According to a recent infographic by Brandmuscle, these three strategies were found to be the best ways to get the most bang for your marketing buck. Use these strategies to not only increase revenue, but also improve your brand reputation and customer relationships.
1. Utilize Strategic Email Marketing
When done effectively email marketing will not only increase brand and business awareness but also generate impressive sales for your business. 66% of consumers have made a purchase as a result of an email marketing message. Email marketing also has a 4,300% Return on Investment, meaning that MailChimp account you’ve been debating starting could eventually end up paying for itself. Perhaps the most surprising figure is that almost half of all emails are opened on a mobile device, however only 11% of emails are optimized for mobile.
Making all emails mobile friendly should be a priority in 2015 and can easily be accomplished with the help of email subscription services. It is also important to make it easy for your customers to sign up for your email subscription. But above all else, it is important that you give your customers a reason to subscribe whether that is by offering exclusive deals, inside information or personalized content.
2. Optimize Social Media Marketing
It’s not groundbreaking news that social media is one of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to communicate with consumers. However, with literally thousands of brands and businesses participating in social media it is important to know how to effectively connect with customers so that you don’t get lost in the mix. Currently, 74% of adults participate in some sort of social networking site. Also, 25% of adults ages 18-44 said they don’t remember the last time their smartphone wasn’t next to them (!!!). While this is slightly concerning, it definitely shows the impact that social media has made on phone usage.
While these are all incredible stats it is important to recognize the difference between having a presence on social media and making an impact. First, it is important to recognize that your business by no means needs to be on every social media platform. Not only is that usually a huge waste of time but it also forces you to sacrifice time that could be spent optimizing your more productive social sites. This next one might be obvious, but please include updated business information. Think about it: if you visit a company’s Facebook page and see that their most recent post mentions their Holiday sale but you are looking for a Mother’s Day gift, what incentive are they giving you to visit their page?
3. Protect Your Online Rep
Did you know that 79% of people say they trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation? While this is great news for brands and businesses with a positive presence on online recommendation sites like Yelp and Angie’s List, it can be quite concerning for those who either have a negative or absent presence on these and related sites. There is also a direct relationship between an increase in Yelp stars and increase in sales. For instance, a one star increase on a Yelp review will increase revenue 5-9%. It is important to not just work to promote positive business activities, but also learn how to correct mistakes when they are made. In fact, 95% of people surveyed said they would return to a business if their problem was resolved quickly.
The two best ways to improve your Customer Relationship Management is to monitor and optimize search engine results and be active on social media. Monitoring business reviews on outside websites is a great way to learn what is going well with your business and also identify areas of improvement. Encouraging customers to write reviews is also a great way to get feedback. It is important though that you keep the conversation going by responding to customer posts in a timely and consistent manner. Simply thanking someone for referring your product to someone else via social media can also go a long way and can even lead to a long term loyal following.
Focusing on these strategies will not only save your business time and money, but also will allow you to improve your relationship with customers and the quality of your service, all while increasing your revenue. Let’s make 2015 our most productive and profitable year yet!
The post How to Get the Most Bang for Your Marketing Buck appeared first on Tribeswell.