The Three Pillars Of A Successful Marketing Strategy

Marketing is one of the fundamental blocks in the foundations of your business. Without a clever marketing strategy, you can’t hope to be successful. It’s impossible to reach your potential if you don’t market and promote your brand at all times. This doesn’t mean you force your company down people’s throats! Instead, it’s all about developing a strategy that subtly makes people feel like they need to buy what you offer. 

Naturally, all businesses and brands are different. What works for you might not work for someone else. As such, we tend to shy away from laying out a marketing strategy framework. Instead, let’s look at three things all marketing strategies need:

Trust

Trust is absolutely essential for a business. If consumers don’t trust your brand they won’t buy anything from you. Therefore, a simple tactic for increasing sales is to build trust with the consumer market. A good way to show the importance of trust is to compare a site like eBay to one like Amazon. If you search for a product, and you see it on both sites, which one are most people likely to drift towards? In most cases, you choose Amazon as you trust that the product will be of high quality. With eBay, you’re buying from sellers that you don’t know, and therefore don’t trust. Even if the product is cheaper, you’d prefer to spend more as you can trust you’ll actually receive a quality product. This shows that trust can help you make sales and also allow you to beat competitors that try to undercut your prices. Consumers want trust, give it to them!

Value

Every business needs to provide value to the customer. This is literally business 101. Pretty much all business coaching programmes will dedicate a section to adding value. Why? Because this is how you set your brand apart from the rest. You must find your value within the market and show it to consumers. This is what makes them realize you offer something more than your rival companies. Thus, the customers come flocking to you instead of everyone else. 

Relatability

In truth, this can also be described as ‘shared values’. However, seeing as ‘value’ is listed above, I chose relatability to avoid any confusion. In effect, this is the act of being relatable to your target market. You build a brand image with values that other people share. A prime example is a new activewear brand called TALA. This brand creates activewear from recycled materials and promotes sustainability. As such, they have a relatability factor with consumers who are looking to be more sustainable. This makes it easy to connect with its target market as both business and consumer have shared values. When you devise your marketing/branding strategy, make sure you pinpoint some key values that relate to your audience. 

It doesn’t matter what your marketing strategy or campaign looks like, as long as you incorporate these three pillars. Trust, value, and relatability all help you stand out from the crowd and capture your target market. 

Boosting Sales With a High-Quality Website

Nowadays, a website is an absolute essential for any business that wants to experience success. The world is becoming increasingly technological and more and more people are spending more and more of their time online. Whether they’re using a smartphone to check friends’ social media feeds, a table to stream a film, a laptop to get answers to their questions or a computer to complete their work. It’s not all too surprising that E Commerce has really taken off! Some of the biggest companies in the world right now are entirely web based and don’t have any traditional brick and mortar stores. Take Amazon as an example. Customers want convenience. They want to be able to browse goods and place orders at any time of the day or night that suits them. They want to be able to shop wherever they are. They want to have goods delivered directly to them in the comfort of their homes. So, make sure your business has a website to accommodate these needs. You’ll make way more sales! Here are a few steps to getting your website right the first time round!

Use Professionals

So many people attempt to create a website themselves. This is understandable. There are platforms that make hosting a site simple and straightforward. But often, you can be limited to certain themes and designs and it can be difficult to make your page look unique. Instead, you should collaborate with a professional web designer like BPS Designs and a web developer to create a unique website from scratch. This will help to make sure that your page doesn’t only function well, but looks great too! Have a good idea of what branding and style you’d like going into your first consultation. Simple preferences like branded colours and fonts can make the process easier for the designers and developers. It’s also good to be open to their recommendations though, as they’ll have plenty of experience and will know what works and what doesn’t work.

Focusing on SEO

Your site is going to be one of millions that customers could choose from. To make sure they click through to your page rather than competitors’, you’re going to have to focus on SEO. This stands for “search engine optimisation” and is the process of getting your website to rank highly in search engine results. It’s a complex process, but there are all sorts of agencies out there who you can outsource the work to. Ranking highly really is important. After all, when you search for products, you rarely go beyond the first or second page at the most. You need to rank as close to the top as possible to get as much traffic to your site as possible. More traffic generally means a higher chance of conversion and greater profits!

These are just two aspects of your website that you really need to focus on to make significant profits. Keep the advice in mind and you should be able to get started out in the right direction!

Is Your Office Ready To Get Back To Work?

After this pandemic eases (and it will), you need to consider how you are going to utilise your office space once again. The world has changed in recent months, with people all over the globe working from home. This has seen an emergence in flexible working, unlike anything we have ever seen before. Many companies are even considering whether they need their offices at all. Most businesses are thinking about how they can return to the office in a more effective way. Homeworking has shown how staff can be productive when sitting at their dining room table sipping their favourite coffee, so why do we need an office? Face to face interaction is something we have sorely missed. We rely on email tones rather than facial hints. The office, while maybe not the same as it once was, is still a crucial part of your company in a post-pandemic world. How will you get your office fit for work?

Clean

The most vital aspect of working as the coronavirus lockdown eases is ensuring our workplaces remain clean. Every evening after everyone has gone home, you need to give your office a clean to remove all traces of any potential virus. Couple with this a more Covid-19 secure deep clean every week to ensure all surfaces and common areas have been decontaminated. This will be the new routine for many bosses across the country. This is a cost you need to factor into the upkeep of your workspaces. To maintain cleanliness, all non-essential items should also be removed, such as greenery and water coolers.

Social Distancing

The concept of social distancing only became relevant a few months ago. Before this, we wouldn’t dream of beginning a meeting without a handshake. Now we namaste or elbow bump. Social distancing is crucial in preventing the spread of coronavirus, and you need to uphold this within the workplace. You may need lines drawn on the floor to remind people of the two metre distance they should be keeping from everyone else. Hot desking can no longer be common practice, and you should refrain from encouraging the sharing of mugs at the coffee machine. Simple practises will go a long way in stopping the spread of the disease.

Staff Well Being

Many people have found lockdown a challenge. This has affected the mental health of many individuals. However, when your staff return to work, you want them to see the office a safe space. To do this, you must maintain high levels of communication and take their views on board. If masks make them feel safer, get some. If they want hand sanitiser at their desk, order it. And, if they need some time out every so often, allow this. Be flexible. You don’t want a workforce that is scared to come into the office. Morale will be sapped, and confidence will be low.

Help your staff to return to work in stages. Allow working from home, and consider an office presence rota to maintain social distancing. Your business will function and thrive once again.