resources:
Free Consultations (Skype Sessions / Online Booking System)
Offering free consultations is a “Serve First” mantra. By offering a “free consultation” to prospects, you’re lowing the barriers of entry and risks to prospects (what do they have to lose?).
Providing “free sessions” gives you the ability to showcase your product or service, and highlight the value you provide.
This makes it much easier to sell. Conversion rates for people who do free consultations are usually quite high.
It can also be a great way to build your brand and develop trust within the industry.
Pros: High qualified audience, if prospects are prepared to spend the time, they must be interested in your product.
Cons: Investment of your time, you need to be able to identify issues, make recommendations and sell sell sell.
Google My Business
Google My Business is a free service by Google that allows you to promote your business by creating a business profile. It showcases your opening hours, contact details, images and location, which can work well with Google Maps allowing customers to find you easily.
You can also grow your reputation by having a high number of 5 Star reviews and positive feedback.
Pros: Free, easy to use and set up. Helps with search result ranking for a local audience.
Cons: Having a number of negative reviews could derail your business.
Useful Links / Resources:
Group Buying
Group buying as the name suggests is just that. An example of this is a group of similar small businesses banding together to purchase a product, that they would not normally be able to buy due to min order quantities.
By buying the product as a group, it gives them access to products they would normally not be able to obtain. Thus, giving them the ability to compete with larger chain stores.
Pros: Buying in bulk will give you better purchasing power, thus offering a wider range of products to your customers.
Cons: You may not be able to purchase as frequently as you would like. You are at the mercy of the groups buying cycle.
Guest Posting / Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a great way to leverage off someone else audience. It’s done best when you have a similar audience and offering a complementary product/service. If you want to drive traffic to your site, the content will need to be new, fresh, interesting and of high quality. The owner of the blog is not likely to post your blog unless it adds value to their brand.
Pros: You can get your content read by thousands of people from an established blog.
Cons: The results are short-lived, as you don’t own the traffic. You may have to pay in order to publish on someone else’s blog site.
Industry Newsletter
Creating an Industry Newsletter is an ambitious marketing tactic. It involves a serious amount of time, effort, skill and planning to make this happen. Not to mention its an ongoing activity that never ends. You’ll most likely need to employ a number of full-time staff in order to make this a reality.
The benefit of creating your own industry newsletter is that you can obtain a fair amount of clout within the industry.
You can sell ad space within your newsletter. You have full control, so you only need to sell space for those who don’t directly compete with your business.
Pros: Depending on your niche, you can brand yourself as the industry expert/leader.
Cons: Requires a lot of work and effort to produce an industry magazine. Also, your production skills need to be high.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a type of marketing whereby “Influencers” (an obvious example would be Kim Kardashian) promote your product. The advantage of this type of marketing is that the influencer has established credibility within a specific industry.
Pros: Providing you engage with the right influencer, you have the potential to obtain huge amounts of growth in a very short period of time.
Cons: You will need to pay the influencer to make this happen. This will be a fixed fee, or a percentage of the sales generated.
Instagram
Instagram marketing offers a variety of visual tools to create brand awareness. It can help promote your products or services, whether it’s an organic post, live stories or paid ads.
Instagram marketing works well with younger demographics, with over 100 million photos and videos posted each day. With Instagram’s popularity continually growing, it shows no sign of slowing down.
Pros: You can target niche audiences. Instagram has high engagement rates which allow people to have a closer connection to you.
Cons: You need to create quality content and creative in order to be effective. You’ll need specialized skills to build a brand personality.
Useful Links / Resources:
Instore Displays and Signage
In-store signage is similar to window displays; however, they are confined to inside the store.
They are primarily used to highlight sections within the store and showcase promotions.
You’ll often see these in large format department stores.
Pros: Helps customers with the user experience and navigating large stores. Can also help with conversion rates and up-sales.
Cons: Only works for localized foot traffic.
Joint Ventures / Alliances / Strategic Alliances
Joint Ventures and Alliances from a marketing tactic could be described as “Joint Venture Campaigns”.They can give you the ability to leverage off other people’s audience or create a marketing and sales synergy. An example of this could be: If you service a certain geographic location, and you’re getting traffic from outside your serviceable area, you can create a deal with someone who serves that area and take a small fee. The same applies to the other person. This strategy means everyone wins!
