数据处理
Marketing automation
Marketing automation is an ecosystem that handles repetitive marketing tasks. With LIKE.TG Automation 360, you can combine email, social media, SMS, and web push campaigns toprovide the best user experience.
In this video, Anna, a LIKE.TG marketer, shares 5 tips for creating effective digital marketing automations.
There is increasing investment and adoption of marketing automation tech in multiple industries. When properly implemented, marketing automation tactics can assist online marketers in nurturing prospective customers using personalized content, convert leads into loyal returning customers. In the end, marketing automation, which is part of customer relationship management, helps businesses generate new income, and gain a high return on investment.
Why do online businesses need to implement marketing automation?
Marketing automation is vital to companies that rely on email, social media, SMS, surveys, and websites to market their brand. Both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) brands stand to gain a lot from marketing automation. This technology can enable them to keep their advertising material current and send it to those prospects who are most likely to convert. But, B2B companies benefit the most. With marketing automation, they can market to more significant segments of prospective customers affordably using personalized messages than ever before. This approach drives customer engagement and increases revenue. Generally, one can use marketing automation software to:
Automate delivery of product or service information
Direct prospects to specific web pages
Score, segment and nurture leads
Assess prospective customers’ current and future interest in buying a product/service
Conduct and analyze customer satisfaction surveys
Boost customer loyalty
How does marketing automation work?
Progressive profiling
Lead scoring
Lead segmenting
Automated programs
Marketing automation involves the following processes:
Progressive profiling. Progressive profiling refers to the collection of information about subscribers to know who they are and whether or not they are likely to convert. But people do not willingly give information about themselves at once. It is a progressive process. Make a master profile and store it in the CRM to get customers’ details and build on it using smart CTAs.
A progressive profiling process example:
1. Content subscription 2. Event registration 3. Meeting request
Lead scoring. Once an extensive profile is created, one can begin lead scoring. A brand should assign high scores to leads that they intend to focus their marketing energy on and low scores to those that are least likely to convert.
Lead segmenting. With detailed information about prospects and their scores, it is time to segment them. Brands use different criteria to segment leads. One can segment based on lead score, buying stage, or tier.
Automated programs. The last stage, automated programs, involves sending marketing content to the segmented prospects. By automating a business’s plans, the management of marketing campaigns becomes more accessible and more effective. An excellent example of automated programs is triggered emails. Conduct A/B testing to evaluate which marketing programs work best. Are you looking for triggered email ideas? Watch our video!
Key Marketing Automation Channels
Email marketing automation
Push notifications
SMS marketing automation
There are three effective marketing automation channels one can use either separately or together to increase customer satisfaction, conversion rate, and retention. These include:
Email marketing automation
Email marketing is a pivotal marketing strategy for any business sending online campaigns and is one of the best lead generation methods. Automated email marketing is sending out messages to prospects or customers based on specific triggers, schedules, or criteria. Automated emails can be “thank you” messages to a customer after a purchase, a notification for order shipment, a discount offer for the next purchase, and so forth.
Push notifications
Push notifications are short messages sent to users’ mobile and computer devices to initiate re-engagement or transactions. Push notifications work in all popular browsers and on smartphones. For better performance, you can segment, automate, and A/B test them.
SMS marketing automation
Automated SMS is a type of marketing automation that allows brands to communicate with leads no matter where they are. This marketing strategy has the advantage of reaching people on the go. An automated SMS can act as a reminder or notification for a flash sale as people are more likely to read texts than other forms of notifications.
Marketing Automation Tools with LIKE.TG
Email marketing service
Push notification service
SMS service
LIKE.TG is a multi-channel marketing platform that, among other things, allows marketers to create and automate their campaigns. Some LIKE.TG tools that can be used for marketing automation are:
Email marketing service. LIKE.TG enables users to create and send automated emails to subscribers based on the available data, activities of the subscribers on the website, and other predefined conditions with ease. A user can choose an email template and edit it using the LIKE.TG drag and drop editor, build customized subscription forms, set up automated email flows with Automation 360, and track conversions.
Push notification service. If your database is less than 10,000 subscribers, LIKE.TG offers a free web push feature that helps brands drive traffic back to their websites. By creating browser push features with LIKE.TG, a business can send notifications about sales, new content or products, and essential updates straight to the subscriber’s mobile device. The push notification creation tool makes it easy to set up personalized online and offline notifications, segment leads, and more.
SMS service. The LIKE.TG SMS service allows internet marketers and businesses to send marketing SMS on 800 networks in more than 200 countries in the world. Users can send bulk SMS for any purpose. Whether it is building brand awareness or for personal non-selling purposes, LIKE.TG provides the perfect tool for faster and more personalized SMS sending.
How to Combine Marketing Automation Channels Efficiently
The right combination of email, push, and SMS creates a perfect marketing automation strategy. With over 50% open rate, LIKE.TG is an excellent tool for combining these delivery channels.
How to Set Up Marketing Automation Using Automation 360
Automate your marketing strategy by setting up email marketing, push notification, or SMS marketing separately or combine them with the Automation 360 tool in LIKE.TG.
Register in LIKE.TG. Create an account by clicking on “Sign Up” and filling out the form.
Create a Campaign. Go to the Automations tab and select Automation 360.
Select Events Manager. There are four predefined events under this section with variables that can be added, edited, or deleted based on one’s preference. After creating the event, the tool will generate a unique URL, and the user requests it to send the event.
Create an Automation Flow. In “Settings,” give the general details that will be used to set it up. One can drag any of the following Automation 360 elements: email, push, SMS, filter, condition, action, and goal.
Track Conversions. Conversion can be anything from email open rate, click-through rate, or a purchase. It refers to a goal that is set by the user. In this case, the event created is the goal, and achieving it is a conversion.
The user, however, is in control. Therefore, they manage where the automation flow ends. Set a “Condition” after the email is sent and specify the event, for example, an email click. Under the “Yes” option in “Condition,” name the event as your “Goal,” and every subscriber who clicks on the email will be counted as a conversion.
Combining SMS, Push and Email in One Campaign with Automation 360
With LIKE.TG Automation 360, one can combine three communication channels within one automation flow. To create a combined automation campaign using the Automation 360 tool, you should do the following.
Sign Up at LIKE.TG. RegisterwithLIKE.TG to create an automated marketing campaign. It is quick, easy, and convenient. After registration, all services with LIKE.TG are available at affordable pricing plans.
Click Automation 360. It is an excellent email, push, and SMS automation marketing creation tool. A product performs a variety of functions, including sending reminders to customers who have not completed a purchase, thank you emails and messages to customers who have bought something, welcome customers after subscription/registration, re-engage passive subscribers, create personalized events, etc.
Add an event. An event can be anything the user wants. Plus, one can edit and add variables to one’s preference to create a customized one.
Create an automation flow. LIKE.TG allows users to add three delivery channels in one event: SMS, email, and web push for better outreach. Prospects will, therefore, receive relevant messages they have subscribed to in all of these channels.
Start the flow. Once the customer or visitor triggers the event, the automation flow begins, and the customer gets the first email, SMS, or web push notification.
Track statistics. Automation 360 keeps tabs on all conversions made or goals achieved as per the event set. Plus, one can follow up on how email marketing campaigns perform in LIKE.TG analytics.
Good Marketing Automation Examples
Marketing automation is one of the most effective online marketing strategies today. Excellent examples of marketing automation at work include the following.
Welcome email
Once a subscriber registers, it is an excellent practice to welcome them. Marketers send triggered welcome emails to initiate conversations with new subscribers and notify them of current offers or products they should check out. Besides, very often, the newcomers can set the email preferences in a welcome email regarding the content they’re interested in and email frequency.
Thank you email
A thank-you email is sent after a client made an order. It usually contains information regarding the items for the customer to check the data.
Reminders
Sometimes customers add items to the shopping cart and leave without buying them. Most businesses do follow-ups on abandoned carts through automated emails or web push. With marketing automation, a marketer can continually send reminder emails to such customers to convert them into clients.
Draw inspiration from LIKE.TG video on how to build an abandoned cart email series.
Send automated campaign
Marketing funnel
A marketing funnel is a model that shows the way a potential customer goes from becoming aware of your brand to purchasing a good or service. This model involves several stages of customer engagement with a brand. Companies use marketing funnels to understand their customers' needs in each stage, optimize their marketing efforts, and generate more sales.
Building a marketing strategy without a funnel is like taking a shot in the dark. Read on to learn how businesses benefit from building marketing funnels.
Why are marketing funnels important?
You cannot downplay the importance of using a marketing funnel. In the end, it can change the game for your business. Here are several ways a marketing funnel can assist you in:
Picking a marketing strategy. The cornerstone of a marketing funnel is your customer journey. Knowing the latter allows you to understand when and why prospects drop off before making a purchase, and what tools and strategies you can use to keep them engaged with your brand.
Staying consistent with your promotion. With a marketing funnel, you don't have to puzzle over your next step to attract and retain customers. Create a plan of marketing activities for each stage of the funnel and interact with leads to drive them towards making a purchase.
Increasing your sales. Without a funnel, you lose money if a potential customer doesn't buy from you immediately. They just drop off and forget about your offer. If you have a marketing funnel, you can nurture leads until they're ready to purchase.
Making it easier to close the deals. In B2B, closing deals requires combined efforts of the marketing and sales teams. Marketing funnels provide your salespeople with detailed insights into leads' behavior, which gives them more hints on how to close the deal.
Saving time and effort. Knowing your customer journey and having a plan of activities for each stage allows you to automate your marketing efforts. It saves tons of time and helps you achieve better results.
Predicting future sales. Marketing funnels enable you to understand the results of your marketing activities better. Knowing a lead conversion for each stage, you can predict how many of your leads will eventually turn into paying customers.
Retaining customers. A plan of post-purchase marketing activities helps you keep customers engaged and make them return now and then. Retaining customers is five times cheaper than acquiring new ones.
We've unpacked a few reasons why every business needs a marketing funnel. Now let's discuss what stages it includes.
Marketing Funnel Stages
The number of stages in a marketing funnel depends on your approach and, mostly, your customers' behavior. Some keep it simple and divide the funnel into the top, middle, and bottom stages.
The most relevant for today's world marketing funnel includes the following stages.
Awareness. A future customer gets to know your business.
Interest. Leads gain more knowledge about your company and its products.
Consideration. Leads turn into prospects; they show more activity by learning about your product or service.
Intent. Prospective customers demonstrate their interest in purchasing from you.
Evaluation. Here buyers make a final decision about whether to buy from you or not.
Purchase. The final part, where a prospect makes the decision and becomes your customer.
Some marketers add two more stages – loyalty and advocacy. The first includes actions on turning a single-time customer into a regular one; the second entails your customer becoming a brand advocate. These stages can be merged and called post-purchase behavior.
Working with post-purchase stages is especially important in the B2B sector, where the number of potential customers is limited, and the purchasing process is more lengthy and complicated. To learn more about the peculiarities of marketing funnels in B2B and B2C, read further.
What is the difference between B2B and B2C marketing funnels?
B2B and B2C customers go through more or less the same stages of a marketing funnel. However, there are some differences in this process.
In B2C, customers make purchasing decisions alone. Thus, the business-to-consumer model entails a short buying cycle, limited to hours or days. On average, individuals do less product research than businesses; they often buy impulsively. Typically, no salespeople are needed because marketing teams drive the whole process.
B2B implies a lot of decision-makers – departments or whole companies, so making a purchase in B2B often takes weeks or months. The decision-making process is based on rational thinking; thus, you have to use tactics different from B2C.Operating on niche markets, B2B businesses have to focus on identifying their buyer persona and building stronger relationships with them. To close deals, marketing and sales teams often join their efforts in the funnel's lower stages.
Now you know the differences between B2B and B2C marketing funnels. Eager to build your own? Let's dive into creating a marketing funnel.
How to Create a Marketing Funnel
Get to know your audience
Learn your buyer's journey
Determine the number of stages
Spot the most effective marketing tactics
Use a CRM system
Keep track of changes
With an abundant variety of approaches for developing marketing funnels, building your own can feel overwhelming. Consider the following steps to get the ball rolling:
Get to know your audience. There is no way to create a marketing funnel without knowing your customers' pains and interests. To determine them, follow our tips on creating a customer persona. For even more useful insights, research your competitors' customers – you're likely to have a lot in common. Also, pay attention to feedback from your existing customers, surveys, social media, and web analytics data.
Learn your buyer's journey. Besides learning who your customers are, try to understand how they interact with your website and other resources. What channels do they prefer? What barriers stand in their way to purchase? What doubts and problems do they have during the buying process? Answering all of these questions will help you find the best places to start your funnel and ways to push your customers through it.
Determine the number of stages. Your customers do not necessarily go through all the stages of a modern marketing funnel. For instance, you may or may not include post-purchase stages, or instead of defining six steps, just go for the top, middle, and bottom parts of the funnel. The exact model depends on your buyers' behavior.
Spot the most effective marketing tactics. This move will help you turn a marketing funnel into a practical instrument. Think of the tactics and channels you want to use and the types of content to attach to each stage. For instance, you may attract leads with blog posts or PPC ads, nurture them with email marketing, and make them purchase your product through case studies or events. Check out our compilation of eCommerce marketing types and strategies to learn more about your options in various stages of the marketing funnel.
Use a CRM system. It helps companies manage their relationships with clients.The LIKE.TG CRM systemallows marketers to record each deal to see how fast they move, keep information about each client, assign sales reps responsible for every deal, communicate with clients via email or chatbot in one place. The service is free, so register and put your sales process on autopilot.
Keep track of changes. You cannot just craft a marketing funnel and call it a day. To make this tool effective, remember to test new marketing tactics and content formats. Keep track of your results, and look for changes in your customers' behavior.
Having a hard time thinking of how to put your marketing funnel creation into practice? We've picked some more precise tips on building funnels for B2B and B2C sectors.
How to Build a B2B Marketing Funnel
Defining a buyer persona and pinpointing your audience's pains is crucial for B2B. The problem is your potential customers may not even know they have a problem. At the top of the funnel, your task is to help them realize it rather than offering a solution immediately. The content formats suitable for this stage are blog posts, downloadable offers, whitepapers, PPC ads, videos, and social media campaigns.
To push your prospects to the middle of the funnel, show them why your product or service is the best solution they can get. Consider using case studies, guides, webinars, email campaigns, retargeting ads, podcasts, checklists, and more to drive this point home.
Only a small portion of your prospects will make their way to the bottom of a funnel. Your mission here is to help them decide to buy from you. Use free trials, live demos, consultations with salespeople, training, testimonials, and discounts to encourage them to make the purchase.
