The ultimate guide to marketing your business
Everyone wants to build a big and successful business, but the one question you first need to answer is how to market your business to the world?
How to get more traffic, more client calls, and eventually, more revenue.
Every business is a marketing business! That’s probably more true in 2022 than it has ever been at any other time in history.
Your job as a business person is to constantly sell your vision and products to people. It does not matter whether you are a law firm, a shiny tech startup or a big multinational. You simply cannot escape the reality of life; in order to win, you need to be great at marketing.
Then arrives the question: What kind of marketing best suits your business?
Should you erect billboards that cost millions of shillings all over town? Or would you rather run ads on Facebook? Should you try guerilla marketing or stick to the more traditional inbound and outbound forms of advertising?
Any business person can go mad trying to figure this out.
In this guide, we will look at 10 of the most powerful marketing channels that are guaranteed to take your business to the next level.
10 ways to market your business.
Build a website
In 2022, every business should have a website.
Whether online or offline, your customers are looking for you, entering your business name in their search engines. If you don’t come up in the search results, you might never see those customers again.
A website allows you to tell your customers what you offer, as well as show them why you are the best at offering it. It shows them that you are a credible and trustworthy brand and that they should choose you over your competitors.
It sounds dumb, but something as small as the design of your website can influence the purchase decisions of potential customers.
There is no real downside to having a website. The upsides, however, simply cannot be ignored.
Luckily for you, web design agencies in Kenya have made it easy for you to design a website at very affordable prices. You don’t have to worry about learning a programming language or hiring a web design team.
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Understand the power of Search Engine Optimization
Such a big, fancy word!
Search Engine Optimization!
We, marketers, like to call it SEO to confuse you even more.
The concept behind SEO is not as complicated as you think though.
SEO is simply how Google determines what websites should rank on their first pages. Think of it this way, every website is on a long queue, let’s call it the Google Master Queue.
So, in order to get ahead in the Google Master Queue, you need to prove to Google that you are a credible site.
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You can do this by having other people in the queue talk about you, making sure your website is extremely good Google can’t ignore you and building yourself as a leader in a specific topic by blogging frequently.
After some time, Google will notice all the effort you have put in and slowly start moving you to the front of the queue.
That is Search Engine Optimization.
If you want to get started with your own SEO efforts, leave us your contact and we will help you figure it out.
Manage your Social Media like a 16-year-old
Teenagers love social media.
They’re on all of them, well, except Facebook.
The point is that they consume and produce lots of content every hour of the day.
It’s no wonder that nowadays, a teenager with a smartphone can have hundreds of millions of followers online just by posting short, 15-second videos.
Businesses in 2022 can learn from this frenzy.
Social Media is not a place for you to come and talk about yourself, it’s not where you try to sell, sell, sell.
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Instead, social media has evolved to be more like a high school dormitory, where a bunch of kids meet to talk about stories their peers find interesting. No one wants to be around the kid who is always talking about how awesome their grades are, or how much the teachers like him.
On Social Media, if you cannot tell amazing stories, everyone will ignore you!
Run creative Ads on Social Media
It’s not enough to tell stories. You also need to make money, don’t you?
As a general rule, 95% of the content you put out on Social Media should be aimed at educating or entertaining your audience.
The remaining 5% can then go into running very powerful and compelling advertisements.
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Running Ads is not as simple as putting dollars behind a campaign. You need to think long and hard about the kind of people you want to reach, their demographics, interests etc.
This will help you when making the decisions on the right kinds of copy, images or videos to use.
Create content like a Media House
The one thing media houses are great at is putting out high-quality content almost every hour of the day.
We’re not saying you should upload a blog or an Instagram Reel every 15 minutes. However, you should put a bit more thought into the kind of content you put out there.
Is it good?
Will people love it? Really?
Is it delivered in a timely manner?
Will it make you stand out from your competition?
Does it help you build your credibility as a topical leader?
Before you post, make sure your content answers all of these questions.
A good frequency to post your content is once or twice a week for blogs, daily for short-form video content on Social Media, and once a week for long-form video content on Youtube.
Promote your content like a media house.
Media Houses not only know how to write good content but also how to promote it.
From catchy Tweets to impressive Instagram stories, they make sure their content spreads far and wide.
You might not be as good as a professional journalist, or news editor, but putting in the effort is what will make the difference.
Once you have produced high-quality informative content, you need to have a very good distribution strategy that will knock your competition off balance.
This can be social media ads, webinars, or even unconventional marketing strategies like having a mascot.
In the content world, distribution is king.
Run Ads on Google.
If you’re too lazy to start doing Search Engine Optimization, you can still rank high on Google by running Ads.
While SEO might take months before you start seeing any results, running Ads can save you time and give you immediate results.
However, Google Ads are a bit pricey, so you must be willing to put in a bit of investment to run this kind of marketing.
Although mastering Google Ads will probably take some time as well as trial and error, an optimized campaign is worth the effort.
Create a listing on a business directory.
Online directories are websites that allow businesses to list their services. These websites are often long-standing sites with high traffic and high domain authority.
Adding your business to an online directory is a very affordable way to get your business noticed.
Many consumers often visit online directories to get information about businesses.
Making sure you are there when they visit will expose you to new potential customers.
Some of the online directories you can list are:
- Yellow Pages Kenya.
- Yelp
- Google My Business
- White Pages
- Business List
Get online customer reviews
Word of mouth is the most powerful kind of marketing.
If your customers love your product or service, they will tell anyone and everyone they can about it.
You need to make it easy for them to do so. One way is by collecting customer reviews and testimonials. You can have a dedicated section on your website for reviews, or you can use sites like Google or Yellow pages for review collection.
Whichever way you decide to use to collect your reviews, make sure that any potential customers you have can see them because reviews will have a great impact on their purchasing decisions.
Attend Meetups, Trade Shows and Conferences.
Attending local meetings and events is an excellent way for becoming more visible in your city. Some businesses may benefit from this more than others. Local networking is significantly more fruitful than, say, selling things online if you offer services directly to consumers.
Even if it’s merely to exchange ideas and find inspiration with other business owners, networking of any form is beneficial.