Pros: Joint Ventures can be very effective once set up. They don’t have to cost you anything.
Cons: Might not be realistic depending on your industry and can take time to find willing JV partners.
Landing Pages / Sales Funnels
A landing page is a mini-site or a specific page on your website that is used to engage with visitors that have come from your marketing channels. Ie. PPC ads, social media, etc.
You’ll need to have a compelling offer that directly relates to your campaign.
Popular landing page builders and sales funnel platforms are Clickfunnels, LeadPages and Thrive Themes.
Pros: Easy to set up. It enables you to track and measure different campaign content quickly.
Cons: It’s not a set and forget task, you’ll need to continually test and measure different layouts, wording, and images to see what gives you the best results.
Useful Links / Resources:
Leads Magnets and Freebies
A lead magnet is a marketing tactic whereby you offer something “of value” to the prospect in order to push them further down the sales funnel.
This is often in exchange for their email address, or other contact information.
Lead magnets usually offer a piece of digital, downloadable content, such as a free PDF checklist, eBook, infographic, whitepaper or video.
Pros: Relatively cheap and easy to set up. Freebies can help your email marketing initiative as prospects are already interested in your products.
Cons: If the “Free material” you provide is of low quality, it can hurt your brand.
Licensees & Franchisees
Selling the rights to sell your product or service is a great growth initiative.
If your business is labor based, then the only way to grow may be selling your intellectual property, systems, and process. Alternatively, if you sell a product that has geographical restrictions, then setting up licenses to sell your product all over the world might be a viable option.
A service example could be consulting, where you are limited by labor output.
A product example could be concrete furniture and sculptures.
Pros: You can gain passive income from licenses and generate a return on your intellectual property.
Cons: If you get the wrong licenses, it could hurt your brand. It can take considerable resources and time to set up your franchise packs and systems.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is another social platform, but it can be used as a great tool to help you make important business connections and join professional groups. LinkedIn allows you to post articles and videos on the platform, thus allowing you to build a personal brand.
In terms of marketing, LinkedIn has a premium service and paid ads which allows you additional features like In mail messages, sponsored posts and lead generation.
Depending on your product or service, LinkedIn can be a great way to grow your business.
Pros: You can target people by: Job title, industries, company size etc.
Works best for B2B companies.
Cons: Not effective and costly for broad audiences.
Useful Links / Resources:
List Swap
A simple yet effective marketing tactic.
Swapping your list of contacts/prospects with a complementary industry is a great way to build up your potential leads.
An example of this could be. If you’re a personal trainer and you do a list swap with a dietitian.
Pros: Costs nothing, only your time to find someone willing.
Cons: This tactic may not be repeatable, as once you have given your list to someone else, you probably can’t give it out again, or at least you have built up a new set of contacts/prospects.
Local Newspaper Ads
A very traditional form of marketing. Depending on your audience, advertising in your local newspaper could be effective, especially if your product is geographically restricted.
Local newspapers often have special sections that target audiences based on industry or service; for example, Home & Garden, Travel, Events, etc.
Older demographics tend to still read newspapers. There are also ethnic groups that produce their own newspapers.
Like all marketing initiatives, identify your ideal customer, then work backward to see where they engage.
Pros: Can increase brand awareness and drive new/repeat foot traffic to your business.
Can also be great for special events.
Cons: Requires copywriting and graphics skills to create the ads.
Magazine Ads / Newspaper Ads / Newspaper or Magazine Columns
Magazine and Newspaper Ads can be a great way to reach your target audience. However, they work in different ways.
Newspaper ads are more localized, and these work best by looking like articles, and over a continued period of time.
Magazine Ads serve a much more defined niche market and are usually nationally or internationally distributed.
An example of this could be a taxidermy magazine which has a tight niche, while a wider niche would be a golfing magazine.
Pros: Magazine ads can be effective if your target audience is niche and many of them read a particular industry magazine.
Cons: Smaller niches have a lower subscriber rate. You’ll need to research to see if it will produce the results you are after.
Media Expert / Authority
Promoting yourself as an expert or authority can be a highly effective way to promote your business. You can be a guest or be interviewed by news channels, TV and radio shows, podcast, videos, and blogs. These are great opportunities to showcase your knowledge and skills.
