Every business house does marketing to aware people about their product/services and to enhance the sales of the company. But to get maximum results, your marketing strategy must be solid. Every marketing strategy is based on your business objectives. What you want to achieve from your business requires a strategy. A wrong or unclear objective can ruin your business and marketing process.
So, in this session, we’ll learn about fundamentals of marketing to grow your business.
It will cover:
#1. Business Objective – How to deliver ROI
#2. USPs – How to define USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) to make a stand in competition
#3. Target Audience – How to visualize your targeted audience
#4. Marketing Funnel – How you can plan better budget for your marketing
Before planning any marketing strategy you have to define your business objective. Without being clear about your business goals is like to visit a supermarket and you do not know what to buy. You must have a clear vision about what do you want to achieve otherwise you will waste your money/efforts and results will be zero.
With Facebook you can fulfill all types of business objectives:
-Raise brand awareness
- Generate leads
-Increase local sales
-Driving online sales
-Promote your app
Let’s discuss in detail and learn how we can use all these.
Before starting brand awareness you must know why we need to generate brand awareness in the first place. Why does a business need brand visibility?
Brand awareness is an initial step because it is very important to let people know about your business, what your brand does and what are the products and services. If they don’t know about your brand and services then they will never be able to reach you, and no revenue will be generated. Brand awareness helps you to reach the people. It also helps to build visibility in a long-term.
When someone buys a product or service from you, it means they feel good about your business. If they recall you it means they feel more connected with your products and services.
How does Facebook Help You To Raise Brand Awareness?
Facebook helps you to connect with the people who are important to your business and let them reach your business. When you share something about your brand’s products and services, the people learn about you. In future, if they would like to buy something related to your brand’s products/services, they will come to you and know more about your business.
Facebook is very useful to reach people where ever they are on their customer journey. It helps you to deliver your message to the right audience by sharing photos and videos.
For example, about 20 years ago a brand used to advertise itself in a relevant magazine, newspaper or friends and family suggestions. But now they use online feed, blogs, and friends/family mouth of words.
Lead is an inquiry by people who are interested in your products/services. If a person asks you about your products or services, then it is called “Lead”. So when people are interested in your product/services, they get inquisitive to know what you sell.
Facebook makes lead generation very easy for people and brands as well. Any interested person can leave his/her contact details in your FB inbox or timeline. It helps you to create high quality leads for your business.
People can request you for a newsletter subscription, price quotes, demo of any product/service or any other in just a few clicks on any device. All these are done by lead forms. You can also customize these forms as per your brand services or comfort. You can also ask open ended or multiple choice questions.
To take an immediate action you can integrate lead forms with CRM to update your leads in real-time. Let’s understand it with an appropriate example! 25 years ago, how did people contact a coaching center? The most common method was through recommendations by parents.
To connect with people they used to advertise in the newspaper, circulate pamphlet, or stick posters on boards near to their street. But now Social Media has emerged as a powerful tool. All it requires is a facebook brand page, and people will reach to you. People can also search for you on their smartphones and tabs. Not just that, they can rate your services and make an inquiry via Facebook.
This is for an offline business like restaurants, spas & salons, coffee shops or other retail outlets where you need people to walk in to occupy space at your outlet more actively and enthusiastically. It is to drive potential customers to your store.
The best way to gain more crowd in your store is by connecting with people who are around you. SInce they are near you, you can easily lure them to grace your store and increase the footfall of the corporate setup.
Create target advertisement for right audience based on demographics, interests, location. Try to connect with people located around you.
When your audience views the ad then they could click on it, get directions and visit your store, outlet or branch. It will help you get real results and you can have a better understanding of your audience.
Let’s take an example of Cupcake shop. Before social media, the owner waits for the audience to walk in the shop. Or if he has shifted his shop then he could not connect to its loyal customers. But with the advent of social media, there is a solution to this problem. A brand can now connect to its loyal visitors via social media and new and returning audience can also communicate with that shop. The best way is to contact those who live in the close vicinity. With Facebook, you can also know about the people who love cupcakes or desserts. If someone wants to know more about that shop, then s/he can visit its Facebook page. So Facebook has great benefits to raise local sales.
If you have a website then would like to have more traffic to your website, so that more and more people can buy your products/service and you can grow your revenue.
Facebook offers you to target your right audience. When you target your products to right audience then it gives a reason to your audience to explore your product and indulge in it by becoming customers of the brands.
Connect with your audience when they are active on facebook (Laptop/desktop/mobile/tablet). Lead people to your website from Facebook and inspire them to buy something. Not just that, you can also measure and track how your ads are performing and continuously create new ads for different products and services you offer.
Let’s understand it with an example of Jeans shop. Before 20 years, customer walking was the only option for sale. They used to put hoardings or banners to attract customers. But now they can advertise on Facebook and target the right audience. People will see the ad in their news feed and visit the website. Thus, helping the advertiser to lead more online sales.
If you have an app for your business then you want more app downloads. The objective is to promote your app and increase app installs.
You also want to develop your app to keep your users engaged and entertained them. If users install your app and they are not using it actively then one day they will delete this app. You never want this surely. So app promotion is very useful to retain your users for long-lasting.
Facebook helps you to reach the right audience with targeted ads on the basis of gender, interest, age, device, and more. Once a user installed your app, it is important to keep them engaged to take specific action. You can also track your ad effects regarding app installation, sales, and more.
Let me clear this with the example of a game store. Before 20 years, the store used to depend on the gamers to loved to drop by, but now they can run their app online and target audience very effectively.