In B2B, you have to include the post-purchase stages into your funnel. Keep your customers engaged using digital marketing, social media, and personal interactions. It will help you increase customer lifetime value.
How to Build a B2C Marketing Funnel
As B2C customers often base their decisions on emotions, you need to make them excited about your brand. Viral social media posts, PR publications, guerrilla marketing, and media interviews will help you grab the audience in the funnel's top stages.
To help customers make their way through the middle stages, educate them about your product and make an appealing offer. Consider using performance marketing, SEO, online reviews, gifts, and remarketing campaigns.
In the lower stages, choose email campaigns and web push notifications with exclusive offers, promo codes, and more. Register with LIKE.TG to create amazing campaigns in two clicks and send them automatically.
To retain customers, continue communicating with them even after a purchase. You can offer them contests, ask them to fill in surveys, or engage through social media.
Need a dose of inspiration for creating your marketing funnels? Read further and check out some examples we've picked for you.
Marketing Funnel Examples
Let's learn a bit more about the tactics brands use to attract potential customers and drive them towards a marketing funnel.
NYX
The beauty brand, NYX, shows an A+ example of a marketing funnel that starts on social media. Once a potential customer visits the brand's page on Pinterest, the journey begins.
Part of the page's content implies advertising products. In the example below, it's an appealing image with a brief description of the product. The post contains several links to the NYX website, moving the customer down to the interest and consideration stages.
Once clicking on the promotional post, a potential customer goes to a special section of the NYX website, dedicated to brow products. Here they can choose between several options, which meet their needs. Now they are in the evaluation stage.
In the final stage, a customer can purchase the product in two clicks. It may be considered the end of the funnel.
Snaptravel
The booking service, Snaptravel, uses a Facebook chatbot to drive a customer through their funnel in several minutes. Starting with a potential customer discovering Snaptravel on Facebook, the service offers to interact with its bot straight away.
In their conversation with the chatbot, Snaptravel briefly educates visitors about the service and offers to help them find cheap hotels for specific dates and destinations. This move helps to push a potential customer through the middle of the funnel.
Eventually, the service invites a user to look through the whole list of suitable hotels on its website. A potential customer can go there and book the most appealing option.
To incorporate chatbots into your marketing strategy and draw leads down the funnel faster, try LIKE.TG. Create a bot for Facebook or Telegram and send up to 10,000 messages a month to an unlimited number of subscribers for free.
Wix
The website creator, Wix, built a marketing funnel to drive new users to its website and keep them engaged with the service. The purpose is to make potential customers sign up rather than buy a premium subscription.
To make potential customers aware of the brand, Wix uses SEO. The company's article appears in the Google featured snippet for the query "how to create a landing page." After clicking on it, Google redirects the potential customer to the Wix blog.
To push a new visitor down the marketing funnel, Wix offers them to start building their website straightaway. After clicking the "Start now" button, a potential customer goes to the Wix editor. Once a visitor registers with a service, Wix achieves its primary goal.
Bannersnack
The online ad builder, Bannersnack, attracts potential customers with Facebook PPC ads. The service provokes interest and tells potential customers about its benefits with a show-stopping video advertisement.
After clicking on the post, the customer goes to the consideration stage. They meet the company's landing page and a proposal to use an advertisement constructor. Here a customer signs up with the service, but their journey isn't over yet.
In contrast to Wix, Bannersnack's goal is to sell a premium subscription. So, in the member's area, the service offers access to more advanced features and redirects a user to the pricing page.
To reinforce the message about the premium subscription benefits, Bannersnack adds email marketing. The company sends new members a welcome email offering to try paid features.
Now you've learned how to build marketing funnels. To save time and money on maintaining them and automate your marketing activities. Register with LIKE.TG, set up email and web push campaigns, create chatbots, and send SMS to drive your potential customers from the awareness stage to the purchase stage with zero effort.
Marketing information system
A marketing information system is a platform for collecting, storing, analyzing, and distributing essential marketing data received from internal and external resources. It provides marketers and otherexperts with easy access to accurate data that helps them make informed decisionsdirected atbusiness growth.
In this article, you’lldiscovermarketing information systembenefits,analyze the components of such systems, and see some examples.
Whyare marketing information systems important?
Whether you are a marketer or a business owner, sooner or later, you need to make strategic decisions to improve your product, increase your market share, attract new audiences, and handle the competition. The most reliable foundation of any decision is data. With the help of accurate information about your marketing environment, competitors, customers, and their behavior, you’ll manage to make better campaigns. The insights obtained from reports and marketing research will prevent you from playing a guessing game and wasting your time and budget in vain. The more complex your marketing information system, the more value you can get from it.
Other benefits of using a marketing information system include the following:
conducting thorough demand and supplyanalysis;
increasing competitiveness and market share;
identifying business development opportunities;
implementing a consumer-oriented approach;
identifying and managing business risks;
improving the overall marketing strategy of your company;
keeping an eye on your competition;
having bettercontrolover all marketing operations.
Although the benefits are tempting, implementing a marketing information system requires money, time, and alearning curve. If you are ready to get started,let's find out how to get accessthe necessarysystem components.
4 Marketing Information SystemComponents
These components form a holistic marketing information system. So, to make the most out of it, you need to combine them effectively.
Internal records. This type of informationis the easiest to obtain inside your organization. For this purpose, you need to monitor your cash flow, employee salaries, product inventory, sales, and marketing reports, including the current and past ones. Internal records include all your performance reports’ financial, transactional, and marketing data.
Marketing research. This essential marketing information system component allows you topresenta specific problem as your current business goal and investigate all the details necessary for developinga solution. If you are considering developing a new product, conduct marketing research andcome up with a solutionbased on your findings. Stating a problemallows marketers to direct all their efforts into collecting a particular type of data from the most meaningful sources.
Marketing intelligence. This data type makes it possible to better understand your current business situation, market changes, trends, competitors’ strategies, recent innovations, and consumer preferences. You can get it from external resources, such as journals, magazines, competitors’ sites, marketplace overviews, press, partners, suppliers, etc.
Marketing decision support system (MDSS). This data can be retrieved from special analytics software and services that help marketers collect, store, and analyze data to make better decisions. For example, you can use specific third-party platforms to carry out market segmentation or discoverhow much your competitors spend on PPC advertising on average.
Combining these four marketing information system components will help you better understand thecurrent situation both in the market and your company andtweak your strategies accordingly.
Marketing Information SystemExamples
Nowadays, almost every business has a marketing information system since it helps them make better decisions and, as a result, drive sales. For example, many retail stores provide their clients with loyalty cards, and many brands offer customersan opportunity to create profiles in their online stores. Both loyalty cards and profiles help businesses collect data about clients and keep track of their purchase behavior, average checks, engagementlevel, items viewed, etc. With this data,companies can manage their pricing policies, create better marketing campaigns, and come up with relevant offers in theright place and at the right time.
Online booking services operate similarly. They monitor their client’s habits, preferences, and routes to gain insights and act on them. For example, airlines and hotel services keep track of the demand and increase prices when it rises. They can also offer their frequent buyers discounts during the off-season.
Congrats, now you know the benefits of having a marketing information system, its components, and some examples. Implement this approachfor your business to keep pace with any market changes and increase your profits.
Marketing campaign
A marketing campaign is a set of actions and efforts aimed at reaching customers and achieving specific objectives. It helps attain a company’s SMART goals: launch a new product, increase sales volume, improve a certain event’s exposure, etc.
In this article, we’ll discuss the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, their benefits, objectives, and types. We’ll also review severalmarketing ideas, tips, and examples. Finally, we’ll uncover how to create a marketing campaign with LIKE.TG.
Why are marketing campaigns effective?
You’ve probably noticed that successful marketing campaigns stay in your head for a long time after you watch a TV commercial or buy a particular product. The number of effective campaigns increases all the time. Their examples include Nike’s “It’s Gotta Be the Shoes!”, Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” and many others. They improve company image, build brand recognition, boost sales, and increase ROI.
These campaigns are effective because they stay in customers’ minds for a long time and encourage them to buy products from certain companies. People remember exceptionallyimpressive and unique campaigns long after they were on TV or the internet. Customers still recognize Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaignthat was run in 2006 and are ready to pay high prices for the brand’s products.
Great campaigns make people remember specific companies, providing brands with identity, personality, and emotions.
Now that you know why marketing campaigns are effective, let’s proceed to their benefits.
Benefits of Marketing Campaigns
Consistent marketing campaigns that communicate a clear message have a chance to succeed and bring great results, such as:
brand recognition;
big sales volume;
good reputation;
wider audiences;
customers’ trust;
increased efficiency;
raised awareness of a product;
credibility;
Since companies can reap many benefits from marketing campaigns, there’s a point in integrating different channels when developing them. However, you need to have clear objectives to create an effective campaign.Let’s move to the next section to help you define them for your company.
Objectives of Marketing Campaigns
Creating a successful marketing campaign is a long process that requires a lot of effort and professional cooperation. All activities are directed at reaching a company’s primary objectives. You can see the main goals brands usually chase with their marketing campaigns below. They strive to:
drive sales;
enhance theirbrand awareness;
reach new audiences;
improve relationships with current customers;
enter new local or international markets;
present new products;
increase market share;
retain customers;
improve theirsales funnel;
increase ROI;
generate leads;
establish an online presence;
take positions of industry leaders;
increase revenue.
Now that you know marketing campaigns’ key objectives, let’s proceed to their types.
Types of Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing campaign
Brand awareness campaign
Traditional media campaign
Seasonal push campaign
Product launch campaign
Youshould decide which marketing campaigns suit your company’s purpose to achieve your goals. Next, we’ll cover the most popular types of marketing campaigns to help you choose onefor your business.
Email marketing campaign
Companies leverage this type of campaign to stay in contact with customers and keep them updated about their upcoming sales, launches, referral programs, giveaways, and events via email.
Let’s take Walgreens, for example. The email below informs customers about the company’s discounts.
LIKE.TG lets your company set up email send-outs informing customers about sales, discounts, webinars, special courses, etc. To create a great email campaign with our service, you don’t need any special skills or HTML knowledge. It’s one of the cheapest and most effective communication channels. LIKE.TG also provides its users with a free plan and allows them to send up to 15,000 emails to 500 subscribers.
Brand awareness campaign
Many companies gather all their efforts around the process of building and strengthening customers’ awareness of their products or services. You don’t necessarily need to use traditional advertising (run ads on TV or place them on billboards). With digital platforms, marketing is more convenient and accessible. Consider starting a blog and producing unique and informative content, guest blogging, using branded hashtags, partnering with a more popular company and using its visibility, creating your own podcast, etc.
For example, Coca-Cola’s #ShareACoke branded hashtag succeeded in gathering even a wider audience than the company planned to.
Traditional media campaign
This type relies on traditional media channels like radio, print advertising, and TV. Brands place their ads on billboards, create commercials for TV, and write articles for newspapers and magazines to improve their brand awareness and sales volume. However, bear in mind that this method is costly, especially if compared to email campaigns.
For example, MM’s created an engaging and funny TV commercial with the brand’s famous characters. The company’s marketing team managed to turn their colorful candies into interesting characters that create a unique atmosphere typical only for MM’s.
Seasonal campaign
Retail brands and restaurants make use of these campaigns to promote their seasonal sales. Companies that experience a deficiency of financial resources during a particular season use daily offers, conduct winter or summer sales, and give discounts on celebrations like Mother’s Day or Independence Day.
Let’s take HM’s summer sale, for example. The brand offers customers to enjoy its summer sale and buy summer clothes for men, women, and children with a 20% discount.
Product launch campaign
When companies launch a new product, they need to introduce it and educate customers about its benefits and features first. You need to market your product right so that you can attract more people to build brand awareness. To do this, you need to embrace different marketing strategies. The most effective techniques include video marketing, trial offers, opt-in forms, influencer marketing, and new communication channels.
For example, let’s take Harry’s, a brand that offers razor blades for an attractive price. To launch a new product successfully, the company provided customers with a trial offer. The brand’s team announced the offer on their website and social media accounts to make it visible. Harry’s succeeded in becoming an online retail giant with many customers and high revenues.
Now that you are acquainted with different types of marketing campaigns, we’ll discuss several great ideas you can implement for your business.
4Marketing Campaign Ideas
Leverage social media
Conduct seasonal sales
Create promo codes
Provide customers with a freebie for purchases
We’ve prepared some of the most effective marketing campaign ideasfor you to explore, so let’s dive in.
Leverage social media
Since the number of active social media users increases all the time, it’s worth using the famous platforms to your benefit. With video and photo sharing platforms, you can reach your audience without spending lots of resources. Using social networks enables you to communicate with current and potential clients, establish brand loyalty, and increase sales volume. With social media campaigns, you can also improve your brand awareness and website traffic.
For example, Airbnb’s campaign on Facebook aimed to promote its new app. Users had an excellent opportunity to see live streams of people’s travels. The campaign achieved great success and increased the company’slevel of engagement.
Conduct seasonal sales
You can run a seasonal sale to attract attention to your brand, obtain new customers, and boost your product sales and profit. Think of promoting your sale through different platforms to gain more exposure. Byenhancing your brand visibility, you can significantly increase your reach and sales in the long run. Moreover, various paid ads can increase your customer base and make consumers revisit your site and make a purchase again.
For example, Monki invites customers to enjoy its 70% off sale for summer clothing.
Create promo codes
If you want to introduce new clients to your brand, provide them with coupons. They are beneficial both for customers and your company. Coupons make a first buy cheaper for customers and encourage impulse purchases. At the same time, they can make space for new inventory, introduce new product lines, and increase sales.
For example, Asos invites customers to use its code to get 20% off all its products.
Provide customers with a freebie for purchases
It’s a good idea to thank your customers for spending a certain amount of money on your products. Consider providing your clients with a special gift. Send email campaigns to your subscribers to promote such an offer via emailand encourage them to participate.
For example, MAC Cosmetics offers its customers a free gift when theyspend a certain amount of money on the brand’s products.
Now that you have some ideas for your future campaign, it’s time to explore our tips on creating it.
4Tips to Create a Killer Marketing Campaign
Set SMART goals
Choose appropriate communication channels
Think aboutspecific ways to achieve your goal
Track and analyze your results
To develop and run a great marketing campaign, you need to have a clear understanding of your goals, select the most suitable channels, and motivate customers to takea certain action. If you are interested in getting it right the first time, stick to our four main steps.