If this tactic is suited to your personality and you have the skills and industry knowledge. It could be a long-term play, especially if you become a regular contributor.
Pros: Works best for businesses that revolve around personal identities, such as consultants, lawyers, personal trainers, phycologist, etc.
Cons: Takes time to build an expert reputation. You will need to maintain a relationship with journalists and producers.
Meetups
Meetups can be a great way to extend your networking base and showcase your products and services.
The official Meetups website: meetup.com has a huge number of groups that you can join. Not just for business people, but people from all walks of life.
Meetups are best suited for B2B type businesses.
Pros: It’s a financially cheap investment, and you’ll gain many new useful contacts in the process.
Cons: Can be expensive in terms of time commitment. You’ll need to stick at it for a while.
Merchandise Displays / Point of Sale Material
Merchandise stands, and display units are a tactic used by companies that want to obtain placement within someone else’s retail store.
You’ll often see these stands in convenience stores, gas stations, and general retail outlets.
If you have a product that fits these criteria, having merchandise stands might be a great way to showcase your products to thousands of people each day.
Pros: Enables you to sell your products in many locations without the overhead of renting spaces.
Cons: You have little or no control over the negotiating process.
Movie Ads
Movie ads have a high view rate as people are forced to watch your ad.
However, the audience is there to watch the movie, so are unlikely to search and engage with your service.
Movie ads are best used as an awareness tool.
Pros: Trapped audience.
Cons: Your product/service needs to work on a broad audience.
Networking
Networking is a tactic that works well no matter what stage of business you’re at. There are formal networking groups such as BNI that have a proven track record for the past 40 years.
It enables you to share knowledge and leverage of other people’s networks. To get the most out of networking, you’ll need to provide others with value, do one on one meetings and utilize LinkedIn.
Pros: It’s usually inexpensive in terms of money. You’ll get to meet people outside of your business circles you wouldn’t normally meet. It has some social aspects to it.
Cons: Can take up a fair amount of your time
Useful Links / Resources:
Online Classified Ads
When we talk about classified ads we are referring to both offline (magazine/newspaper) and online (craigslist/gumtree).
Classified ads can be a great way when starting to validate (test) your product or service as its affordable, and you’ll get immediate feedback.
Pros: Easy and cheap to promote your products and services. Scalable. You can leverage off huge amounts of existing traffic.
Cons: High level of competition. Difficult to differentiate yourself from competitors. You need to update your listings continually.
Useful Links / Resources:
Online Marketplaces (eBay / Amazon / Etsy)
Online marketplaces are big business, with many of us routinely opting to buy online.
If you have a business that sells a physical product, it might be worthwhile to also sell them on one of the big platforms.
Building a successful online store from scratch takes a lot of time and hard work.
These platforms have huge amounts of traffic and marketing budgets that your business can benefit from.
The downside is that it can be difficult to differentiate yourself from the pack.
Online marketplaces are not so great for service-based business unless you are low-cost provider.
Pros: Fast, easy and inexpensive to set up a store. You can leverage off the platform’s traffic.
Cons: You don’t own the platform. Can be hyper-competitive.
Useful Links / Resources:
Outdoor Advertising / Billboards
Outdoor Advertising is designed to capture the attention of local traffic such as motorists and pedestrians.
For best results, your message needs to be clear, short and simple, as people only have a few seconds to see it.
With new sign technology, signs can be digitally animated and more dynamic. As well as allow you flexibility for short-term promotions.
An example could be a countdown advert for a hot rod show in two weeks’ time.
Pros: Can be highly effective when placed in high traffic areas.
Cons: Can be expensive, due to the size and location.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC or Paid Per Click is a form of digital marketing model where you pay when your ad has been clicked on.
The biggest platforms that offer PPC advertising are search engines (Google, Bing) and Social Networks (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter).
Popular ad types are text ads that appear in search results. This follows a bid system where you bid for specific keywords.
Another type of ads are “display” ads or “banner” ads. These appear in any relevant websites your prospects visit.
Pros: This can be a cost-effective tactic, as you only pay when a user clicks through to your website.
Cons: Requires skill and technical knowledge to set up, optimize and maintain ads.
Personal Meetings
Personal meetings are a client maintenance task, which involves you purposely engaging with your client to help them create value.
Everyone knows that keep existing clients is much easier than finding new ones, that’s why is tactic is vital for all salespeople.
