Business – Page 3 – CityScape Insurance

5 Marketing Tips To Boost Your Exposure

Times are changing and the demand to increase efficiency and maximize exposure has never been so great. We understand the importance of this demand on business owners and though we would share 5 quick tips to make more sense of your next marketing campaign.

Understand Your Target Market

Getting to know your customers and their purchasing habits is key in the marketing process. By focusing on a target market segment it’s easier to identify specific behaviors, needs wants of your end consumer. Once focus has been made it’s important that you not only maximize marketing efforts towards this group, but customize the products offered as well.

Write A Marketing Plan

Once a target market has been identified you need to develop your strategy in the form of a written marketing plan. The reasoning for this is to maintain consistency across the team and keep an overall focus on the end goals. This plan needs to cover all essential aspects of presenting and delivery of your products to the customer. Here are just a few questions to ask yourself when creating this plan:

Where are we now?
Where do we want to be?
What opportunities exist in the environment?
How will we get there?
Who will do what?
How will we know we’ve arrived?

Design Advertising & Customer Communications

Advertising isn’t like the old days where you could place an ad in the newspaper, list the company in the Yellowpages, or mail out coupons. It’s a whole new world out there with the internet and if you’re not on top of your game you’re no where to be found. Consumers are bombarded with hundreds of marketing emails, ads on Facebook, and just about every website you go on. To stay ahead of the game you need to do something pretty special to stand out, so make sure your messages are clear and appeal to exactly the people you are trying to sell to. For example if your consumer is looking to buy a dog and you’re a pet store, create an ad about adopting a furry friend. This stands out from others saying adopt a dog here, or dog options now. Though it is important to use call-to-action words, don’t let that take away from the consumers main focus, they’re looking for a companion.

Make Sure Your Store Front Is In Pristine Order

Having a clean and inviting atmosphere is a big influence tool when it comes to getting potential customers in the door. It generates trust, motivates your staff and makes customers feel more comfortable doing business with you. This tip also applies to online businesses. We’ve all come across a website where you click on it because it sounds like what you’re looking for and then it hits you like a brick. The site is a horrible, poor navigation, flashing pictures everywhere, and no quality content anywhere to be found. Keeping an orderly yet insightful and content driven site that interacts with your consumers is very important when looking to convert. By creating an easy to navigate site with a clear action path you will see a much better return and interaction rate with both potential and returning consumers.

Last But Not Least Invest In Your Employees

Regardless the size of your business it’s imperative that you take care of those under you. Your employees are the face of the company and can make or break the customer experience. By investing in your employees and creating a growth plan you build both trust and motivation to work harder. We believe that success is built from within so get your employees involved in your marketing plan, ask for their ideas, and most importantly treat them as equals. Package happy employees with an awesome marketing plan and watch both customer satisfaction and sales grow.

There are countless tips and good ideas when it comes to marketing, it’s up to you and your employees to find what works best. Please share your thoughts and ideas with upcoming entrepreneurs below, we’d love to hear what you have to say.

Filed Under: Business

Email Marketing

Is Email Marketing Worth the Effort?

With so many options available to business owner’s such as such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, and iContact one may ask themselves, “where do I start?” Well the good news is you’re not alone.

Email marketing is an excellent way to generate new business leads and increase company exposure. With the right audience, a well written email, and great products it has never been easier to prompt a sale. In fact with the growing popularity of mobile devices and the drastic changes in technology, nearly 48% percent of all emails are opened on a smart phone. Now what better way to increase company exposure and place your products in the hands of potential clients.

Email marketing services such as Mail Chimp, provide complete control of the messaging experience allowing you to tailor campaigns to specific behaviors and demographics, improving the likelihood that your prospects will act. In addition these services provide useful analytic tools which provide in depth information about how your marketing campaign is performing, from open rates to URL’s clicked and much more. These tools also allow you to trial different campaigns prior to launching, allowing you to maximize your audience interaction.

So we ask is email marketing worth the effort or just a waste of time and resources? Email marketing has a much higher conversion rate in comparison to traditional hard mail marketing and is still more effective than social media marketing. To answer the question, yes we think it’s definitely worth the effort and suggest that you try for yourself.

Here are A few tips to consider when creating your email campaign:

Subject Line – It’s important that the subject is relevant to your audience, this will help avoid your message coming off as SPAM. According to recent studies nearly 33% of recipients open emails based on subject alone. Creating a relevant and catchy subject line will peak the recipients curiosity increasing your chances that they will open your email.

Time of Day – Spend the time to researching your audience. When are your readers most active? Studies have shown sending emails in the morning have a greater chance of being opened. This doesn’t mean that all readers abide by this study so make sure you know the behaviors of your reader’s. For many this key factor can make or break the success of your campaign.

Email Frequency- It’s very important that you stay in contact with prospects and current clients but avoid sending too many emails. One of the main reasons a reader will unsubscribe from email notifications is they are receiving too many.

Format – As we previously stated many readers check their emails on a mobile device or tablet. It’s especially important that your emails are optimized to support these formats, failure to cater to these devices could lead to your email being overlooked, unopened, or marked as junk.

Template – Always keep things fresh, if your content is always delivered in the same template readers may become bored and your interaction will decline. We recommend having at least five to ten templates designed and create a rotation. This works great for monthly newsletters and holiday offers.

Special Offers – People who actively participate in email marketing are looking for value. Even in an industry such as insurance it’s important that we make our reader feel special. What sets you apart from the rest?

Call to Action – Creating a call to action is imperative if you’re looking to get anything out of your email campaign. Even if you’ve written excellent content for your readers without a call to action they may do just that, read and not act. Create something catchy and place it within the email, some even add a quick phrase at the end. Just be sure you don’t come off like an advertisement that is trying to push a product, readers and consumers want to feel like they have a choice not have a sale shoved down their throat.

Information Overload – In today’s society readers want information fast, no one has time to scroll through an email for the bits of information their interested in reading. Target the information you would like to share and make sure your email is geared to deliver those key points. Simply put, less is more so try and avoid the fluff.

No one launches a masterpiece on their first campaign so be patient and always remember the tips above. We would love to hear about your success and failures in email marketing so please share with us.

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