Set SMART goals
Before running any campaign, plan all the details to gauge its effectiveness and guide your marketing department. Firstly, define your campaign’s goals.You can create it to promote a product, improve brand engagement, obtain customer feedback, generate leads, bring in new customers, improve customer satisfaction, advertise an upcoming sale, product launch, etc.
Establish SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) goals for the best results. For example, let’s say that an apparel brand aims to gather customer feedback from 200 clients about its customer service via surveys sent to customers’ emails by July 21, 2021.
Secondly, determine the ways to evaluate your campaign: email open rates, email click-through rates, responses, spam complaints, etc. Thirdly, select a specificaudience segment that might be interested in your campaign. The people you target and the message you create depend on the stage of yourbuyers’ journey.
Choose appropriate communication channels
Once you know customers’ preferred communication channels, their level of engagement, needs, and problems, it’s time to select your main distribution channels.Analyze your performance metrics to determine which mediumswork best for youand which of them you can afford.
Select two or three channels that are popular among your customers. Remember to choose mediums that enable you to achieve your company’s goal. For example, if you aim to promote a website builder, consider using digital platforms for the promotion.
Sometimes companies forget about timing despite it being critical for the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. That’s why you should define your marketing campaign’s start date and deadline. Consider making a calendarwith all the important dates of your campaign and a content plan to understand when and what content to publish, what channels to use, etc.
Think about specific ways to achieve your goal
At this stage, you need to think of the efforts and strategies to attain your goal. For example, to gather clients’ feedback on a brand’s customer service, this company needs to create a call-to-action button. It can be placed in an email asking a customer to take a survey and evaluate its support.
As an option, a brand can have a special form on its landing page for customers to leave feedback. Track your performance metrics to gauge the effectiveness of your campaign. They can vary and depend on the marketing channels you prefer. If you have an email campaign, track your open rate, bounce rate, conversion rate, number of unsubscribes, click-through rate, and spam complaints. In case you leverage paid advertising on social media, monitor your campaign’s engagement, impressions, click-through rate, reach, and follows. Companies focusing on SEOshouldgauge their average session duration, conversion rate, website traffic, andbounce rate.
Track and analyze the results
Monitor your results to figure out what worked and what didn’t. It will help you find out whether you succeeded in attaining your goal.Your campaign results willalso give you some insights intowhat you should and shouldn’t do for your next campaign. This valuable experience and information will help you improve your future campaigns and reach your next SMART goal.
Next, we’ll review how to create effective and successful campaigns with LIKE.TG.
How to Create a Marketing Campaign with LIKE.TG
With LIKE.TG, you can create the following marketing campaigns:
Email campaign
SMS campaign
Chatbot campaign
Web push campaign
Let’s talk about how to create each of them to help you choose a marketing campaign that suits your business needs.
Email campaign
LIKE.TG enables you to create and send professional email campaigns without any coding skills and specialized knowledge.
Registerwith LIKE.TG.
Upload or create your mailing list,and segment it if needed.
Fill in your Sender information, and add a subject line.
Select a ready-to-use template or create one from scratch.
Use our drag and drop editor to add or remove some elements and design an email to your liking.
Double-check your email before sending it.
Send your campaign, or schedule it to be sent later.
SMS campaign
You can reach your customers and build brand recognition by sending SMS campaigns.
Create an accountwith our service.
Create a mailing list.
Insert your Sender ID.
Enter your SMStext.
Select your recipients.
Set the date and time of your SMS campaign send-out.
Send the campaign.
Chatbot campaign
With our service, you can sendvarious Telegram, WhatsApp, and Facebookmarketing campaigns.
RegisterwithLIKE.TG.
Go to the “Chatbots” tab, and click “Manage bots.”
Log in with your social media platform or messenger to create a campaign.
Select the necessary group pages for your chatbot campaign, and click “Enable.”
Select your bot, and segment recipients if necessary.
Enteryour message.
Add a button and other essential elements (image or file).
Double-check your message and campaign information.
Send your campaign, or schedule its send-out.
Check out our detailed instructions if you want to send chatbot campaigns on Facebook, Telegram, or WhatsApp.
Web push campaign
You can easily send web push campaigns informing customers and prospects about various seasonal sales, product launches, and events with LIKE.TG.
Registerwith LIKE.TGif you don’t have an account yet.
Add your website (click “Push” and then “Add New Website”).
Fill in the necessary information about your website.
Add the code to your website.
Track your subscribers.
Click “Create PUSH.”
Select a list of recipients, and add your title, message, link, and image if needed.
Send your campaign, or schedule it to be sent later.
Check out ourarticleto find out more.
Let’s now jump to several examples of marketing campaigns.
Examples of Successful Marketing Campaigns
Companies write plans, invite professionals, andanalyze their idea to develop effective campaigns. We’ve prepared several examples of successful campaigns for you to get inspired.
Thank You, Mom
In 2012, the famous Procter Gamble campaign won viewers’ hearts with its TV commercial. The commercial’s main characters are mothers of athletes who put all their heart into raising their children. This campaign aims to convey gratitude to mothers for everything they do and is considered P G’s most prominent campaign in the company’s history.
Got Milk?
“Got Milk?” is an excellent example of a marketing campaign that achieved its primary goal. Marketers identify four main reasons for the large-scale success of this campaign: it was simple, actionable, integrated, and had a sense of humor. Capturing famous people and leveraging different platforms for promotionhelped increase the level of milk consumption, and milk sales in California became 7% higher.
Source: CR Fashion Book; Naomi Campbell for “Got Milk?” campaign
Just Do It
This marketing campaign is probably the most recognizable and successful in Nike’s history. Created in the 1980s, the “Just Do It” campaign made the brand even more popularand increased its salesvolume and revenues to an incredible $9.2 billion in 1998.
With marketing campaigns, companies manage to achieve their main goals and communicate their messages across different platforms. Use our tips above to create a campaign that will evoke trust and credibility.
Marketing budget
A marketing budget is the sum of money a company assigns to marketing projects (paid advertising, marketing automation software, sponsored content, etc.) aimed at product promotion. It helps startups and established companies manage resources efficiently and achieve business goals.
In this article, we’ll review the types of marketing expenses and find out how to create a marketing budget.
Why do you need a marketing budget?
A well-thought-out marketing budget is essential for every business that seeks success. It helps stay competitive within the market and increase revenues. With a marketing budget, you’ll be aware of the money you have to put in to effectively promote your brand and product. Your company needs marketing methods to catch attention, communicate the message, and win customers. A well-marketed product will bring you good ROI. However, it’s not possible without a marketing budget.
It’s crucial to manage the capital wisely. You need to comply with the plan and use only available resources so that your company operates properly. Having a budget for marketing-related projects ensures that you will achieve your short and long-term goals. Many businesses with no plan can’t pay the costs and receive ROI. As a result, the company’s reputation suffers.
Now that you know why to consider creating a marketing budget, it’s time to reveal the types of marketing expenses. The next section will give you a clue about the costs you might need to pay to promote your brand.
Types of Marketing Expenses
Many marketing approaches help you get your business to the next level and require you to allocate a specific sum of money to do everything successfully. In this section, we’ll review the most crucial types of marketing expenses for product promotion. So, let’s unveil them so that you can include these costs in your budget.
Advertising. If you want to catch customers’ attention, resonate with your target audience, and win new prospects, consider implementing different types of ads. They will help introduce your company to a wide audience, communicate the necessary message, and promote your product. Digital marketing offers many possibilities to businesses. You can incorporate pay-per-click and sponsored ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Besides, many marketing channels help reach different goals. You can send email campaigns and promotional SMS to share upcoming releases and set up chatbots and web push notifications to inform about sales. LIKE.TG allows you to schedule email campaigns and incorporate chatbots and SMS to communicate your product’s value. If you are committed to traditional advertising, allocate resources to advertisements in newspapers, television, radio, and billboards.
Events. Holding events involves certain costs, such as catering, decor, photographer, marketing, equipment, entertainment, transportation, venue, etc. You can organize different events to launch your product, present a new feature, or celebrate your brand’s anniversary. Face-to-face meetings drive the attention of potential customers and partners. Consumers can buy your product, and partners make investments. If you plan to visit an event, you might have the following expenses: display costs, registration fees, and supplies.
Company merchandise. Distributing promotional merchandise boosts brand recognition and encourages organic promotion. Promotional merchandise includes bags, office supplies, clothing, etc. For instance, if you have a brand, you can become more recognizable to potential customers with the merchandise. A person who sees a T-shirt with a logo and is curious about the brand, can easily browse the internet and find information about the company.
Tools and technology. The development of marketing projects isn’t possible without special technology. Marketers use design software to edit photos, produce video and audio, and create animation. They also search for companies that help make a website so that users can explore the product and its features. Your company also needs an all-in-one marketing platform to manage contacts in one place. LIKE.TG’s CRM enables you to collect information about your deals in one place free of charge!
Devices. You need special equipment to create marketing materials. Examples include laptops, smartphones, cameras, printers, and video production devices. The equipment you use depends on your marketing needs and goals. For instance, if you want to record a podcast, you might need to rent some professional audio production equipment.
Now that you know what expenses you should be ready for, let’s figure out how to create a marketing budget. It will help you allocate resources appropriately.
How to create a marketing budget?
A marketing budget is a crucial part of your marketing plan, and you should pay close attention to it. In this section, we’ll unveil the steps to develop a budget.
Explore your sales funnel. Consider exploring your sales funnel if you strive to create an effective marketing budget. You should monitor the revenue cycle to see the results. Keep an eye on the process of converting prospects into customers. Having data in CRM simplifies your tasks. Explore the following indicators: site visits per month, number of generated leads, number of qualified leads and their cost, and the number of closed deals.
Identify operational costs. These are expenses that support a business's day-to-day operation. You should understand these costs to calculate the marketing budget correctly. You need to find out the time for getting customers' contact information, your employees' compliance with requirements, the cost of hiring a special agency, potential costs of your inaction, and other factors.
Set the budget based on goals. Ask yourself what things you want to achieve to determine your business goals. Make sure to identify your company’s goals for the quarter, for the year, and for a couple of years. You should also determine the number of closed deals to hit to achieve your revenue objectives. Small companies usually spend 7-8% on marketing efforts like websites, ads, events, marketing campaigns, etc.
Explore marketing trends. Since marketing trends constantly change, you need to monitor and adapt to them. It will help you effectively reach your target audience and resonate with customers’ needs. For instance, if you decide to use email marketing for your product promotion, consider exploring the latest trends like marketing automation. However, makes sure to research the newest options before implementing them. If you succeed in combining modern and traditional marketing approaches, you can effectively reach different audience segments and encourage them to purchase.
Congrats, now you know what the marketing budget is and why it’s crucial. Hope that our step-by-step guide will help you develop a marketing budget for your business.
Marketing analytics
Marketing analytics is studying a brand’s performance to gain insights into buying behavior and the current situation on the market. It lets companies optimize their ROI and improve the effectiveness of promotional campaigns.
In the article, we explain what marketing analytics is and why it is essential, highlight its types and steps to study it effectively. Also, we describe the 3 best tools that can help you collect and manage your analytics.
Why is marketing analytics important?
According to Adobe Experience, 78% of B2B marketers track the impact of their promotional campaigns on companies’ revenue, and this percentage is growing. It proves that measuring and studying marketing analytics plays a vital role in business development.
You can identify problems with your existing promotional strategy and improve them immediately. It lets companies save money and time from ineffective advertising initiatives and avoid overspending. You can spend these resources on more successful promotions and, in such a way, boost your company.
Also, a thorough analysis of your marketing performance provides insights into consumers’ behavior, current trends, competition, market changes, etc. Knowledge of this data can help you create a well-defined promotional strategy. You will be able to forecast the results of your future marketing campaigns and make better data-driven decisions.
Moreover, studying analytics can help you make promotional messages more personalized. You will know the buying patterns, needs, preferences, and pains of your target audience, so you can make your ads more relevant. It can help you attract more clients, increase consumers’ brand awareness, provide amazing experiences and improve their satisfaction and loyalty.
Now you understand why marketing analytics is essential in optimizing your business performance. Let’s go further to discover its types and their peculiarities.
Types of Marketing Analytics
Marketing Evolution states that 32% of companies believe that marketing analytics is the most important factor in optimizing their future promotional strategies. Discover marketing analytics types and how to use them effectively to improve your performance below.
Descriptive analytics. This type aims to explain what happened with the company’s marketing campaigns and why. Descriptive analytics uses real-time and historical data to measure the success of your promotions and define the roadblocks to better performance.
Predictive analytics. Marketers need this type to forecast a future market situation. Predictive analytics uses the findings of the descriptive analysis and empowers it with insights into current trends. It often involves machine learning to make data-informed guesses about the success of the forthcoming campaigns.
Prescriptive analytics. This type aims to identify the most effective scenario for future marketing performance and determine how to reach it. Prescriptive analytics uses historical data and future forecasts, combines this information, and defines a few variants of possible development. Then marketers choose the best course for the company and identify the steps to follow it successfully.
Use all types of marketing analytics to find new ways to improve your promotional campaigns. We explain what to start from and how to do it easily in the next section.
How to get started with marketing analytics?
Starting with marketing analytics may seem difficult for some companies. However, it is not so. We provide a step-by-step guide on how to improve your performance using marketing analytics below.
Set up your goals. Firstly, you need to understand what metrics you are going to focus on. Identify short-term and long-term targets, such as increasing brand awareness, raising the number of sales, building strong relations with consumers, driving more revenue from specific products, etc. You will use these goals as benchmarks. Then define your current ROI and estimate the expected one.
Collect historical data. You need to gather as much analytics about your marketing performance as possible. Focus on metrics that you have prioritized during the previous step but do not omit other ones as they can be useful. Conduct the descriptive analysis to understand the success of your campaigns, find roadblocks to your existing strategy and think about the ways to improve them.
Build a future strategy. Firstly, you should conduct a predictive analysis based on the collected data and consider possible improvements. You can choose analytical tools to make this task easier. Then, conduct a prescriptive analysis and discover new ways to increase the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. Use all this information to decide how you can strengthen your strategy and launch a promotional campaign.
Use organic reach. You do not need to spend huge amounts of money to make your promotions effective. Empower your paid advertising with a strong strategy for reaching consumers organically. Use relevant keywords while posting on your website and hashtags for social media to help more people discover your brand. Track the performance and make organic growth an integral part of your marketing strategy.
Analyze the performance. It is vital to gain insights into the effectiveness of your promotion during the whole campaign. Track the performance over time and identify the most successful periods. You can segment consumers according to certain factors and find out the trends in the behavior of different groups.