Plus it builds a larger Customer Lifetime Value.
Pros: If done correctly, over time you can turn clients into raving fans of your brand.
Cons: If you have a large amount of client, you may only be able to focus on the top 10-20% of clients.
Personalized Letters and Email Messages
Personalized letters can be a great way to differentiate yourself from others. It shows you value them, and you’ve taken the time and effort to come up with something original.
There are many different websites and apps that can help you with this. You can also send small packages that contain small gifts and tasty treats.
This tactic is best used for high-value clients and people you want to build a long term relationship with.
Pros: Personal letters have a very high open rate.
Cons: They can be expensive and time-consuming to produce. You can only use this tactic for people you actually know.
Useful Links / Resources:
Piggyback Invoice Mailings
Piggyback invoice mailings are similar to List Swaps in that you are leveraging off someone else’s database.
Piggybacks are putting your details on another company’s invoice.
You commonly see these on supermarket shopping dockets.
For best results, it works if there is a strong correlation between your company and the piggyback company.
I.e. A landscaping company, with a piggyback advert for an outdoor furniture company.
Pros: Cheap and easy to implement.
Cons: Can have a low response rate.
Pinterest
Pinterest is a web-based pinboard with great organizational functionality. You can also think of it as a bookmarking tool.
Pinterest can be used to grow your business by uploading interesting pictures that relate to your business. People then click on the images, which direct them to your website.
When considering this platform, bear in mind that 81% of all users being female.
Note: People who go on Pinterest are usually in their “downtime”, so generating awareness of your products and services needs to feel natural.
Pros: Free and easy to set up.
Cons: Can be hard to differentiate yourself from others.
Useful Links / Resources:
Podcasts
Podcasting is a relatively new form of marketing. The benefits of podcasting are that people can listen to them on the go!
Another benefit to podcasting is that, unlike other forms of media, they have a very long engagement rate, with many listeners tuning in for more than 20 + minutes.
Setting up your podcasting will take some time to get the format and audio sounding the way you want it.
Pros: Inexpensive to set up. If done right, you can build a loyal following.
Cons: Requires technical knowledge to produce high-quality podcasts.
It will take time to grow an audience base.
Postcard Deck (ValPak)
Postcard decks such as Valpak is a direct marketing tactic where a marketing flyer (such as a coupon) is placed inside an envelope with other marketing flyers.
The advantage of this is that the cost of delivery is significantly reduced as costs are shared among everyone who is advertising in the deck.
This marketing tactic works best for products and services that target a broad audience. Niche products are less suited for ValPak.
ValPak operates in over 45 US States and parts of Canada, reaching over 39 million households every delivery run.
Pros: ValPak is cost effective. They also offer an end to end service where they will provide the design and print.
Cons: You are not necessarily offered exclusivity when marketing. Ie. There could be competitors on the same deck as you.
Useful Links / Resources:
Posters / Dropdown banners / Floor Stickers
Another low-cost marketing tactic. Best used for localized foot traffic. Helps customers find your business and raise awareness of the passing traffic.
Best used for retail and trade type businesses. It’s also great for trade shows and exhibitions.
Pros: Can capture the attention of passing trade.
Cons: Extremely localized results. Blanket marketing, so not great for niche products.
Press Releases
A press release is a piece of media communication that is directly sent to an editor or journalist of any news network (online or offline).
Typically press releases are four to five paragraphs and 300 to 800 words in length.
If you have a piece of interesting information about your company, writing a press release could be a great way to build brand awareness and leverage off news network traffic.
Pros: Can be very cost effective. It can contribute to your SEO initiatives.
Cons: Requires professional writing skills.
Useful Links / Resources:
Product Packaging
Product packaging is more than just how a package looks; it’s how it makes the customer feel.
It’s an incredibly valuable customer touch point that can’t be overlooked. Customers want to buy more than just the product; they want to buy an experience.
Your packaging needs to reflect your company values, and the ethos of what your company stands for.
Pros: Great packaging can make your product memorable and stand out from the pack.
Cons: Keep in mind; Durability, shipping costs, scalability, and function.
Useful Links / Resources:
Product Placement
Product placement is a marketing tactic whereby companies promote their products and services through their appearance on TV shows, movies, and other entertainment platforms.
