There is no such thing as too much marketing. And a business should not just stop marketing once they’ve “made it.” Think about it. Even well-established and well-branded companies continue to market their product, their brand to consumers. Coca-Cola. Walmart. Target. McDonald’s. Starbucks. These companies have continuous marketing campaigns running all the time. Which means they also budget for continuous marketing.
The ability to push relevant content to your customer base is a powerful tool, and now the internet has provided a way for all business owners to do just that. Unfortunately, many small businesses will choose not to leverage this tool and miss out on some powerful marketing opportunities. Consequently, this means if you’re not marketing online, you’re also missing out on revenue!
One of the things we stress to our clients is the importance of having an online presence for your business. Think of your business website as your virtual front door, your shop window, your display. Your website is where you make your first impression on potential customers and where you can display new products and information to returning customers. Because it serves the same function as the storefront of a physical shop, your virtual presence needs to be marketed just as much as you would a traditional brick and mortar location.
So how does this translate in today’s information-saturated world?
There are many different ways you can market yourself online—from traditional banner advertisements (yes they still work), to pay per click campaigns, to affiliate and network marketing. But the one avenue that absolutely cannot be ignored in today’s online economy is social media.
With more and more competition for consumer attention, your business needs to stand out. Due to everyone’s ability to run a Google search on any company at any time, consumers are more skeptical today than ever. As a result, connecting with your consumers is a great way to keep them coming back again and again. In theory, social media is the outlet where you can really connect to your customers on a personal level and where they are most likely to give you feedback as well.
Social media invites your customers to interact with you and most consumers expect you to have a social media presence just as they expect a business phone number and email address. They want to know you’re accessible.
Every business is unique with its own nuances. And so is every customer base. Success with social media and content marketing sometimes requires more listening and less talking. You need to read your target audience’s online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives.
You also need to know your audience. It’s better to specialize than to be a jack-of-all-trades. A highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.
Similarly, quality always trumps quantity. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time.
Once you begin to attract an audience you need to stay patient and stay consistent. Take advantage of the law of compounding. If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll eventually share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.
This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online.
If you want more people to share your content, then you need to add as much value as possible. If you spend all your time on the social Web directly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business. Take care to acknowledge those relationships to show that you value your network.
Finally, you can’t expect others to share your content and talk about you if you don’t do the same for them. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking about content published by others.
What’s the point of all this social media hustle?
Email collection should be your number one focus. Email marketing has an ROI of around 4,300% according to the Direct Marketing Association.
Consider newsletters, free giveaways or quizzes to collect working emails from your audience. With a solid email list made up from an audience that is interested in your message, you can do a lot!
A Simple Calculation to Find the Value of an Email Address:
Start with your email campaign. This campaign will either be a single email blast or a series of emails. Here’s the equation to finding the revenue generated by an email campaign:
# of Contacts times (X) the Sales Conversion Rate X the Average Order Value = Revenue
Here’s an example using a very low conversion rate for email marketing:
1000 Contacts X 2% CVR of email campaign X $10 Average order = $2,000 generated
Note: If you already know your email campaign revenue, you can just plug it into the next equation.
Then use this equation to find the revenue per email lead:
Revenue generated divided by (/) # of contacts in campaign = Revenue per email lead
In our example:
$2,000 / 1000 contacts = $2 revenue per email lead
$2 per lead isn’t too shabby. However, it’s totally reasonable to see the revenue per lead between $5 and $8.
Now, imagine if you had 10,000 contacts to reach on this campaign. That’s $20,000 from one campaign with a below average conversion rate and a small average order size!
So how do you take your list from 1,000 leads to 10,000 leads and fuel your email marketing campaigns?
Email Popup Signups are the Most Profitable Low-Hanging Fruit
As you can see, an email list is something to be leveraged to increase revenue and nurture customers into repeat customers. But, you have to actively collect those addresses.
Having newsletter signups is a great start, but optimizing your email list to transform into a revenue-generator is going to require a more focused and aggressive effort.
Having a great relationship with your core audience through social media is a great start, but you want to follow that up with an irresistible offer for your potential clients. If you’ve been engaged with your audience up to this point then you will know what that offer ought to be.
None of this matters if your business lacks an online presence. There’s no excuse in today’s digital landscape, so get out there and make it happen.