Optimize your strategy. Now you understand the roadblocks with your current strategy, so it is time to improve it. Discover more about new trends in the industry and the cutting-edge products of your competitors. Try to become the leader in the sphere and use thorough prescriptive analysis to help you with it.
Many companies use analytical tools to conduct marketing analysis faster and make it more accurate. In the next section, we describe the top 3 ones that can help you gain insights and improve the performance of your promotions.
3 Best Marketing Analytics Tools
Nowadays, it is not necessary to track the effectiveness of your campaigns and analyze them manually. Many tools that can help you streamline processes and increase the accuracy of your analysis. Continue reading to find out more about them.
TapClicks
This service lets you track a market situation and your competitors' performance to improve the effectiveness of your promotional campaigns. You can automate data collection and reporting with TapClicks’ artificial intelligence. Also, this cloud-based tool provides many visualization options for you to increase the effectiveness of your management. Discover more about its features below.
Data collection. TapClicks lets you collect information about your company’s performance and group it based on the defined parameters. It provides customizable tags for better data segmentation. You can scale information about your performance and analyze its progress anytime during the campaign.
Workflow automation. You can automate and optimize routine processes based on the pre-set rules. Save your employees’ time using automatically created and assigned tasks and transfer orders from CRM systems immediately.
Custom metrics. You can define the most important metrics based on your company’s goals. Also, TapClicks allows marketers to create KPIs to track promotional campaigns' performance and provide relevant information to the stakeholders.
Analytics and reports on marketing performance. This service provides a wide range of opportunities for data analysis. You can use pre-built visualizations and a library of widgets to study your marketing performance. There is an opportunity for omnichannel reporting with customizable dashboards and automated reports that are easy to scale. Also, you can audit your website’s success and track your rank and keywords effectiveness.
Competitive analysis. TapClicks lets you compare your marketing positioning with your competitors’ and helps discover the weak points in your promotional campaigns. It provides insights into other brands’ keyword conversions, and lets companies monitor the success of their ads’ A/B testings.
Integrations. This service can integrate with more than 1400 platforms. You can use Excel, PDF, Email, PowerPoint, and Word to automate your marketing analysis and create reports in different formats.
Pricing is discussed individually. A 14-day free trial is available.
Look at the screenshot below. Here you can discover the users’ analytics in TapClicks. The service provides insights into paid search metrics and social KPIs. Also, you can find out more about roles, data profiles, client groups, and many other aspects of buyers’ analytics.
Improvado
This service is mostly focused on providing amazing customer experiences to empower your marketing campaigns. It lets you collect data in real-time, analyze it using customizable metrics, gain cross-channel analytics and discover new ways to improve your promotions. We describe more of Improvado’s features below.
Data collection. You can gather omnichannel information in one platform and organize it the way you need. This service provides automated data mapping and lets you scale it to gain more insights into your marketing performance. You can view the data within the dashboard, manage it in the warehouse, download and visualize it.
Standardized metrics. Improvado lets you create customizable metrics and unify them across different marketing channels. You can collect standardized insights into your marketing performance and define the peculiarities of your consumers’ behavior.
Analytics and reporting. This service allows you to track the success of your campaigns across different channels. It shows changes in your performance immediately and provides real-time insights on how to improve it. Also, Improvado can create automated reports and visualize data in the way you want using customizable dashboards.
Integrations. Improvado connects with almost every marketing tool. You can integrate it with ad tech platforms, such as Facebook and Google Ads, website analytics, SEO, marketing automation, and bulk email services. Also, you can connect Improvado with any CRM your company uses.
Pricing is discussed individually.
Below there is a performance marketing dashboard in Improvado. In this tab, you can discover more about transactions, revenue, and the cost of your promotions. Also, the service lets you filter the data based on the source, project, region, and date.
Woopra
This service lets you build reports, visualize information, collect high-quality analytics, and study customer journeys to optimize your marketing campaigns. It can connect with marketing automation tools and platforms that let companies improve their promotions, such as Google Ads, Marketo, Salesforce, etc. Discover more about Woopra’s features below.
Data collection and segmentation. This platform allows businesses to study the influence of every touchpoint on their buyers’ experience and satisfaction. You can create dynamic segments of the audience based on consumers’ behavior and demographics to provide more personalized experiences. Also, Woopra gains insights on buyers’ retention to help you improve the roadblocks and increase clients’ lifetime value.
Customer journey studying. You can visualize the users’ path through your website and promotional campaigns to discover consumers’ needs and expectations. Use this data to improve your interactions, drive engagement and increase buyers’ retention. Also, customer journey studying provides you insights into the performance of your promotional campaigns. You can identify the ads that attract new customers and the ones that persuade clients to purchase again.
Analytics. Woopra provides real-time data about your marketing performance. You can discover the features that interest clients the most and track the results based on multiple dimensions. Also, this service lets you analyze the growth of any metric over time and helps define bugs in your campaigns immediately.
Reporting. You can track the most important metrics and discover how to improve them using Woopra’s reports. This platform lets you create behavioral cohorts, gain insights about consumers’ lifetime value and define at-risk users.
Pricing:
Core plan — free. You can do 500K actions every month and get core analytics.
Startup plan — 349$ per month. There are 14 days of a free trial. This plan lets you do 1 million actions every month and get advanced analytics.
Pro plan — 999$ per month. There are 14 days of a free trial. You can do 5 million actions per month, get premium support and use automation to streamline your processes.
Enterprise plan — pricing is discussed individually. It provides 50 million actions every month, data warehouse synchronization, and dedicated support.
There is a cohort reports tab in Woopra. Here you can gain insights into clients’ behavior over time. Also, it lets you track the revenue and its connection with consumers’ trends during their lifecycle.
Congrats, now you understand what marketing analytics is and why it is essential, know its types, and the ways to get started using them easily. Choose the service that suits your business perfectly from the top 3 ones and work with it to optimize your promotions.
Marketing communications
Marketing communications (Marcom) are channels and tools a company uses to communicate the necessary message to the target group. They encompass PR, branding, advertising, packaging, social media, etc. Marcom allows customers to understand a company and product it offers and a brand to reduce the sales cycle.
In this article, we’ll unveil the objectives and types of marketing communications and figure out how to develop a Marcom strategy.
Objectives of Marketing Communications
In a market full of competitors, companies leverage different unique techniques and tactics to reach their audiences. They combine marketing channels and tools to convey the necessary message and make sure that prospects understand it. These communications include advertising, PR, sponsorships, promotion, social media, etc. They help fulfill different objectives, to name a few:
communicate the main message and idea to the target audience;
introduce a product to leads;
initiate brand switching;
allow a brand to compete within the market;
improve your product and brand awareness;
influence buying decisions;
encourage customers to purchase a product;
establish a positive brand image;
attain brand recognition, trust, and transparency.
You can reach even more goals with marketing communications; keep exploring to find out more. Now let’s delve into the types of communications.
Types of Marketing Communications
Marcom implies different ways of reaching customers. We’ve prepared the main types businesses use most often to drive the attention of their target audience.
Digital marketing. In this type, brands use the internet to market and promote products, connect with customers and encourage them to purchase. You can approach prospects and customers through email marketing, messengers, social media, web push notifications, etc. Create desktop and mobile versions of your website to enable users to feel comfortable when using your service. LIKE.TG enables you to create effective marketing campaigns and reach leads and customers in no time. You can communicate the necessary message to your target groups with our chatbots, web push notifications, and SMS.
Public relations. This approach is considered one of the most effective and credible ones. This is because the information about a certain brand or product comes from the third uninterested party that genuinely recommends a specific company or discourages people from buying its products. Business owners don’t control the content parties disseminate about their companies. PR works best for brands that offer an excellent product, consistent user experience, and smooth customer support. These factors positively influence brand reputation.
Advertising. Entrepreneurs spend millions of dollars to promote their products on TV, radio, social media, YouTube, and other channels. They seek help from advertising agencies or develop ads by themselves to hook a wide audience and encourage prospects to purchase. The method is expensive yet effective. By running ads on various platforms, companies can receive a high ROI that exceeds expenses.
Social media. Since 4.48 billion people worldwide use social media, it’s the most popular channel for promotion. At a low cost, brands can reach the international public. There are various channels you can use to market your product like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, place ads on sites and blogs, and ask influencers for promotion.
Customer recommendations. Customers can become brand promoters for free. Word-of-mouth marketingis an effective tool since most people trust the recommendations of close people. Happy customers who like a product can promote it better than any quality ads. You can encourage more satisfied clients to promote your brand. For example, you can develop referral programs, provide consumers with discounts and special offers, and invite them to join a loyalty program. As a result, you’ll gain trust, credibility, and awareness.
Direct marketing. This form of communication implies companies preparing content and tailoring messages for pre-selected customers. A brand already knows its consumers and the offers they need at a certain period. Companies send coupons, items on discount, special offers, etc.
Sales promotion. The majority of people opt-in to receive updates on the brand’s news, especially sales, discounts, coupons, giveaways, loyalty programs, referral programs, and free delivery. With this approach, companies that just start can hook attention and increase product sales. More people will discover a new brand and get involved. Sales promotion is also a good idea for well-established companies. It helps sell old collections and make room for new products.
Now that you are aware of the types, it’s time to jump into creating a marketing communications strategy.
How to create a marketing communications strategy?
You can build your long-term plan in 6 simple steps. Our step-by-step guide will help you create a strategy and make your business grow.
Identify your target audience. Offering your product to all people doesn’t work. You need to target specific audience segments that need your product to help solve their problem. That’s why you need to identify your target group, their location, age, gender, interests, preferences, needs, occupation, etc. This will help you craft personalized messages and marketing campaigns. Besides, you’ll know which channels it’s better to choose to reach your ideal customer. Develop a buyer persona to name the characteristics of your consumer. It’ll help you select people you should target. To develop an accurate buyer persona, you need to mention the customer’s job title, pain points, challenges, and goals.
Define your unique value proposition. UVP makes your company stand out and outperform your competitors. It’s essential to have one to demonstrate it to your audience and prove that you are superior to other brands for a number of reasons. UVP is a solution your customers need. If you succeed in helping your customers, they will reward you with good revenue, word-of-mouth promotion, a bigger customer base, a good position within the market, and more. For example, Domino’s Pizza positions itself as a company that delivers the freshest and hottest pizza faster than competitors, only in 30 minutes.
Bring the solution to customers’ problems. The next thing you should do is to match customers’ pain points with the solution you offer. Create a table with customer problems and product solutions. You should mark the offerings that meet customers’ problems. Share this table with your team to create messages that address clients’ issues and provide solutions. Align messaging across all marketing channels you use for communication.
Select channels to deliver your message. The channels you use depend on the goals you want to attain and customers’ preferences. Identify the platforms and messengers your target audience prefers the most. You can start with developing your website and publishing quality content on your blog. LIKE.TG’s landing page builder empowers you to create a landing page within 15 minutes. Apply multi-channel services like LIKE.TG to send email campaigns, set up web push notifications, and support clients via chatbots.
Measure the end result. Once you implement everything, track the results. See if your business moves towards the achievement of your goals. Metrics will provide you with a clue of your company’s performance.
Congrats, now you know all the important facts about marketing communications. Hope our guide will come in handy when you are ready to develop a successful strategy for your company.
Marketing environment
Marketing environment is a set of internal and external factors that influence a company's activities related to the promotion of a product. Tracking the marketing environment helps a business avoid possible threats, make the right business decisions, develop relevant marketing campaigns, and allocate resources efficiently.
In this article, we’ll unveil the importance and types of the marketing environment. We’ll also review 7 factors affecting it.
The Importance of Marketing Environment
Many factors influence the existence, activity, success, and profitability of a business, and it’s essential to be aware of them. After researching the marketing environment, entrepreneurs make well-informed business decisions, understand customer needs and behavior, create efficient budgeting, recognize potential opportunities and threats, and develop an effective marketing strategy.
Since the market constantly evolves and customer demand changes, you need to explore the marketing environment before entering the market. Pay attention to ecological, demographic, economic, political, and socio-cultural factors before entering the market in new locations. This will help you provide customers with the product they need.
After analyzing your marketing environment, you’ll understand which features, promotional strategies, and marketing channels perform better and resonate with your target market. You’ll be able to find out what customers needs and what they search for in competitors' products.
If you aren’t new to the market, you still have to check the threats that can negatively affect your company. Conduct comprehensive research to identify trends and the level of competition, etc. Track changes in competition, prices, and customers’ preferences to stay updated. Knowing the market situation enables you to adapt fast: modify your marketing strategy, launch new products, communicate via new channels, add features, improve delivery and customer service, etc.
Now that you know why you should be aware of your marketing environment, it’s time to jump into the factors that have an impact on your company. After reading this section, you’ll know how to avoid threats and receive opportunities.
7 Factors Affecting Marketing Environment
To prevent a business from failing within the market, you need to know the factors that affect your business environment. We’ll list the most prominent ones for you to consider.
Ecological. Nowadays, it’s vital to produce products in an eco-friendly way to prevent any harm to our natural environment. If you don’t comply with these rules, the government can take measures, and customers won’t buy your product. That’s why you need to pay close attention to things related to the environment. You should control your use of natural resources, production process, technology, disposal of wastes, use of plastic, etc. To draw attention to your brand, you should be eco-friendly, care about our planet, and protect it from different types of pollution.
Demographic. Since the market consists of people, entrepreneurs should study the population. A company needs to create a buyer persona to identify the target audience. You can do it after the analysis of demographics. You should pay attention to the following factors: total population, migration rate, family system, occupations, geographical concentration of people, etc. Demographic factors are basic characteristics your potential customers have in common. They are age, gender, geography, and income. For example, if you decide to target young people aged 25-35 with online courses about marketing and this audience segment increases in your location, this means that it’s a great idea. On the contrary, if this segment is limited, it’s better to choose another location or audience segment. Once your team finishes with the research, they can segment the market and identify audience segments that might be interested in the product.
Economic. These factors influence customer buying decisions and the performance of your business. The economic environment of your company depends on government funding, credit availability, market trends, interest rates, and shifts in the global economy.
Political. Since politics impacts the economy, you should be aware of these factors when doing business. Based on the type of business and industry you are in, pay attention to tax incentives, FDA regulations, employment laws, health and safety laws, etc. To be more competitive within the market, consider PEST (political, economic, social, and technological) analysis. Evaluate each of the external factors that affect your company.
Socio-cultural. These factors refer to the way people interact with each other and their cultural heritage. Examples include culture, customs, traditions, beliefs, norms, etc. Every country differs in culture, the way people communicate, their values, and preferences. Brands should take them into account. People’s culture influences their buying behavior. Even huge companies like McDonald’s adapt to the needs of their consumers in various countries. For example, in addition to french fries and burgers, you can find rice on McDonald’s menus in Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia.