Product Placement is all about generating brand awareness. You’ll often see examples of product placement in movies or on tv shows.
An easy example is when you see judges on a talent show like American Idol, and they all happen to be drinking Coca-Cola.
Another example is when you see a tv show and their driving around in a car, and your camera zooms into the logo of the car more than ten times.
Pros: You can create a brand synergy between the tv show and your product. If done right, product placement feels more natural and less “commercial” than an ad.
Cons: Can be ultra-expensive if you don’t get your target audience right.
Public Relations (PR)
Public Relations is a way for companies to get information about themselves out into the media.
It can be done using traditional methods such as magazines, newspapers, TV, and radio.
More common now is the use of online channels.
For PR to work effectively, you need to have a clear message, a memorable USP and followed up by regular content.
Pros: Helps build your brand identity and loyalty.
Cons: If situations arise that require PR, they need to be handled professionally and with the utmost of care.
Radio Advertisements
Radio ads fall under the category of blanket marketing. As such, this tactic works best for products and services that serve a wide audience base.
Moreover, radio is best suited for building branding and awareness.
Typical costs to run radio advertisements each week range from $200 to $5,000 depending on your location.
Production costs can be anywhere from $1,000 to $2,500.
Pros: Can have an immediate impact on your business.
Cons: Can be difficult to measure the result (awareness).
Referrals / Word-of-Mouth
Referrals and word of mouth marketing tactics are one of the best forms of marketing. As prospects who come to you from a referral are pre-qualified.
The conversion rates are much higher compared to other tactics, and potential clients are more likely to be A grade clients that don’t negotiate on price.
Referral Marketing can be a form of “growth hacking” which has the potential to give your business exponential growth. Take the example of Dropbox and Airbnb.
Pros: Can be free to set up or cheap (if you offer an incentive for existing clients to refer you).
Cons: Your referral system is a long-term play. Expect results after an extended period of time.
Refrigerator Magnets
Fridge magnets are a long play in terms of a marketing tactic.
They are something you would consider if you wanted to build up your brand over an extended period of time.
Magnets are best suited to serviced-based businesses, such as food /delivery, plumbers, etc.
The best results I have seen have been takeaway food and real-estate agents but really depends on your audience.
Pros: Magnets can have a long-life cycle.
Cons: Can be expensive if not targeted correctly.
Remarketing / Retargeting
Remarketing is a tactic to re-connect with visitors that previously visited your website or engaged with your social media accounts.
This is done using a piece of code (also known as a tag or pixel) that is added to your website. This code adds your visitors to your remarketing audiences using browser cookies.
Remarketing code can be customized to target people for specific time frames (i.e. last three months) or specific actions on the website (visited your product page, abended the shopping cart).
Remarketing campaigns can be used on many different platforms, such as Google Shopping, GDN, Facebook ads, YouTube and email marketing.
Pros: Remarketing can be highly effective in increasing your conversion rate as these are people that have already shown interest in the product.
Cons: Require technical knowledge to set up the code and create your remarketing campaigns.
Review Websites
A review site is a website that enables people to search for local business and check reviews and feedback on that company.
Posting your business on a review site can help with your SEO (ranking) as these website rank high in search results.
Review sites also help with building trust, authority, and reputation.
One of the downsides to review sites is, the majority of happy customers will not leave a review, while the minority of unhappy customers will leave strong negative feedback. Review sites need to be carefully managed and steps are taken to promote positive feedback.
Pros: Helps with driving online and offline foot traffic.
Cons: Review sites need to be continually monitored. Bad reviews can hurt your business.
Useful Links / Resources:
RSS Feeds
RSS which stands for “Really Simple Syndication” is a simple method that allows users to access updates to online content.
An example of this is setting up an RSS feed to your website, which in turn notifies the subscriber when you publish a new blog post.
The advantage of this is that your key audience will be directly notified when you post something new. It also works for iTunes Podcasts, Vlogs, and all other media.
Pros: It means your target audience never miss a post.
It allows you to spy on competitors.
Cons: To maximize this tactic, you really need to be posting regularly and providing continual value.
Useful Links / Resources:
Sales Presentations
Sales presentations are similar to free consultations; however, they differ as Sales Presentations are usually initiated by the salesperson instead of the prospect.
For many salespeople, the number of Sales Presentations they do each month is a KPI.
