Webcoupers: Different Marketing Strategies to Help You Grow Your Business

If you are a business owner, no matter how small your business is, one of the dilemmas you’d continuously be faced with is, how to get more customers – how to market your product or services and therefore grow your business. Of course, there are different marketing channels, but a lot of the time, brand owners are stuck on the strategies to employ. So, in this article, I’d be highlighting 7 different strategies you can employ in marketing yourself, your product or your service.

Excited? Yea, Me too.

Here are different kinds of marketing strategies you can employ:

Word of Mouth Marketing
This has got to be the most basic, most used and very much so, still one of the most effective marketing tactics of all time. Word of Mouth Marketing is simply the practice of telling people by yourself about your business, and those people telling others about your business. Typically, word of mouth leverages on existing relationships, your personal brand and credibility as well as your persistence. Every business owner needs to learn how to do word-of-mouth marketing. I mean, if you do not sell your business. Who will?

Nostalgia Marketing
Everyone experiences nostalgia – the sentimental yearning for a thing in your past – at one point in our lives or the other. Also known as retro marketing, it is simply the method of infusing nostalgia – culturally relevant positive memories into your marketing. For instance, imagine the use of Styl Plus‘ ‘Iya Basira’ song in a marketing campaign, or indomie coming back with a remix of ‘mama do good o’ advert etc. You could get people to share their favourite childhood cartoon show for a chance to get a discount on your product, or do an ad that reminds people of the games we played as kids like suwe, police and thief and relate the ad back to your business etc. The idea behind behind nostalagia marketing is to elicit and leverage on positive emotions in your storytelling and marketing. The more emotional connections people have with your brand, the more likely they are to become customers.

Event Marketing
This involves developing a themed based event to promote your products or service. The event can be online (like a Facebook or Instagram live) or offline like a movie premiere or a food tasting event or brand launch etc.

Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on specific key individuals rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. Influencer marketing works because word of mouth recommendation and or criticism from people we respect and or look up to, holds more water than random adverts.
Influencer marketing can be done in two ways: by taking key influencers as brand ambassadors (though this can be expensive), or by employing the mini influencers (social media guys especially) in key campaigns you run for your brand. An example of this is what Samsung is doing for GalaxyS8+. They gifted a lot of influencers this gadget and over time, these guys (e.g. Ebuka, Toolz, Kate Hensaw etc) take a picture, and they use the hashtag #GalaxyS8NG. These guys are promoting the phone camera feature without saying anything about it.

Undercover Marketing
I once saw a quote that said that the best kind of marketing is when the customer doesn’t feel like he is being marketed to. This is what undercover marketing aims to achieve. It entails using hidden marketing activities like ghost writing, guest blogging, getting people to write reviews of your business, thought leadership, surveys, throwing a party and sharing only a particular drink or serving only a particular brand of snacks/food, getting people to ride an uber or taxify and ‘gist’ with uber drivers about this new product,  etc. Undercover marketing is all about subtlety.

Relationship Marketing
Relationship marketing is a facet of customer relationship management (CRM) that focuses on customer loyalty and long-term customer engagement rather than shorter-term goals like customer acquisition and individual sales. This marketing strategy seeks to develop solid relationships with customers by giving them direct information that caters to their specific interests and needs. You can do this using online marketing channels, but understand that the best form of relationship marketing is a great customer and brand experience.

Online Marketing
Online Marketing is the ish right now; you know, yes? And this is understandable, because everyone is online. You can do online marketing using different channels like Google Search, Google Display, Social Media and Email Marketing etc. The cool thing about online marketing is that you can use it with other marketing strategies. You can promote your event online, use online influencers etc.

The truth is, marketing doesn’t need to be a hard task and it doesn’t have to be boring or obvious or stereotypical either. Just be creative, use different strategies and multiple channels, build your sales funnel, cultivate relationships, and most of all… be willing to invest time, money and energy into your brand.

I hope you learnt something reading this. Do share your thoughts, questions or comments on the comments box.

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Peace Itimi is an Accounts Manager at Webcoupers.

Photo Credit: Denys Kovtun | Dreamstime