International. World Bank and International Monetary Fund are the international institutions responsible for worldwide fair trade. International companies can become huge competitors and threats if you decide to open a business in the same industry. That’s why you need to conduct research and find out whether you will have direct international competitors.
Technological. These factors relate to the technology you use to produce, control, and distribute your product or service. Since technology evolves fast, you need to be aware of all changes. This is necessary to incorporate new technologies and improve your manufacturing process and project management.
Now that you know the factors, it’s time to review the types of environment. You need to keep track of them.
Types of Marketing Environment
There are different types of marketing environments businesses should explore. In this section, we’ll uncover them for you to consider.
Internal marketing environment. These operations take place within the company. Examples include work with materials, systems, and professionals. This type of marketing environment influences the tasks of marketing and production teams and their efforts. Marketers develop strategies and campaigns and select suitable channels based on internal factors. Your brand’s culture reflects on the behavior of your employees and business operations. For instance, a company open to new ideas from active employees is more competitive within the market.
External macro environment. These factors influence an industry. Examples include demographic, economic, technological, ecological, political, legal, and socio-cultural conditions. You can’t control these factors, and they can influence your company and operations within it. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way businesses operate. Most companies have their employees working online, accept contactless payments, have visitor restrictions, and other requirements.
External microenvironment. Customers, vendors, partners, and competitors belong to marketing environment because they influence your business operations. The behavior and actions of these people and companies set the direction for your further actions, strategies, and activities. You can control these factors yet can’t prevent them from impacting your brand’s success and proper operation of your brand.
Now you know what a marketing environment is and why it’s vital. Knowing your marketing environment helps you make well-informed decisions and prevent threats.
Marketing innovation
Marketing innovation is the incorporation of new marketing methods and techniques that differ from the previous ones and involve significant changes in product promotion, design, packaging, and placement. It helps improve a product or service and reach a wider audience.
In this article, we’ll review the importance, types, and examples of marketing innovations.
The Importance of Innovation in Marketing
Innovation in marketing is not only the incorporation of new technology but also the implementation of new effective ideas. Innovation is essential since it helps improve your product or service. With innovation, you can reach new markets, and increase sales and revenue.
Innovation can be presented in different forms and influence various areas of a business. You can bring new technologies or ideas into practice so that your company can stand out from the competition. After implementing some changes, you might notice higher customer satisfaction, more sales, and higher profit. Consider implementing design, manufacturing, and product innovation depending on your needs and problems.
If you manage to adapt to consumer preferences, needs, and behavior, you can focus on your customers. Innovative marketing strategies and campaigns enable you to find the right approach to your target audience and win their attention. Conduct research to find out the features your product needs for a better user experience. Excellent customer experience will bring benefits to your customers and business.
Now that you know the importance, it’s time to explore the three types of marketing innovation. After discovering the types, you’ll be able to find out which one is the most suitable for your business.
Types of Marketing Innovation
We can differentiate three types of marketing innovation. In this section, we’ll review each of them in detail so you can identify them quickly.
Radical innovation. It brings drastic changes to the brand, its market, or business growth. This type of innovation occurs when a company completely changes its product, positioning, or working processes. Let’s take Apple as an example. When the brand released its iPhone, people had already used smartphones. However, Apple’s product brought features that changed the market and people’s perceptions. Now everyone knows that iPhone users can make great images and videos. They don’t even need to buy professional cameras.
Incremental innovation. It doesn’t bring significant changes to a product. Incremental innovation involves adding new features to a product, company, or production method. Often, it’s already implemented but still needs some alterations. So brands make them to increase customer satisfaction. Let’s take Google. The company often improves its service and provides users with new features and apps. People can now use the benefits of Gmail, Google Drive, Google Meet, etc.
Disruptive innovation. It emerges as a response to behavioral and technical changes. Disruptive innovation reacts to the target market and aims to provide customers with the best customer experience. Let’s take a top-rated video streaming service — Netflix as an example. The company that started as a DVD-by-mail rental service now has 220.67 million paid subscribers worldwide. The company’s profitability grew drastically.
Now that you know the types, it’s time to unveil some examples so that you know how it works.
Examples of Marketing Innovations
Since marketing innovations can improve your company and relationships with customers, we’ve decided to list the most successful examples of marketing innovations employed by big brands. So, in this section, we’ll review them in detail.
Instagram
Instagram is an excellent platform for brands to showcase their products from different perspectives. Stories, posts, and ads enable you to draw attention to your company and win customers. Moreover, Instagram constantly releases innovations, making the promotion process easier for your brand and more engaging for clients. You can tell the story of your company, show details, backstage, share customer feedback, etc. With the help of influencers, you have the chance to increase your following and drive profits.
Instagram provides users with personalized experiences. People can instantly find posts based on their preferences in “Explore.” The platform finds ads users can be interested in and suggests them to potential customers.
Below you can see an example of a suggestion made by Instagram. The platform chooses posts based on users’ interactions.
L’Oréal
L’Oréal adapts fast to people’s needs in the digital era. The brand does everything possible so that customers can easily find its products and shop them without limits. The company designed a special app where users can find everything they want. L’Oréal’s Makeup Genius app is augmented reality technology that lets customers purchase items from different devices like smartphones and tablets. The app helps customers find the right products without leaving their homes. They can try on products, explore looks, and experiment with new beauty products online.
SmartBuyGlasses
The brand uses virtual reality to let customers try on its glasses and make the right choice. Its virtual try-on glasses tool lets customers choose the perfect home frames. Users need to visit the company’s website and make two easy steps. First, they should record a five-second selfie video. Secondly, open the list of glasses and choose those they want to try on. Once potential customers do it, they will see themselves wearing a pair of glasses they want to try. The tool helps customers identify their face shapes and perfect glasses.
Congrats, now you know what marketing innovation is and why it’s essential. Hope that our examples inspire you to implement innovations and reach company success.
Marketing channel
A marketing channel is a tool that helps companies distribute information about products and sell them to the target audience. It enables brands to connect with customers who wish to purchase.
In the video below, Anya shares 7 powerful channels to grow your business. Check it out!
In this article, we’ll uncover why marketing channels are important and review the 9 types of channels.
Why are marketing channels important?
According to The Pipeline, 52% of marketers use three to four marketing channels. They ensure that products reach their customers and deliver information. Most brands integrate several marketing channels like websites, blogs, social media networks, email marketing, content marketing, SEO to be more effective. A well-thought-out marketing strategy covers a mix of marketing channels to increase engagement and accomplish the key business goals. Various channels help communicate the relevant content, market and sell a product and provide support during the post-purchasing period.
Marketing channels allow business owners to save time and money on disseminating the necessary message to consumers and marketing it by themselves. Since many people search for information on social media, a company can become popular and attract customers without any effort. If a product is worthy, customers will become free promoters. As a result, the base of leads and clients will increase. A brand will sell more products and increase sales volume and profits. With marketing channels, everyone has their own tasks. Distributors care about distributing products while retailers provide products to the target audience.
Now that you know why marketing channels are important, let’s unveil their types.
7 Different Types of Marketing Channels
As a marketer, you can make use of various types of channels and techniques. Market products on social media platforms, promote webinars through email campaigns, and receive payments through chatbots. In this section, we’ll review the most popular and effective marketing channels that will change your business for good.
Email marketing. Email marketing allows you to communicate your promotional message to the target audience effectively. With email campaigns, you’ll be able to update clients on sales and discounts, promote referral and loyalty programs, and share educational materials. LIKE.TG allows you to send professional email campaigns without coding skills to reach your subscribers. Make use of our ready-to-go templates to save your time on establishing connections with customers.
Influencer marketing. This marketing channel enables you to partner with opinion leaders in related industries. As a marketer, you provide influencers with pieces of content they should share to promote your company’s product. After implementing influencer marketing, you’ll generate quality website traffic. Besides, opinion leaders help boost brand awareness and bring social proof to a wide audience of followers. People trust the recommendations of authoritative leaders more than marketers, so you should consider this channel.
Social media. Leverage different social media channels based on your target audience and business goals. With social media, you’ll be able to support engagement, keep abreast of brand events, share behind the scenes, provide support, and show the product’s benefits. This marketing channel enables you to inform subscribers about the product and make a direct sale by sharing information, photos, videos, testimony, etc.
SEO. SEO marketing refers to the position of your website in search results. To make your website and content visible to potential customers, you need to optimize the search engine results based on SEO principles. Publish relevant quality content, use links, do keyword research, optimize pages, improve site structure, etc. If you want your users to find your website fast, you need to understand their intent, the way they search, and the problems they want to solve.
Websites and blogs. Having a website is essential for every business since this is a perfect place for educating your customers about your company and product. To approach visitors, you need to develop an appropriate content marketing strategy based on the preferences of your potential customers. A website introduces the product, communicates its advantages, and provides reviews and case studies. A blog will help you figure out how best to use the product to achieve the best results.
Podcast marketing. According to statistics, 41% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly. The demand for audio content has increased significantly, so it’s worth considering podcasts as one of your marketing channels for product promotion. In podcast marketing, marketers create audio content to market their products and companies. Conversational episodes and friendly hosts will do their job and establish brand awareness and positive relationships with your customers.
Video marketing. Video is a perfect tool for educating customers and communicating the necessary message. It shows how to use the product, conveys the benefits, and provides demos. Video marketing is a perfect choice if you want to increase conversions, improve ROI, and build a good interaction with your clients. By creating videos for your social media accounts, website, and advertisements, you can establish brand awareness, and a positive first impression, and build strong relationships with your target audience.
Events. It’s always a good idea to conduct online and offline events to connect with your target market. Consider hosting an event to celebrate a release of a new product or present a new product line. Besides, you can create webinars to educate people about specific topics online, share valuable content, and bring new knowledge and information to your subscribers. This way, you’ll understand their preferences, needs, and pain points.
Digital ads. You can create ads of different formats for digital platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, websites, streaming services, etc. They help effectively reach target audiences and promote specific products.
Congrats, now you know the 9 types of marketing channels to leverage for your business and reach your key goals. Hope you’ll find our information useful for your company.
Market segmentation
Market segmentation is organizing your customers into groups based on common demographic, behavioral, psychographic, or geographic characteristics. It helps create a relevant product and branding to drive consumers’ interest, engagement, sales, and ROI.
In this article, we’ll uncover the benefits and types of market segmentation. We’ll also review how to get started with market segmentation.
Why is market segmentation important?
According to statistics, market segmentation helps marketers improve the open rates of email campaigns by 14.31%. Market segmentation allows you to identify the needs and preferences of your target audience and address them. After segmenting consumers into groups, you’ll be able to provide them with tailored offers. You’ll deliver relevant advertising campaigns, content, enticing discounts, promos, and free items. For instance, if you sell ice cream, you can target different groups of people. You can provide dairy ice cream for lactose-tolerant and non-dairy ice cream for lactose-intolerant customers. Besides, creating different ice cream flavors enables you to target even more audience segments.
Since a generic product and message no longer bring the awaited results, you should create a personalized offer. You can do it only after analyzing your customers’ data, needs, desires, and interests and dividing them into groups based on common criteria. You can segment your audience based on age, income, occupation, shopping habits, loyalty, location, emotions, etc. As a result, you’ll boost interest and engagement, increase customer loyalty, and make informed business decisions.
Now that you know the importance of market segmentation, it’s time to unveil its benefits. They will help you decide whether your company needs segmentation.
Benefits of Market Segmentation
Market segmentation carries many advantages for business owners. You need to discover them all to make sure that it will help your business use resources efficiently, reach customers with personalized offers, and target them with relevant ads. Let’s review them in detail.
Customer-centric approach. Market segmentation encourages your company’s team to explore customers’ needs and understand their desires. A brand focuses on creating the best experience for different market segments. A company’s team identifies the needs, desires, preferences, shopping behavior, reactions to marketing efforts, location, age, etc. After the research, team members divide consumers into groups based on common characteristics. Afterward, they search for ways to approach them and drive interest effectively. During this time, employees pay attention to every piece of information that can come in handy. They interact with consumers, conduct research, do interviews, and create surveys to collect as much data as possible. As a result, the offer is customized, and customers are satisfied. Customer loyalty increases.
Excellent customer service. A brand’s team considers every detail about their clients and puts them into the database. They record buying habits, behavior, interactions, preferred communication channels, preferences, location, etc. Once customers get in touch with customer support or other departments, they instantly have all the information in front of their eyes. It helps customer support agents figure out how to communicate with these individuals and understand their needs. When customer support reps know how to solve problems and help clients, they can provide excellent customer service.
Superior customer experience. Tailored marketing messages, preferred communication channels, targeted ads on social media, relevant email campaigns, and content drive customers’ interest. Excellent customer service and product innovation based on customer needs encourage engagement. Clients get what they want without effort and receive a superior customer experience.
Space for innovation. Segmenting your target audience helps not only consumers but your product as well. After discovering customers’ preferences and thoughts, you can consider product development. Unveil opportunities to improve your product and increase your customer base. Innovation brings a competitive advantage and one more differentiator to your product.
Efficient usage of resources. If a company has a focus and a direction, it uses resources efficiently. A business with key goals and a marketing plan implements the strategies and makes steps without excessive expenses. Entrepreneurs invest specific sums of money in reaching different segments.
Improvement of marketing strategies. Knowing who you target allows you to find appropriate words, create the right message, and provide relevant content. You don’t need to launch advertising campaigns across all channels because you already know where to market your customers. For instance, if you know that one of your market segments prefers to search for items on Instagram, then consider Instagram promotion. You can send email campaigns to consumers that prefer this channel to receive news from brands. With LIKE.TG, there’s no need to segment your mailing list and email campaigns manually. The service provides ready-to-use segments formed based on subscribers’ activity.
Now that you know the benefits, it’s time to uncover the different approaches to segment customers.
Types of Market Segmentation
Market segments can be divided into four key types. In this section, we’ll review each of them with examples.
Demographic segmentation. The demographic criteria are age, gender, occupation, marital status, income, nationality, religion, education, and family size. These characteristics enable you to narrow down your audience and target only people who might be interested in the product. Some brands rely only on demographics when targeting customers. For instance, a producer of shower gel needs to split up people into two groups, “men” and “women,” to offer them products “for men” and “for women.”