Pros: Usually a highly qualified audience.
Cons: You will need skills to be able to entertain, educate and persuade prospects.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a marketing tactic that focuses on growing the organic (non-paid) traffic to your website.
The goal is to make the website rank higher in the search results for certain keywords.
It is important to start by identifying the keywords that are relevant to your business and will provide a high volume of quality visitors.
Improving your SEO is technical in nature and involves improving your website (web code, loading time, responsiveness, user experience, backlinks etc).
It also has a creative element which involves creating quality relevant content, such as blog, articles, and videos. All these things help your website authority and reputation.
Pros: Long term results. Organic traffic is usually of higher quality as these are actively searching for your product or service.
Cons: Usually takes several months to see results. Requires an ongoing effort to maintain your position.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are paid campaigns that allow you to bid on relevant keywords and appear in online searches.
This helps your website rank higher when customers search for terms relevant to your product or service.
The model works by selecting keywords, then paying per click when someone clicks on your advertisement.
The most popular platforms for SEM include those offered by search engines themselves, such as Google Ads (previously Google AdWords) and Bing Ads.
Typical SEM campaigns include: Text ad, Shopping ads, and Re-marketing.
Pros: Highly targets results.
Unlike SEO, you can see immediate results.
Cons: The results stop as soon as you finish spending money on campaigns.
Setting up and managing campaigns requires technical knowledge.
Useful Links / Resources:
Seminars and Workshops
Seminars and workshops, either free or paid, can be a great way to build your business. Not only do they help build your brand and authority, but they help move people further down the sales funnel and make it easier to sell your products and services. When conducting a workshop or seminar, it helps build trust.
Pros: You can team up with other companies to create synergies.
Cons: Not scalable (unless video broadcasted). Can be very time consuming to set up a workshop. Ie. All the learning resources, content, takeaways, etc.
Shipping and Billing Inserts
Shipping and billing inserts are those cards you receive inside your parcel when you purchase something.
They are often discount vouchers that you can apply to your next order.
This tactic helps promote brand loyalty.
It is best utilized if you also provide something extra within the package, like a sweet or fridge magnet.
Pros: Cheap, easy and fast to implement. You are retargeting clients who you have already sold to.
Cons: Only works with products and services where the consumer buys more than once.
Shoppers / Circulars
Shoppers and Circulars are those marketing brochures you get in your mailbox three times a week.
For the most part, they are extremely ineffective, unless you are a corporate or a major retailer with deep pockets.
They are best used for maintaining brand awareness and market share.
This is not a tactic that is suited to small or medium business.
To make this tactic work its essential that you amazing product photos, with each week offering a new selection of products.
Pros: Helps maintain brand awareness and market share.
Cons: Although cheap to produce per unit, it’s an expensive tactic once you produce millions of shoppers each run.
Shopping Centre Promotions
Shopping Centre Promotions are a marketing tactic used by Shopping Centre management to attract customers to the center.
Promotional activities are usually short-term events which create urgency and increase sales, such as pre-holiday weekend discounts, or mid-season sales.
Usually, these promotions will include a main attraction that offers to help drive more traffic to the event. Examples can be shows, raffles, special stands, car giveaways, kids face painting, etc.
Pros: If done correctly, a synergy can be created whereby the overall sales for the mall increase.
Cons: If the promotions are specific to certain industries, it may not benefit the other stores within the mall.
Social Media
Social Media marketing tactics include a variety of platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram. Each platform requires different skills, creative and even different marketing goals.
Creating a company page and sharing content on social media networks is a fast and affordable way to reach your potential audience, offer information and promote your business.
The biggest opportunity in social media is that you can engage with your customers across the entire buying cycle. From brand awareness through to consideration and decision making, and even after sales support.
Pros: Easy and inexpensive to implement. You can build a relationship with your customers and react to their needs.
Cons: It’s critical to have a well-crafted strategy and a deep understanding of your audience. Takes time to build a quality group of fans/followers.
Speaking Circuits / Keynote Speaking / Expert Panels / Lectures
Offering lectures and working the speaker’s circuit can be a great way to build your personal brand and authority within an industry.
If you combine books you have written, courses, programs and elite consulting options as part of your business. You can create a synergy of products and services.
Speakers circuits work best when you leverage off other top-level presenters.
