Waseem Saddique offers an insight into choosing the best
marketing techniques amongst the hundreds on offer.
Piecing together a marketing plan and a marketing
campaign represents a daunting prospect for a number of businesses. With so
many ideas on the market as to what makes marketing a ‘success’, businesses
often end up trying to adopt too many strategies and ultimately a marketing
campaign ends up failing.
So many voices say that some techniques are a ‘must have’
whilst opposing voices say those same techniques are a waste of time and money.
It’s no wonder that businesses don’t know which way to turn for advice. At
present it is estimated that there are over 100 different marketing techniques
available to businesses. But, how does one go about choosing the right ones for
their requirements?
Waseem Saddique offers some points to consider:
First and foremost, it is vital to understand the purpose
of marketing. Setting out clear goals and the results you expect from your
marketing strategy and marketing campaigns will guide you to choosing the right
techniques for you. There are hundreds of thousands of books, websites and
other sources on marketing, but if you take the time to break them down, you will
find that there are usually four key themes associated with the purposes of
marketing.
These include:
·
Brand Awareness – This is where your target audience is able
to discover more about you as a company, learning about your products and
services
·
Lead Generation - Encouraging your target
audience to gather information from you or request a sales call with you,
therefore developing a pre-sales rapport.
·
Brand Consideration – Your target audience is
looking at purchasing from you, or at the very least has placed you on a
shortlist of possibilities alongside your rivals
·
Direct sales – Persuading your target
audience to buy directly from you
For instance, you may well use search engine advertising
as a means of generating leads, however, this may not work for direct sales,
particularly if your target audience does not buy using those methods.
The
Target Audience
Uncovering what techniques work for your business, leads
into the next thing to think about. What techniques does your particular
audience tend to engage with and ultimately, what do they respond to? What’s
key here is how well you’ve identified the audience you’re targeting. In some
instances an audience will not purchase from a business until they understand
them (i.e their awareness of the brand and relationship building). Should your
audience engage in this way, look at using different marketing tactics across
different themes. For example, to create brand awareness utilise public
speaking, for lead generation try SEO or a free offer and finally for direct
sales try e-mail marketing.
Marketing
Products VS Marketing Services
If your business sells products and not services, then
you need to adopt a blend of marketing techniques. Too many businesses make the
mistake of thinking they can sell products and services using the same
marketing techniques for each. This often ends in disaster. Waseem Saddique
explains “consumers purchase services very differently to how they would buy
products; it is therefore imperative that you have two distinct and unique marketing
campaigns to promote products and services as separate entities.”
Overall the key things to consider are: knowing your
audience, your time and financial availability, your goals and the ability to
evaluate your results. With these things in place you will ultimately discover
the marketing techniques that work for you and deliver the most productive
results.