Psychographic segmentation. The mental and emotional characteristics, traits, beliefs, values, attitudes, and lifestyles belong to psychographic segmentation. These factors are similar to demographics, but they are harder to identify. Psychographic segments provide valuable information about your consumers’ needs, motives, and preferences. Knowing these aspects enables you to ensure relevant content and customized offer. Psychographic segmentation helps you find out why people choose or ignore your brand. For instance, you have a cosmetics brand. Some of your prospects convert and bring revenue, while others don’t. After conducting research, you find that these clients are against animal testing, and some are vegan. If your company is against animal testing and has vegan products, you should inform your audience about it.
Geographic segmentation. The target audience’s location is the basis of this segmentation strategy. With information about customers’ locations, you can create location-based ads and address consumers’ needs. Location is a vast concept for segmentation. You can identify a country, state, zip code, climate, population density, and type of area (urban, suburban or rural). This segmentation is critical for your marketers since they can prepare relevant advertising campaigns and run location-specific ads. For example, if you have a restaurant in Europe and Asia, you need two different menus. Asian menu should consist of spicy food while European — from classic.
Behavioral segmentation. Shopping habits, activity on a brand’s website, usage rate, and loyalty are examples of behavioral segmentation. When you group customers based on their behavior, you can develop messaging that caters to those behavior patterns. Your strategy and tactics depend on users’ interactions with your brand, website, and app. You can effectively market your product after tracking consumers’ behavior patterns.
Now that you know the types, it’s time to uncover how to implement different approaches to encourage purchases and increase ROI.
How to get started with market segmentation?
You need to be precise when dividing customers into groups based on common characteristics because it influences the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. These detailed instructions will help you with handling this process.
Develop customer profiles. After choosing the type of segmentation, gather customer data from available sources. For example, you can find demographic, behavioral, and geographic information about consumers in Google Analytics, CRM, or eCommerce service. Once you have all the necessary data, you can create customer profiles. For example, Anne — female — 27 years old — lives in Florida — uses Instagram often — single — has high income — likes cats — goes boxing. Create one profile for each market segment you have.
Analyze customers’ expectations. Once you finish with your customer profiles, proceed to the needs and expectations of these individuals. Your product should be able to address their problems and solve them. To find this out, your team of marketers should interact with customers and ask them about their preferences, desires, and needs. For instance, many cosmetics brands, after hearing women's demands and wishes about the harm of UV to their skin, many cosmetics brands decided to launch special series of beauty products with sun protection features. Now you can find lipsticks, concealers, and primers with SPF.
Determine your market segments. Once you finish with the research on your target audience and their needs, you should determine the audience segments. Divide your customers into groups based on common characteristics. You can segment them by gender, location, interactions with your brand, occupation, income, age, etc. For example, if you have women, men, and kids, create 3 separate groups. After, create subgroups based on their common characteristics. For instance, you can divide the women group into subgroups based on their age: women aged 18-35 and women aged 36-55. This will help you provide a relevant product for each group. For example, facial cream for women aged 18-35 will have a moisturizing effect, while for women aged 36-55 will have an anti-aging effect.
Prepare relevant marketing approaches for each segment. After ensuring that you have accurate information about each market segment, it’s time to develop an offer that resonates with customers’ pain points and a marketing strategy that helps approach them. Develop relevant strategies for each segment to promote your product and encourage customers to buy it. Remember, a strategy for each group should be different to address their needs, desires, and problems.
See reaction to your product and marketing strategy. After running ads, sending email campaigns, and setting up chatbots for different audience segments, consider reviewing their reactions, behavior, and emotions. This will help you identify gaps in your strategies and make some improvements to increase customer satisfaction. Tailor your emails and chatbots to consumer segments. With LIKE.TG, you can segment your chatbot audience by assigning variables or tags.
Congrats, now you know what market segmentation is and why it’s essential. Use our guide to do proper segmentation and cater to the needs of different groups of customers.
Market research
Market research is the process of collecting information about your company’s target audience to evaluate the viability and success of your future products.
In this article, we explain what market research is and why it is important, cover its types and methods, provide a guide on how to do market research, and 3 best tools for it.
Why is market research important?
Conducting market research is necessary to ensure that your product can become successful on the market. It helps discover more about your company’s potential clients and get feedback from existing customers to build strong product marketing strategies. In this section, we explain why market research is so important.
It provides many insights into your target audience. By conducting market research, you can discover customers’ needs, pains, and the ways to solve them. It helps identify your ideal clients and their buying habits. You can also estimate the value of existing and new products to develop a well-defined pricing strategy.
It helps you forecast sales. Market research provides insights into the demand and ensures that your company has enough resources for production. You can also test the effectiveness of the marketing strategies within the research to avoid overspending.
It allows your business to stand out from the competitors. Market research helps determine the size of the industry, direct and indirect competitors, their strengths and weaknesses. Using this information, you can develop brand positioning, find its competitive advantages, and the ways to highlight them during the marketing campaigns.
Now you understand why conducting market research is so vital. Let’s go further and discover its types in the next section.
Types of Market Research
To do market research effectively, you need to know the ways of gathering information and their peculiarities. This knowledge will help you collect relevant data faster and understand your customers better. Read about the types of market research below.
Primary research is gathering information directly from the target customers. Businesses can do it on their own or employ a third party to specialize in conducting such research. You can get first-hand data using focus groups, questionnaires, polls, surveys, etc. Collect numerical information and customers’ reviews to understand their attitudes to your brand better.
There are two categories of primary research that complement each other: exploratory and specific. During the explanatory research, businesses always ask open-ended questions and conduct detailed interviews with a small group of people. Specific research focuses on collecting statistics and solving the problem companies find after the explanatory research.
Secondary research uses information that other people and companies have gathered. This data may include government reports, market statistics, articles in media, and even presented research from your competitors. You can also use your company’s internal insights during the secondary research. Businesses gather this information to have a general overview of market trends and ways of development in their industries.
While conducting market research, it is essential to keep in mind your aim because the methods you use and the information you focus on may be different.
In the next section, we provide the methods and their peculiarities so that you can choose the most suitable ones for your research.
9 Methods of Market Research
Your research can include many elements and methods to create a complete picture of the current situation on the market. We describe these methods and explain why your company needs to use them.
Buyer personas research. This method allows you to discover more about your target audience, its pains, and preferences. By conducting buyer personas research, you can create an image of your ideal clients and discover product features they need the most.
Market segmentation research. Usually, businesses can define 2 or 3 groups of customers within their target audience. Market segmentation helps differentiate them and understand the peculiarities of each group better.
Interviews. Companies often use this way to collect relevant information during primary research. Interviews include a series of open questions and aim to discover more about customers’ experiences. One-to-one communication gives many insights into the target audience and lets them understand these people better.
Focus groups usually consist of 6-10 people that correspond to the image of ideal customers. It is better to gather a few groups for each target audience segment. By using this method, you can gather feedback about your brand, certain product, or the idea of future marketing campaigns.
Observation and product use research. Companies need this method to see how people use products and their specific features. By conducting observation research, you can discover what problems consumers face and improve them during product development.
Pricing research is the way to discover how much your potential customers are ready to pay for your products. Within the research, you can collect data about your competitors’ prices and compare them to the demand if possible. This information can help you define a successful pricing strategy.
Customer satisfaction research gives you a deep understanding of the consumers’ loyalty level. By conducting this research, you can identify weaknesses of your products and problems during communication to improve them in the future.
Brand awareness research. This method allows you to discover the associations with your brand that the target audience has. It can help you transmit brand personality more accurately and make the company more recognizable by effective promotion.
Marketing campaigns research helps estimate the success of your previous campaigns and analyze why customers liked certain promotions. This process can save your company lots of money and is extremely important while developing future marketing strategies.
Now you know the types and methods of market research. Discover how to conduct it step-by-step in the next section.
How to do market research
Market research can be rather different according to the aim of the business owner and chosen methods. However, there are some similar steps that every company should include in its research to do it successfully. We highlight them and give some recommendations below.
Set your goals and choose research methods. Define the main aim of the research and keep it in mind during the whole process. Examples of the goals can be: preparing for the launch of the new product, changing brand positioning, improving existing products, etc. Write down your aim and the questions you need to answer. According to the goal, you can identify the most suitable types and methods to gather relevant information within your research.
Define your target audience and assemble focus groups. Before conducting the research, describe your ideal customers — buyer personas. It will help you understand these people better and get insights into their buying behavior. Think about consumers’ age, gender, location, social status, occupation, lifestyle, etc. Then find such people in real life and form a representative sample. You can also include regular customers in the group.
Analyze competitors. Gather all the information about other companies within your industry. Define the strengths and weaknesses of each brand to include all the advantages into your product marketing strategy. This analysis can also help you gain a strong competitive advantage.
Prepare research questions and collect relevant data. Remember your goal and think about the open-ended questions you need to ask to gather the necessary information. Then ask people from your focus groups, conduct interviews, use polls and other research methods that you have already chosen. Gather qualitative and quantitative data to get more insights into the current market situation.
Analyze and plan future actions. Ensure that you gathered all the information needed to reach the goal. Revise this data, create a summary and draw a conclusion. Then prepare the action plan and develop a future strategy. Implement changes to improve your products and boost your company on the market.
Now you are ready to conduct market research for your company. Read the next section to discover the tools that can help you.
3 Best Market Research Tools
There are many market research platforms on the Internet, so it might be difficult for you to choose the best ones for your business. Below we describe three tools, their features, and pricing to make your work easier.
Attest
Attest is a platform that you can use for any kind of market research, such as competitor analysis, market segmentation, buyer persona research, etc. This tool provides access to 110 million people from 49 countries worldwide whose answers you can get in real-time. There are filters to focus on your niche and templates to set surveys up in a few minutes. Attest provides an interactive dashboard and statistical significance calculator to gain insights easier.
Pricing
Free trial for the first survey.
Professional — 50,000 responses for 0.50$ per response. This plan starts at 25,000$.
Premium — 100,000 responses for 0.44$ per response. This plan starts at 44,000$.
Enterprise — from 250,000 responses. The payment you should discuss with the platform. Additionally, you get early access to all new product features.
Look at the screenshot below. There is an example of brand awareness research you can conduct throughout your target audience. You can add questions, edit them, change their sequence, and add media.
Then you should choose the audience. You can identify these people’s age and demographics. You can also identify the number of respondents and the language of the questionnaire.
Pollfish
This tool lets you create polls and questionnaires, use open-ended questions, images, videos, and randomization to get insights into the audience’s preferences. Pollfish gives you insights into the quality of the information. You can get results in real-time and analyze them easily with dashboards. Also, Pollfish provides 24/7 customer support.
Pricing starts from 0.95$ per completed survey response.
There is an example of the survey Pollfish conducted within their audience. You can create a similar questionnaire, add a list of questions and possible answers on the right and apply filters to choose the audience on the left.
Google Trends
It is a platform that gives you an overview of the data. You can enter any term in the tool, and Google Trends will provide you with analytics on how it has been trending over time. It is possible to compare different terms, refine search results by location, and see the popularity dynamics.
Using this platform is completely free.
Below there is an example of World Cup trend research. You can see the diagram of the interest, the difference in popularity by region, and related topics. It is possible to share or download all the information.
Congrats, now you know what market research is and why it is important, its types and methods. You can do market research for your company and analyze the results to boost your company on the market.
Mailing list
A mailing list includes your customers’ email addresses, as well as additional information about them (usually their name, though it may also contain further details).
Subscriber lists are often in the form of tables, where each recipientcorresponds to a separate entry containing fields with their details.
The ability to work with subscriberlists is an essential feature of any service.
Mailing templates
An email template is an HTML preformatted email that you can use to create your own unique email template by changing proposed content to your own. LIKE.TG offers more than 130+ free ready-made templates to any taste.
The video demonstrates how to create an email template in LIKE.TG.
An email template allows you to quickly and easily write and create email campaigns because all you have to do is replace pictures, texts, fonts, and other elements of the email. In LIKE.TG, the gallery of email templates is divided into thematic categories to quickly find the suitable option.
Design outstanding emails!
We have a big choice of pre-made email templates that you can edit to your liking or craft your own one with a flexible drag and drop editor.
Register and create an email campaign!
Email template benefits
Saves time and effort
Rather than having to create the email template from scratch, you can easily upload your pictures, change the text, and select relevant and new content for your subscribers. You don't have to choose what parts of the email to include, where to insert the images, and where to write the text. Instead, with the ready-made template you will have more time to search for unique new content.
No need to check the formatting
Each time you create a new email template from scratch, you should check it for errors, because working with a large amount of data you risk leaving out important sections or making mistakes with formatting. Using a template ensures your email has exactly the same look as in previous newsletters.
Market evaluation
Market evaluation is a research of a marketplace aimed at determining whether a new company can perform well and succeed in a new business environment. It helps receive insights into your competitors' state of affairs and market trends and make strategic business decisions.
An accomplished entrepreneur who has clear objectives and plans won’t rely on their feelings only. They know that a great idea for a startupcan’t guarantee success and wealth. The first thing you should do is research a market you strive to enter and evaluate it. You should do an analysis that will help you find out whether your company can blossom forth in a particular marketplace.
In this article, we’ll discuss the market evaluation process. Read on to unveil how to analyze your market.
How to Evaluate Your Market
There are many great business ideas all around the world, but only a few of them bring profit. The process helps you concentrate only on startups with the highest potential to succeed. Let’s discover how to do it.
Analyze your target audience and rivals.If you aim to determine whether the demand for your product or service is high, you need to conduct research. Split up your customers into segments based on their age, occupation, gender, and interests to understand if they actually need your product. Once you are finished with the analysis, you’ll know what to do next. Apart from customer research, consider performing a thoroughcompetitor analysis. Evaluating the strength and weaknesses of your business rivals empowers you to decide on your future strategies and product differentiation.
Assess your potential marketplace. In addition to customer and competitor analysis, remember to research your market. To determine how successful your business can be, you need to havesuchinformation as market size, the number of customers, the barriers to entry, the industry value chain, and the level of competition.
Find some adjacent opportunities. Corporations with systematic and disciplined approaches are the most profitable. They manage to expand their core business and reach new geographics. That’s why you should prepare the best marketing strategies that suit your business and look for adjacent opportunities to scale in the future. To reach new categories, you can leverage the same channels and techniques.
Explore your business environment. Understanding the general business environment gives a clear picture of a potential influence on your company’s performance. Before entering the marketplace, you need to be aware of the factors that can impact your business, such as government regulations, trade policies, social and cultural norms, and technological developments.
To collect and store all this information as a whole and make decisions, you might need some effort. Although it’s a time-consuming process, you will be satisfied with the final result. It will provide you with the best insights into the market, help you avoid unnecessary investments, and figure out the potential of your business idea.