Pros: If you’re persuasive and command the audience, you can generate a good supply of new leads.
Cons: Can take up considerable time and effort in terms of planning.
You may need to pay a substantial amount of money to be popular speakers circuits.
Special Events
Special Events are not your usual type of marketing tactic.
They consist of hosting an industry event or party whereby experts, industry leaders, and key customers attend your event.
The goal here is to identify yourself as the event organizer, sponsor and key influencer within the whole event.
While obviously entertaining guests and VIP’s, you’ll need to find a way to educate and inform people about your products and services.
Pros: Special Events can be a great way to launch a new product or make huge announcements about upcoming developments.
Cons: Special Events can be very expensive and produce a low or no return if they are not managed correctly.
Stickers & Tags
Stickers are a cheap and effective way to create brand awareness.
On buildings, you’ll often see them next to doorways or in areas at “eye level”.
Sometimes car dealerships put stickers on the cars they sell. Also, mechanics put those little service date stickers on the top of your windshield.
Depending on the product or service you sell, adding stickers to your arsenal could be useful.
Pros: Very cheap to produce.
Cons: Can look cheap and tacky if you use low-quality stickers that flake off from sun damage.
Surveys / Research Studies
Surveys and research studies are a great way to get in front of cold prospects.
This can be done using the phone or an internet survey. But the quickest and easiest way is in person with a clipboard or tablet.
In person is always best, as you get immediate feedback and build brand awareness for your business.
After a few hundred surveys and talking to people, you can start to “feel the market”. You’ll have a much better understanding of what customers like and dislike.
Conducting surveys is also a great way to validate and test new products and services before releasing them into the market.
Pros: Can be cheap and extremely effective at gaining consumer intel.
Cons: You need to craft the right questions to make this a worthwhile endeavor. Also, ensure you use staff that leaves prospects feeling positive towards your company.
Useful Links / Resources:
Taxi Backs, Bus Signage, and Trams
Taxi Backs and Buss Signs are those signs you see on the back and top of taxis.
The success of this type of marketing is dependent upon the product/service you are offering.
The main benefit of taxi backs is that the signage is mobile.
Because of the mobility and visual of the signage, taxi backs can be useful for generating awareness for events.
Pros: High visibility.
Cons: Can be expensive and ineffective depending on where the taxi operates.
Telemarketing
Telemarketing which is similar to cold calling is usually disguised as a phone survey.
Traditionally these coincide with major events. An example of this might be someone calling you to conduct a poll on a local election. They will ask you a few questions, which are cleverly disguised to promote a particular candidate.
Another example might be of someone conducting a survey on local power or phone suppliers.
Pros: Can be effective for building brand awareness and generating leads. Can also be great for promoting events.
Cons: If you use an agency, it can become very expensive. If not done correctly, it can be seen as spam and thus harm your brand.
Television Commercials and Infomercials
One f the more expensive forms of marketing.
As a form of blanket marketing, you need to be very selective about when your commercials are aired.
It could be certain times of the day or connected with selected tv shows.
Because of the costs and resources required to produce commercials, they are typically dominated by international companies and large brands. As such, tv commercials are not suitable for most small businesses.
Depending on your product or service. There are opportunities to create more cost-effective tv commercials by utilizing local and regional tv channels.
Pros: More effectively for broad audiences and building brand awareness.
Cons: Expensive and hard to measure. Less effective your younger demographics.
Testimonials, Reviews, and Endorsements
Testimonials are a core aspect of social proof. You need to have them across websites and all your marketing collateral.
Many people who are interested in your product will only buy it if they read a glowing review of your product.
Testimonials need to be written in a way that makes the prospect emotionally connect with the experience.
This tactic is especially critical for e-commerce stores, with many customers vigorously checking the reviews before purchasing.
Endorsements are similar to testimonials; however, they are usually done by people who have high social influence.
Pros: Free to set up. Builds credibility.
Cons: Can take some time to gather a number of high-quality testimonials.
Text Messages / SMS marketing
SMS marketing (Short Message Service Marketing) is a marketing tactic that sends promotional mobile text messages such as new products, specials, and updates. It can also be used to remind customers of special events or appointment times.
This marketing tactic is permission-based, meaning the recipient needs to give you permission before you can send offers.
SMS marketing only works for short messages. However, you can send links to landing pages or specific sites.
