I think it’s safe to say that many believe that long ago are the days where advertising is paramount to growing your business, however, advertising may have shifted but it remains an essential ingredient to your marketing mix to drive substantial growth for your company. Let’s consider the potential sources of growth for your company:
- Build a website – Whether you’re building a website for your new business or you are updating an existing one, this is always a good investment. If you don’t have a website, you don’t exist in many prospect’s minds. Taking the time to make sure it best reflects you and puts your best foot forward is worth it. In addition, the advancements in marketing technology or “martech” are prolific and it’s worth looking at your “marketing stack” to determine the best tools for you to turn your web visitors into customers.
- Family and Friends – we all know that this only lasts so long. We make one phone call or send one email to our network to say, hey, look what I’m doing now. Need some? We may get some takers but then we must keep looking.
- Networking – ok, you signed up for your first networking group and you’ve got name tag and business cards. Check! You collect business cards, you meet interesting people, you make great connections and you add contacts to your phone. Now, you set up coffees, calls and lunches. You’re on your way! Good job. The process could take months so hang in there, and keep connected. And then you realize you have networking events every day of the week, you stress about your job and getting your action items complete, because you have yet another networking lunch to go to and another networking event in the evening. Your time is getting crunched and you just don’t have enough hours in the day.
- Tradeshows and events – Yes! Tradeshows and events are great ways get in front of your audience and to connect with your prospects, clients and potential candidates.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Ok, now we are really getting somewhere. You can have your website working FOR you while you get your job done. Make sure that your website is attracting the right prospects and that your company and website rank high in search for your key terms. Excellent work. Now, you have leads coming in organically from organic search by optimizing your website and you watch an uptick in your web hits assuming that your prospect market is searching for your services. Team up with the right marketing experts to help hone your message and SEO website.
- Paid Search – Now we are entering the threshold of advertising. Pay a little, get a lot if you are on target with your messaging and your audience targeting. Team up with the right agency partner to help guide you in the right direction. Now, watch that visitor barometer on your website really grow! With that leads grow too!
- Social media – Investing in social media is essential. Do your homework and determine which networks are best for you, and develop a strong content strategy so that you are providing relevant information and an engaging conversation with your audience. Build a community. There are plenty of resources out there to learn more. Agencies can help you here too. Don’t be afraid to ask for help!
- Key Influencer Campaign – Bloggers are people too and they blog about what they know and they can blog for you too if you have the right message for their followers. Not only bloggers but spokespeople too who may be looking for your story and align well with your company like say a potential partner company who also works with your target audience and can represent you well. This will take incremental budget, but the increase in spend starts to really move your lead and prospect pipeline in the right direction.
- Public Relations (PR) – This is an entirely new blog entry by itself (as are most of these), suffice it to say that it is important to get your story in front of the publications that matter to your audience. Work with the right agency partner to help you develop a focused, relevant, meaningful story for your PR strategy.
- Offline advertising – Seem too old school for you? Depending on your audience, you may find that they still read the print copy of Wired magazine or your local business journal. Either way, there are many advertising packages that include both print or online ads so you catch your audience’s eye balls in print and on screen. Do your research to understand what makes the most sense for your lead generation plan.
- Online advertising – Where do your prospects go online for their information and where do they spend their time? Place ads with messages that are important to them, solve a problem, resonate and then point them back to you for the solution. It’s isn’t enough to have a website and send a couple of emails to bring leads in the door. In order to bring in enough leads to grow your business you will need to go beyond your current network, and there is no better way than to advertise online. It’s cost effective and if done correctly with the right message and the right medium, can deliver relevant leads. Remember again that taking a look at your marketing technology (martech) can optimize your channels too.
So, which one do you choose? Need some help finding the right agency partner? Let me help.