Majority fallacy
The majority fallacy is the erroneous belief that a company targeting the largest segment of the market can increase its number of potential customers and gain the biggest profit. It leads to a high level of competition in this segment.
Different types of businesses use segmentation to appeal to different groups of customers by addressing their needs. On the contrary, there are also companies that prefer to use one marketing campaign for an entire audience.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Majority Fallacy
Some companies assume that directing their product at the largest audience segment can be very profitable because they will reach more people and receive higher revenue. To confirm or refute this assumption, let’s consider the advantages and disadvantages of the majority fallacy.
Pros of majority fallacy:
the opportunity to reach more potential customers;
companies can establish themselves faster if they have a competitive advantage;
brands can create one marketing campaign to reach out to their entire audience.
Cons of majority fallacy:
overlooking the huge number of competitors;
the audience of small segments remains unserved although they might bring greater results for the business.
According to BusinessTown, 90 to 95% of all startups fail because they can’t find the right target market. So the key to success is to clearly and correctly define your target audience. The problem that occurs here is that companies often target the biggest market segment that aims at reaching more potential clients and receiving the biggest profit. As a result, businesses face huge competition. Although the majority fallacy is inferior to the alternative approach of targeting small segments, it is still often found among different companies.
To explore the majority fallacy in more detail, let’s see an example.
Example of the Majority Fallacy
Now that you know the pros and cons of the majority fallacy, let’s walk you through an example.
Let’s imagine there are several fast food restaurants located near the campuses of two different universities. The location is great as students can visit any fast food restaurant during their break. However, there is a problem — the crowd of students increases the competition among stores and the number of competitors is constantly rising. Brands are then forced to compete with each other to attract more people with various special offers. As a result, each fast food store gets a marginal amount of revenue but no one receives high revenue.
Simply put, the majority fallacy is a strategy error that misleads companies by stating that a brand should direct their product to the entire audience or its largest segment. It results in some complications, among them, tons of competitors.
Market share
Market share is the percentage of the total sales in the market generated by a particular company over a certain period of time. This metric shows how large your company is compared to its competitors and the whole industry.
In the article, we explain why market share is important, provide the formula to calculate it, and offer strategies to increase your company’s market share.
Why is market share important?
Most brands want to increase their market share to beat the competition and become the largest company in the market. Below we explain why it is so important and how this percentage affects your business.
Increased sales. The higher your company’s market share — the greater sales you have. Your company starts to work on a bigger scale and attracts more and more customers. It helps increase profits and develop a cost advantage to cover even a larger market share.
Larger customer base. If your company gets a bigger percentage of the market, the number of regular customers will increase too. Loyal clients may recommend your brand, and by word of mouth, sales will increase even without paid promotion.
The advantage in negotiations. The company’s domination in the market gives it power in negotiations with suppliers and retailers. Such brands can agree on better terms of cooperation, save money and increase their profits.
Better reputation. If a company is strong and provides an excellent customer experience, it will have a good reputation and become well-known throughout the market. In such a way, you can boost the company further and broaden the customer base.
Less spending on marketing. Companies with a large market share tend to spend less money on product promotion compared with the total revenue. Customers are already aware of your brand, and the business should only maintain this position. Moreover, there is a “bandwagon effect,” which means that popular brands are more visible in the stores, and the sales personnel promote them more often.
Higher profits. All the previous points mean that the companies with a large market share earn more. They create a barrier for new competitors to enter the industry and need fewer efforts to sell their products. Moreover, if the market expands, the companies with the greatest market share increase their profits, unlike their smaller competitors.
As you can see, it is vital for businesses to define and expand their market share. Continue reading to discover different ways to calculate it.
How to calculate your market share?
There are two main ways to calculate it: based on total revenue and units sold. We will describe both of them and provide formulas and examples below.
Based on a total revenue
You need to define the revenue of your company and the revenue of the whole market during the chosen period. To find information about total revenue, read research reports related to your industry. Then divide the first metric by the second one and multiply it by 100.
Market share = Company’s revenue / Total market revenue * 100%
Let's look at the example. Last year your company sold goods for 3 million dollars, and the revenue of the whole market was 20 million dollars. So, your market share is 15% (3/20 * 100%).
Based on the number of units sold
You need to identify how many units your company sold and how many units were sold by the industry as a whole over a certain period. In the same way, divide the first metric by the second one and multiply by 100%.
Market share = The company’s units sold / The industry’s units sold * 100%
For example, your business sells cars. Last year customers bought 4 thousand vehicles from your company and 80 thousand cars in the whole market. It means that your market share is 5% (4/80 * 100%).
Now you can calculate the market share of your company and understand the situation in the industry better. Find out how to cover a larger percentage of the market in the next section.
8 Strategies to Increase Your Market Share
There are two things business owners should concentrate on: efforts to increase their market share and holding strategies to maintain it. In this section, we will provide 8 tips to help you reach both these goals and boost your company in a competitive market.
Introduce new technologies. To stand out from the competitors, you can use innovative techniques in development, launch new features or offer cutting-edge products to the market. Customers interested in this innovation will switch companies and buy from your brand. Some of them can become regular ones. In such a way, your market share will increase, and the share of your competitors will decrease.
Work on customer relations. Khoros states that 65% of customers switch brands after a poor experience. Focus on providing only a positive customer experience to maintain and increase your market share. Improve customer loyalty and customer satisfaction to turn clients into regular ones. According to Qualtrics XM Institute, consumers who rate service as “good” are 38% more likely to recommend that company. In such a way, you can increase market share via word of mouth without huge spending on product promotion.
Appeal to other audiences. Expanding a target audience is one more way to cover a bigger market share. Think about people who can be your potential clients but do not appeal to the image of an ideal customer. Analyze their demographics, behavior, social status, needs, pains, and preferences. Then find the competitors targeting this audience and define their advantages and disadvantages. Develop a strategy on how you can beat this competition. Start to attract new customers by active product promotion and increase your share on the market.
Increase quality. According to Super Office, product quality is one of the main things that form customer experience, which is the top priority for 45.9% of companies for the next five years. Consequently, if your brand has high quality standards, it will become your competitive advantage, help you stand out from competitors, and increase the market share.
Promote actively. You can also increase brand awareness to cover more potential customers. 71% of people are more likely to choose the product from a brand they recognize, states Global Banking Finance. Active marketing campaigns will help you attract these new clients and become the leader in the market.
Hire talented employees. Right people will work for the benefit of the company. They may help you with fresh ideas and take a new look at routine processes. If you hire talented employees, you are more likely to decrease costs on their turnover and training and, in such a way, devote more resources to gaining power on the market.
Offer lower prices. This is one more effective way to attract new clients. According to Super Office, pricing is the main focus within 20.5% of companies for the next 5 years. Think about the ways to provide sales and bonuses for customers. It might be difficult for your business in the short term, but it may help increase your market share and give some benefits in the long term.
Buy a competitor business. There are two things the company gets after this step. Firstly, you cover a bigger percentage of the market because the competitor’s customers become your brand’s ones. Secondly, you reduce the competition and have more chances to become the leader in the sphere.
Congrats, now you understand what a market share is and why it is important, can calculate the market share of your company, and know the ways to increase it.
Marketing analysis
A marketing analysis is a detailed assessment of a market in a chosen industry. It encompasses potential customers and their buying habits, competitors, their strengths, and weaknesses. Marketing analysis helps entrepreneurs reduce business risks, effectively connect with the target audience, provide the right products, and align with the market trends.
In this article, you’ll find out why marketing analysis is essential for your business. You’ll also unveil how to conduct a marketing analysis.
Why is a marketing analysis important for your business?
To be successful, every product needs a comprehensive market analysis of competitors and customers. During this analysis, marketers collect data to unveil whether the product they want to market will meet customers’ needs and solve their pain points. Marketing analysis is essential for improving a company’s position within a specific market and being competitive and useful for customers. After an effective analysis, entrepreneurs receive valuable information about economic shifts, market trends, demographics, competitors, consumers’ buying behavior, etc.
Business owners can reap several benefits after incorporating market analysis into their marketing plan. Then, a company’s team will be aware of the market trends, competitors, and things a brand should do to reach success. As a result, marketers will reduce risks and make the right business decisions.
Understanding customers means that a brand can serve their needs with a product. Targeted products increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Marketers will be able to identify their past mistakes and optimize marketing efforts.
Now that you know why marketing analysis is vital for your business, let’s explore how to conduct it.
How to conduct a marketing analysis?
The effective analysis takes time and effort. It’s time to figure out how to do it step by step.
Define your key goal. You might have different reasons for conducting an analysis: identify and evaluate competitors, assess the market condition, or analyze your customers. Decide on the purpose of your marketing analysis. It can be internal and external. Internal means that you want to make improvements within your company like effective management of a cash flow. External means that you need some help or changes outside your business like seeking a business loan.
Outline your industry’s condition. Evaluating the state of a specific industry is crucial for research. Try to find out the direction the industry is heading. You should use metrics like size and projected growth to outline the condition of the industry you want to join.
Determine your target audience. Successful marketing of a product requires you to select the right target audience. Since all people can’t be your customers, you need to identify those who will be interested in the benefits your product provides. For this purpose, conduct special research. Your analysis should focus on your ideal customer and the things that might influence purchasing decisions. To address prospects' wants quickly, you need to identify your target audience's age, gender, location, occupation, preferences, interests, and needs. Develop a buyer persona that covers the characteristics of your ideal customer so that your team can decide on the marketing efforts.
Understand your competitors. One of the most important elements of marketing analysis is competitor research. You need to allocate enough time to evaluate your competitors, their position within the market, strengths, weaknesses, benefits, and superior qualities. Compile a list of key competitors and do a SWOT analysis for each of the companies on your list. Identify the reasons they stand out and find out what makes them different. After, highlight the most prominent competitors so that you can be aware of their position within the market.
Analyze your data. Once you gather the necessary information and verify it, it’s time to evaluate its usefulness for your company and product. Divide your data into three main sections that matter most for your business: competitors, target market, and purpose. Ensure that your analysis covers the following elements: customer buying trends, industry overview, forecasts for your future growth, etc.
Use your marketing analysis results. Look through your marketing analysis again to figure out what information you can use to make your company benefit. After analyzing your competitors' marketing strategy, you might want to improve yours to reach customers. Consider improving your website, marketing methods, and how you want to present your product and leverage new marketing channels. You might wish to implement chatbots for the most popular social media networks to connect with consumers instantly. As a result, you’ll obtain advanced products and an effective marketing strategy.
If you feel insecure about entering a new market with a new product, you better conduct a marketing analysis first. Hope you’ll manage to do it right with our step-by-step guide.
Market penetration
Market penetration is a ratio that indicates how successful a product or a service is in the market compared to its total estimated market. Companies use it to increase the market share of their products and services.
We use the term to outline two processes. One defines the strategy a new business implements to enter the market, and the other is for calculating the percentage of a market share a company’s product can capture. In this article, we’ll learn how to estimate the rate, make the difference between market penetration and market development clear, explore six effective strategies, and review an example.
How to Calculate Your Market Penetration Rate
Market penetration is an essential measurement for new companies that plan to enter the market. Calculating this ratio allows them to evaluate the industry and their potential in it and estimate their possible market share and revenue. Business owners can also leverage the formula to determine how actively customers buy their products or services compared to their total estimated market.
To calculate the rate, you need to know the number of your clients and the size of your target market. Below you can see the formula to easily estimate the ratio for your firm.
Once you obtain your penetration rate, don’t forget to constantly monitor it to see some changes. As an option, consider estimating it after you run a sales or marketing campaign. The increase or decrease will show you how successful your campaign is.
To avoid any confusion that may arise when you hear about market penetration and market development, let’s discuss these two terms in more detail.
Market Penetration vs. Market Development
Market penetration is a strategy that implies using a product or service in the existing market to build a larger customer base, increase market share, and be perceived as a leader. Companies can reduce prices, put more effort into promotion, and increase sales volumeto reach this objective. Brands also consider creating more convenient locations for their target market to have a wider reach.
Market development involves creating a new product or service to satisfy the existing market. The strategy entails research and development stages and is used by companies with profound knowledge about their market. These firms are ready to bring new solutions tocustomers’ emerging problems.
Let’s take the automobile industry, for example. As our world changes and becomes more environmentally friendly, people’sneeds change too. Conscious drivers want to have cars that don’t harm our environment. As a result, brands launch the production and introduce electric vehicles to their target audience.
The difference is clear, so the next step is to explore our list of the most successful penetration strategies.
6Market Penetration Strategies
Many businesses try to increase their penetration rates to become leaders in their industries, have access to a bigger audience, and increase their market share. For this purpose, they leverage different strategies. Let’s discover the best of them.
Consider educating your audience. If you are just entering the market, the first thing you should do is to inform people about your product or service. Draw attention from well-established companies to your brand by using various marketing tools like paid ads on social media channels,pay-per-click ads, and optimizing your website. For example, Cabot Creamery, a brand that produced cheddar cheese and dairy products, leveraged social media and Pinterest ads to educate people about its products.
Use more distribution channels. Companies that strive for growth should also use different distribution channels. Don’t focus solely on traditional outlets, especially when digital channels prosper. Direct and indirect channels, dual distribution, and the internet are the strategies you can implement to sell your products.
Implement innovation. If your goal is to improve your market share, think of the ways to achieve this objective. Improve the product that customers already like. Knowing the pros and cons of your product means that you have a massive advantage over your competitors. Use these insights, and make the product better and more salable by implementing possible technology perks and new accessories.
Reach new geographics. Many companies consider expanding their offers to other locales. It helps you scale, access new markets, and reach more potential customers. However, like with any business, it also carries financial risks. That’s why, before you dare to take this bold step, make sure that you have a fantastic value proposition and a strategy to fight your competitors.
Target certain locations. There are seasonal products and products popular in specific geographical areas. You need to do your research to learn where there is the greatest demand for your products or services. Let’s take a producer of sunblock, for example, and compare the demand for this product in Los Angeles and Seattle. For sure, the demand would be higher in sunny Los Angeles.
Simplify your purchasing process. First of all, you need to ensure that the online shopping system on your website is perfect. Brands with a simple purchase process have more clients who reach a checkout. It’s evident that buyers don’t want to waste their time and energy on filling out long forms and specifying a lot of information. They will rather search for another company where the process is more accessible and shorter. Moreover, you should allow customers to choose among different payment systems.
Now when you are acquainted with the most popular strategies, let’s proceed to an example.