Pros: Cost effective. Great for last minute offers, food delivery, etc. You can reach thousands of people in a matter of seconds.
Cons: You need to remain compliant with anti-spam laws. I.e. Opt-In/Opt-Out.
Trade Longer / Different Hours
As the title says. A simple but effective concept. If you have a business that is not online based, and you need to service customers, it might be a great idea to trade outside of normal trading hours.
As many customers will be working during the day, you could greatly benefit from trading outside those hours. A common example of this: Thursday late night hairdressers, mortgage brokers, etc.
Pros: You can gain sales that would not otherwise exist. You can provide better service to customers.
Cons: You’ll need to work longer hours, or possibly pay people penalty rates for abnormal hours.
Twitter
Twitter can be a powerful tool to help you market your business. Especially for young demographics with over 313 million active monthly users.
Due to its dynamic nature, Twitter has over 7,000 new tweets every second.
You’ll need to have a cleverly crafted and well-defined content strategy, and continually make efforts to ensure your message stands out to gain attention.
Pros: Great for sharing information and creating brand awareness. Can aid in market research.
Cons: Will work best for brands with a younger audience. Less effective for lead generation.
Useful Links / Resources:
Uniforms / Name Tags
A simple and effective marketing tool.
Uniforms are another extension of your brand. Having uniformed staff with name tags makes the customer experience easier to navigate.
Nothing is worse than going into a store and not knowing who the staff members are.
It’s also a professional look when uniformed employees arrive at someone’s house with smart looking uniforms with name tags.
It gives people a feeling of trust, and that you know what you’re doing.
Pros: Cheap, easy. A real must have. Your team members look much more professional.
Cons: If you have staff working onsite that act in a disorderly manner, your company can be easily identified. Similar to having sign written vehicles, it can hurt your brand if employees act in an unsuitable manner.
Video / In-store Displays
Video indoor displays can be a great way to educate and showcase your products.
Take for example a new type of kayak; if you have an amazing in-store video of the kayak being used in the rapids, it can show the product being demonstrated in a way not possible in a store setting.
Customers can better imagine themselves using the product, and how it might feel to be using it.
Pros: Instore videos can help with the overall consumer experience. They can demonstrate a product instore that would not be possible otherwise.
Cons: Creating a video for multiple products can be very expensive.
Video Marketing
Video marketing has become one of the most popular ways to promote your products and services and can be highly effective in engaging and building a relationship with your customers.
Video formats can vary from explainer videos, “how to” guides, vlogs, and promotional video ads.
The biggest video platform is YouTube over 1.8 billion users. You can also share and market your videos across various social platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Vimeo, Snapchat and WeChat.
Pros: Great for SEO, social engagement and building backlinks to your site.
You can educate your audience about who you are as a brand and highlight the benefits of your products and services.
Cons: Videos need to be of high quality to be effective.
Useful Links / Resources:
YouTube Ads
Webinars
Webinars are online seminars that are video recorded; they can be Live or Pre-recorded. The premise of a webinar is that you will use a lead generation initiative that will prompt people to register for the event.
Webinars can be an effective tool to engage with your audience, educate them and promote your offer. They are a great way to develop authority and trust.
Once you’ve recorded and set up your webinar, you can use it over and over again.
Pros: Affordable and saleable. Helps to create brand awareness and establish a relationship with your target audience.
Cons: Setting up the webinar can take time and requires planning and skills.
Website
Websites are just another extension of your branding colleterial. As such, they need to reflect the values your company represents. Providing high-quality content on your products and services is paramount.
Customers are very web savvy; they have no patience for old slow websites. Ensure your website is responsive as more than 70% of online searches are from mobile devices. User experience is key.
Websites are only effective if you have sufficient traffic coming to your site. This is where digital marketing comes into the equation.
Pros: 24/7 Salesperson. Scalable, ie. You can sell all over the world.
Cons: Having a poor website will affect your reputation.
Window Displays and Sidewalk Signage
Window displays are a traditional way of attracting customers into your bricks and mortar store. They work best when you have high volumes of foot traffic. Combining this with special offers will give you great results.
Pros: You can showcase the newest and best products. Additionally, you can get customers through your doors that wouldn’t normally come in.
Cons: Very localized marketing. You will need to change your window displays continually.