As the name suggests, it is important to stand out in a competition with your features and quality. USPs are to differentiate yourself and your business from your competitors.
For example, there are lots of brands of soft drinks. But your choice is one. It can be Pepsi, Coca-cola, Fruity, Dew, Sprite, and any other. So when you choose a brand, it means you are choosing its unique qualities. That is the work of USPs to make your brand as an icon.
It helps you to connect with your audience more effectively. Such that, if you are a bike brand that is suitable for off roads, then you will choose the audience for the rough route. You will select the cities that are not so much developed.
USPs create brand preference and attraction. When people know more about your brand and USPs, then you will be the 1st choice for your audience. When you clearly define your USPs, it helps to have a unique place for your business in competition.
USPs are helpful to create a unique identity for your brand. Every brand/business has some features, when you clearly define your brand features then it helps to target your audience in an effective manner.
List Of USP
-Product or Services: Do you have any product/service that can be better than your competitors.
- Associated Services: Do you have any special or additional service which can add a value to your brand. Like – A departmental store can offer free home delivery.
-Convenient Location: Are you in a good place? It is very important for raise footfall in your store.
-Availability: Are your products always available in stock. You should never go out of stock.
-Uniqueness: Do you have unique products. Your competitors don’t have such products/services. Like: UrbanClap is a well-known brand to offer destination urban lifestyle services.
-Technical Support: Do you have technical support? If your competitors do not offer any technical support, then it can be a great point for your brand.
-Selection/Range: Do you have a good variety of your products/services. People love variations.
-Guarantee/Warranty: Do you offer guarantee/warranty for your products for a longer time than your competitors?
- Gifts With Purchases: Do you offer free gifts or any additional with a purchase? Like a Cup/mug with tea pack or 20% extra in a pack with the same price.
-Payment Terms: It is very important to drive more sales. The more payment option helps to attract more customers. You can also go for the digital wallet. It is a very good option.
- Pricing Option: A better price always works as the magnet. If you have a better price than your competitors, then you will surely gain customers.
-Quality: Do you fulfill all the quality parameters for a product or service? People love good quality products. If your products/services stay serve for longer durations, then you can be a hero.
- Perceived Value: What people think about your brand? The more perceived value gives you a better identity.
Branding: Do you have stronger branding? It is very important to highlight your features in a better way than your competitors.
-Performance: Does your product offer a better performance? Like, a smartphone can be 2 times faster, or camera can click 5 times clear.
-Referral Deals: Do you offer some additional discount to refer to your brand? For example, if 'A' 'refers your brand to 'B then you offer 5% additional discount to 'A.' It is very useful. The more references you get, the better will be your brand value.
Identify your USPs and make your brand valuable. When you clearly define your USPs it helps you to win the battle of competition.
Points to remember:
- Each business has its unique features that contribute to stand out in the game. This is called USP.
- These USPs describe what makes you different from others and why people should choose you.
In this, we will learn how to define our target audience so that we can reach to the right customers. It is very important to know your audience. If you don’t know your audience then how could you reach or engage with them. It is the first step in marketing strategy to know your target audience.
How To Define Your Target Audience?
You can define your target audience on the different basis:
- Demographic
*Age
*Gender
*Location
- Behavior
*What they want to purchase
*How they make transactions
- Interest
*Movies
*Pets
*Books
*Cooking
*Travelling
Let’s take an example of an Indian traditional food shop – “Silver Byte”, how they will define their target audience?
- Demographic Infomation
*Working professionals/family
*Male and female (18-40)
*Behavior and Interest
*Mobile audience
*Convenient meal option – Footfalls or online
*People who love Indian food
Think about which group you want to sell your food
- Demographics: Age, Gender, Interest, Language
-Location: Region, City, Country, or audience under specific distance
-Interest: Movies, sports, Shopping, and other
-Behavior: Shoppers, Fitness Freak, Travel lovers or more
-Connections: People who liked your page and their friends
Key Takeaways: You have to clearly define your target audience for your business so that you can reach to the right people. This audience will help you to grow your business.
Before making any conversion (sign up a website, buy something, visit a store, download, or any thing else) every customer goes through a marketing decision journey. This journey is called Customer Journey or a path to purchase or The Marketing Funnel.
This marketing funnel has 3 steps:
- Awareness: When someone gets introduced to your brand.
- Consideration: To reach out the customer who is already aware of you.
-Conversion: A call to action
Let’s understand it better with an example:
I am feeling hungry and need to have some food. So firstly I have to decide what kind of food I want for lunch today. I can have a burger, noodles, pizza or Indian food. So I decided to have Indian food. I tried to find nearby Indian restaurant
- Awareness: Bikanerwala, Haldiram, Kebab Express, Om Sweets
- Consideration: Biknerwala (50% off coupon), Haldiram (10% off coupon)
- Conversion: Food ordered from Bikanerwala.
This is marketing funnel. Each step of marketing funnel helps you to reach out to the relevant audience with relevant communication. Your communication and strategy are different for every customer at a different stage. It does not matter, what type of business you have, all your customers will go through this journey. You can influence your customer with effective messages and communication.
Points to remember:
-You must have a clear picture of your customer’s journey in your marketing funnel.
-Customize your communication at different stages in the funnel.
-Try to influence your customers to come to your business.
Do you have anything else to add to this information? Comment on the box below.
(Featured Image Courtesy: Blue Fountain Media)
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