Don’t like reading? Listen to the audio version:
If you listened to the audio, you may want to Click Here.
Otherwise, read on:
Times are tough – for businesses in most industries, anyway. Many businesses are struggling right now. How can you improve your marketing ROI without increased expenditure?
For some business owners, getting it right – or not – could mean the difference between surviving or having to close down.
The reality is that small improvements can quickly accumulate – and since you already spend money on marketing, anything you can do to improve its efficiency will directly increase your net profit.
Here are 6 ways to improve your marketing next year:
1. Re-evaluate your ICP:
If you haven’t done so yet, determine who your ideal customer is. Depending on what you offer, you may have more than one ideal customer profile.
Knowing exactly who you are marketing to (likes and dislikes, pain points and desires) will make it a lot easier to run profitable marketing campaigns.
If you already determined your ICP, you may want to re-assess your initial findings, and compare it to your current buyer/client data. If the profile has changed from your initial assessment, adapt accordingly.
2. Consistency:
The more people trust you, the more likely they are to do business with you. Trust comes from knowing you are dependable. You start proving that by showing up at regular intervals.
Depending on the type of business you are in, your marketing budget and where you are on your marketing journey, that might mean putting out content once a week on one platform, or it could mean putting out content daily across several platforms.
But being visible consistently, predictably, will go a long way to not only building your brand, but also to people getting used to seeing your content at specific times.
3. Track everything:
It’s one thing to know where your visitors come from. It’s another thing altogether to know where the customers or clients came from.
Track not only your traffic sources and their numbers, but also the conversion rates from each source.
For instance, you may find that while it is easier to get visitors from Instagram, you get more conversions coming from Pinterest or SEO.
Doing that will allow you to double down on what works best for you, and put more effort into it. Don’t drop the other stuff altogether, but place your main focus on what works best.
4. Do some split testing:
We are not suggesting that you suddenly start experimenting with everything at once. Because some of what you do might not work at all, and you don’t want to dive into a black hole while trying to figure out what works best.
But start experimenting with one thing at a time.
For instance: Start by testing different types and formats of content. There is a lot to play around with – colors, font sizes, titles, descriptions, whether it is short- or long form video or graphics/carousels, etc.
(Or, if you use paid ads, experiment with headlines, ad copy, and for Google ads, the keywords you target. The intent of the searcher is everything.)
Then start testing posting at different times for different platforms. Yes, each platform has its own busiest time slots, but it doesn’t always mean that your ideal customer will be online at the busiest time.
One of Peter’s old website clients sells a product to help people to quit smoking. She found that, while Facebook is busiest at 7PM in her region, her best results came from posting after 10PM.
Next, start optimizing your landing page. Not all at once, though. Start with testing different headlines, and be sure to run the test for long enough to have enough results to make an informed choice (unless of course you immediately see a clear winner or loser). Then the call to action, and then the content and graphics.
If you have a WordPress website, there are plugins that will allow you to do split testing. If the platform your site is built on doesn’t facilitate it, you can use Google’s A/B testing facility.
You can also test different auto-response messages – whether it is email or a comment chatbot on social media.
Also remember to compare the results for different times of the day.
Whatever you test, do it in such a way that you know which exact item brought about the improvement (or deterioration).
5. Reduce friction:
We describe friction as any steps your prospect has to go through in order to do business with you. friction is unavoidable, but it can be reduced to a minimum.
How easy is it for people to find your contact form? How many fields do you have on the form? Fair enough, the fewer fields you have, the more likely you are to get spam messages and tire kickers…
But if you increase the friction, you may also lose legitimate inquiries from people who were just too busy, and couldn’t complete everything in one go – and then forgot about it.
The easier it is to work with you or buy from you, the more likely any visitor becomes to do so.
Look at anything in your marketing that could be made more prospect-friendly – and implement it.
6. Find what works – and emulate it:
Look at what other players in your industry – in your state – are doing. What works?
For instance, do you see anyone having particular success on any social media platform with specific types of content or specific types of topics?
Also, if you focus on SEO, which companies come up for multiple different search terms relating to your products or services? What do they have on their websites? Do they have a substantial knowledge base, or a blog with weekly posts? What do they have on each page? Do they publish long form content, and how well is it optimized for SEO?
Look at what works – then look at it in detail, and see if you can do something similar.
In conclusion:
If the marketing you are doing is already working – even if not very well, you already have a starting point. Every small gain you can achieve will directly add to your net profit.
If you can stack several small gains in revenue on top of each other, it could very quickly add up to a notable increase in profit.