Market PenetrationExample
Let’s imagine that there is a country with a population of 250 million people. If, for example, 50 million citizens of this country have laptops, its market penetration would be 20%. It means that there are still 200 million people (they make up 80% of the population) who don’t have laptops, so they are potential buyers for companies that sell personal portable computers. Therefore, the market penetration rate shows companies that produce laptops the potential for their growth in this country.
Simply put, our example indicates that laptop manufacturers have an excellent environment for growth since there are still a lot of people who don’t have their products yet. By calculating the rate, firms have the chance to evaluate their industry and estimate whether they will be able to meet their market share and revenue expectations.
To conclude, the measure we have discussed is essential both for startups and well-established companies. It helps assess and analyze the market and determine whether it will contribute to the achievement of goals.
Marginal utility
Marginal utility is a measure that defines the additional satisfaction a customer receives from one more unit of a product or service. It helps companies determine the number of products a consumer is eager to buy and assess how satisfaction influences consumer decisions.
In this article, we’ll find out the importance of the metric, check out the types and examples, and get to know how to calculate marginal utility.
Why is the law of diminishing marginal utility important?
Knowing the marginal utility allows companies to be aware of customers’ satisfaction or happiness with a certain product. This is because the level of fulfillment shapes consumers’ future purchasing decisions. If the measure indicates a high level of satisfaction and product success among buyers, it means that people will continue buying from a brand. That’s why a company can consider making deals with more suppliers and reaching new locales.
A business owner should never forget the law of diminishing marginal utility. According to this law, the utility of a product decreases with every consumption of a product’s additional unit. Because of this, you can also see that customers are ready to pay less for each extra unit, which means that they become less satisfied with every additional consumption.
Marginal utility is leveraged in progressive taxation systems. Companies use it to analyze customer behavior, identify market trends, and decide on productpricesand innovations.
Now that the importance of marginal utility is evident, let’s walk you through the types of this measure.
Types of Marginal Utility
Consumer behavior and decisions are the two main things that influence the type of marginal utility you obtain as a result. Let’s review each type in more detail to see how customer happiness affects it.
Positive marginal utility.You can see this type of marginal utilitywhen an additional item brings happiness to a customer. Say, there’s a person who loves to eat cakes, so when they eat an extra slice, theywould enjoy it and get some positive emotions.
Zero marginal utility. When this type occurs, it indicates that an additional product didn’t manage to bring some more satisfaction to a consumer. For example, when a person eats two hamburgers and feels full, they wouldn’t enjoy having a third one.
Negative marginal utility. This indicates that if a customer consumes too much of a product, an extra portion might even harm their health. Say, if a person ate two slices of an apple pie, they could feel sick after the third one.
Time to move to the calculations.
How to Calculate Marginal Utility
Companies and individuals widely use marginal utility calculations to give a qualifiable worth to their products and services. With its help, they gauge the success of a particular item and adjust their production. Although some companies leverage complex estimations to figure out the measure, you can calculate it by using a simple formula you see below.
Now let’s see the steps in detail to learn how to find the necessary measures.
Find the first total utility. To find an average measure, a manager needs to determine the total utility of a customer’s first visit. Total utility is the level of customer satisfaction from consuming a product or service. You need to sum up the prices a consumer is willing to pay for the first and each additional product to obtain the total utility.
Search for the second total utility. Analyze the information you have about the second visit. Pay attention to the sum of money a customer is ready to pay for your products and use the same approach. Add all the prices together to obtain the second total utility.
Calculate the difference. Once you figure out the total utilities of the visits, collect them to calculate the difference. The result you obtain will be the measure you need to use in the formula.
Estimate the difference between the number of goods. After obtaining totals, you need to sum up the purchased goods from the first visit. Do the same for the second visit. Afterward, subtract the totals from each other to get the second measure — quantity of goods difference.
To understand where to start, let’s look at our example first.
Marginal Utility Example
Let’s imagine that there’s a very hungry office worker who decided to go to a cafe with veggie burgers on its menu. Although one veggie burger costs only $3, this visitor can even pay $6 for each. Therefore, the utility worth of one burger will be $6.
During their stay in the cafe, the worker is eager to eat two burgers. Since this person already knows that they will be full after the first veggie burger, they are ready to pay $4 for the second one. As a result, the utility cost decreases. To find the total utility, we need to sum up the prices the worker is willing to pay.
Total utility (1) = $6 + $4 = $10.
During the second visit to the cafe a month later, the worker wants to eat four burgers. After paying $6 for the first veggie burger, they decide that the second burger is only worth $5 because they don’t feel so hungry anymore. After they eat the second one, they would only pay $2 for each next burger.
Total utility (2) = $6 + $5 + $2 + $2 + $2 = $17.
Let’s find the total utility difference = $17 - $10 = $7.
Quality of items difference = 5 - 2 = 3.
Now let’s estimate marginal utility:
Marginal utility = 7 / 3 = 2.3.
Hence, the marginal utility shows the level of satisfaction a customer can obtain from consuming an additional product or service. A consumer stops buying additional products when the price is higher than their marginal utility.
Live chat support
Live chat support is a customer service channel enabling customers to connect with customer support agents in real time once they need specific assistance or help. Users can find live chat support on companies’ sites or download special applications. After engaging in a live chat, clients receive instant help without making a call or sending an email.
In this article, we’ll uncover why you should use a live chat for customer support, review 14 ways to use a live chat, show you how to create a live chat widget in LIKE.TG, and unveil some excellent examples.
Why should you use a live chat for customer support?
There are many reasons for using a live chat for customer support, including real-time assistance, multitasking for agents, and client convenience. In this section, we’ll review each benefit of a live chat in more detail, so let’s jump in.
Real-time assistance. With a live chat, your customers receive immediate real-time help. A live chat prevents clients from waiting for hours, as they can do during calls or emails. As you know, response time influences customer satisfaction, and live chat will only positively impact this indicator. Moreover, it can help you positively influence your prospects' purchasing decisions. You can provide all the necessary information to convince clients that your product is valuable and useful.
Multitasking for agents. Live chat allows you to improve the efficiency of your customer support reps. With its help, agents can manage multiple chats simultaneously, meaning your customer support team solves problems faster. As a result, they help more people in a day, and clients remain happy with your brand. Customers' problems are solved while your customer support agents’ workload is reduced.
Client convenience. Live chat is about convenience and efficiency for clients.They don’t need to wait hours to get attention to their issues. Customers can visit your company’s website anytime and receive assistance in real-time without waiting and getting annoyed.
Cost-effectiveness. If we compare live chat with traditional phone calls, we must admit that live chat is more cost-effective for companies. Using a live chat can reduce the number of customer support agents in your team. Live chat helps you manage basic inquiries on autopilot and connects an agent only when a user asks it. That’s why you don’t need a large team of agents to handle all issues. It differs a lot from phone call support, where it’s a must to have many agents to answer all calls in time.
Availability 24/7. You can set up the working hours of your live chat, including working around the clock. Depending on your preferences and customer needs, you can support customers anytime by making your live chat available 24/7. If you have a worldwide audience living in different time zones, having live chat online is a must.
Higher customer satisfaction. A live chat has the immediacy and responsiveness all clients require. In turn, it positively influences customer satisfaction. If you manage to solve issues quickly and effectively with a live chat, it will help you boost satisfaction and customer retention. Remember, customer support impacts customer loyalty, repeat purchases, and returning customers.
Better communication. A live chat is a great alternative for people who prefer to avoid having phone conversations on specific technical issues or other problems. Text-based communication is the best solution. It’s more accessible, clear, and easier to understand. Customers can communicate their problems, and reps provide accurate and specific answers.
Analytics and insights. Since live chat services often come with integrated analytics, you can receive comprehensive insights into customer behavior, common issues, and the overall performance of the support team. Afterward, you can use this information to your advantage when incorporating improvements.
Now that you know the reasons to consider implementing a live chat for your customer support, let’s proceed to the most effective ways of using a live chat. After exploring the next section, you’ll be able to figure out the benefits your customer service can reap.
14 Ways to Use a Live Chat for Customer Support
With a live chat, you can interact with users in real time, yet there are other reasons to implement this valuable tool. In this section, we’ll unveil 14 ways to apply a live chat for customer support, so let’s dig in.
Instant problem resolution. Consider using a live chat to answer customers' urgent questions quickly. Since live chat can function 24/7, you can provide your users with solutions to common issues related to your product or service. By guiding them through troubleshooting steps, you’ll improve satisfaction with your brand and boost customer retention.
Order management. Live chat is a perfect channel for order management. If customers have questions or problems with their orders, they can start a live chat to find out some information, ask for solutions, and make modifications. Consider using a live chat to guide your clients through various processes like delivery tracking, cancellation, exchange, refund, etc.
Exchanges and refunds. Use your live chat to manage exchanges and refunds. It will help you reduce the workload on your team and automate repetitive processes related to exchanges and refunds. You can set up your live chat to receive exchange and refund applications on autopilot. In case of approval or refusal, the system will handle it.
Pre-sales inquiries. Consider using your live chat for pre-sales recommendations. Users can ask you to provide them with product information, pricing details, and other pre-sales questions. Train your live chat to answer those questions and quickly send all the necessary details. It will help you increase the chances of new deals. As a result, conversion rates will improve.
Order tracking. Let your customers track their order status, delivery information, and other essential details through the chat. It will help them find out when the order will arrive and make sure that it’ll be delivered to the right location. This prevents clients and your business from having problems with the wrong delivery point, payments, and other issues.
Technical support. Your team should use live chat for technical support to address technical issues that your clients might experience. Provide your customers with guides on software installations and assist them in configuring products.
Customer support agent handoff. When customers face complex issues, consider adding an agent handoff feature. Add a “Connect to agent” button to ensure swift resolution of any issue, no matter how complex it is.
Lead generation. Live chat is a powerful tool for lead generation. Consider setting up triggers based on time spent on a page and specific user actions to initiate a chat and offer assistance. By asking leads open-ended questions, you can understand their needs and recommend relevant products. If you manage to provide prospective customers with their perfect products, you can convert them into buyers.
Lead qualification. Consider using live chat to qualify leads. By incorporating pre-chat surveys and behavior-based triggers, you can collect information about prospects and determine whether they match your buyer persona. All the gathered data will help you follow up with qualified prospects and make them your clients.
Bookings and reservations. Use live chat for your service-based services. Allow customers to make reservations and bookings on autopilot. It’s fast and easy. Consider setting up your live chat to provide information about availability for rooms, tables, or event spaces in real-time. It’ll guide your clients through the reservation process, preventing double bookings or missed reservations.
Product recommendations. Live chat can become a product recommendation tool. Use it for recommending specific items customers are interested in, promoting bundles or packages, comparing multiple products clients consider, upselling, and cross-selling. Live chat can provide information regarding the best deals, discounts, and attractive offers.
FAQs and knowledge base integration. Consider integrating your FAQs and knowledge base with a live chat on your site. Provide links to articles or guides answering frequent questions. This way, users can find all the necessary information and explore some more related topics.
Feedback and surveys. Use live chat to gather information about customers’ experience with your company. You can send surveys and ask for feedback after clients perform specific actions on your site. Clients’ opinions on your product, service, customer support, and other business areas are essential. This data will guide you toward improving your company and making it the best customer alternative.
Proactive engagement. Consider using proactive interaction with users. Invite prospects or customers to have a chat with you. Set up triggers to start the flow when customers spend too much time on specific pages and struggle with their choices. You can help them decide on the product or service they need and close more deals by offering assistance.
Now that you know the areas to use live chat support, it’s time to find out how to create a live chat widget in LIKE.TG.
How to create a live chat widget with LIKE.TG?
In this section, we’ll uncover how to build a live chat widget with LIKE.TG. The process is very simple owing to the LIKE.TG ntuitive no-code builder. We’ll guide you through the setup so you can create it for your business. Let’s begin.
Register or log in to your LIKE.TG account, then go to the "Chatbots" tab. Click the “Connect” button if you haven’t connected any channels before. If you’ve done this already, go to the "Manage bots" section and click the “Add bot” button. You can also click “Connect” next to "Live Chat."
Connect your site
LIKE.TG allows you to add a live chat to a LIKE.TG-made site or a third-party website.
Adding a live chat to a site created with LIKE.TG
Insert your project name, and choose your site, landing page, or course registration page designed in LIKE.TG. Click “Continue” to automatically add your project code to your site settings.
Adding a live chat to an external site
Insert your project name and a link to a site to add your widget. Click “Continue.” Copy the installation code after customizing the widget appearance.
Personalize your live chat widget
Configure the display conditions of your live chat widget. Choose an alignment and color scheme that matches your brand. Insert a title for your live chat header. You can also add a live chat description and a link to your privacy policy.
Click “Next” to save the changes.
Visit our knowledge base for a more detailed guide on building a live chat widget in LIKE.TG.
Now that you know how to build a live chat with LIKE.TG, let’s grab some inspiration from the examples below. They will help you identify where to get started.
Customer Support Live Chat Examples
Since managing customer inquiries is one of the priority tasks for every business, we can be inspired by many examples. In this section, we’ll share excellent examples of live chat for customer support. So let’s explore them in more detail.
British Airways — Managing a Booking
The flag carrier airline of the UK, British Airways, has a great live chat on its site. British Airways Virtual Assistant helps users solve various problems related to flight booking, flight changes and cancellations, date changes, flights canceled by airlines, etc. The live chat provides the latest travel advice and lets clients check flight status. With its help, users can find out how to manage their bookings and modify information related to their flights by themselves. British Airways Virtual Assistant sends clear and accurate information and guides users through all the processes. The live chat is informative, engaging, and clear.
Zoom — Login Issues
A communications technology service, Zoom, provides users with Zoom Support, which they can find when they open the company’s live chat widget. It allows users to choose one of the available issues or type the question if it’s not on the list. Our example contains information on login issues. Users receive answers regarding the problem very fast. The live chat lets users click the fast buttons to identify the real problems and find their solutions.
Zendesk — Reporting an Issue
A customer service platform, Zendesk offers users to enjoy the benefits of customer support live chat when they encounter problems with the service. They can report an issue with their account, payment, login problems, and many more. The live chat helps troubleshoot these issues as soon as possible. To let a live chat make it efficient, users need to describe their inquiry. In complex situations, customers will be connected to customer support agents.
Congrats, now you know what live chat is and why it’s essential. Hope that our ways to use a live chat and LIKE.TG will help you design a perfect live chat for your customer support team. Register in LIKE.TG now to start improving your customer service.
List Building
List building is growing your mailing list by collecting the client’s email addresses. Mind that you need permission to add users to your customer base.
Why is list building important?
Wide outreach
Protection and engagement
You are getting a picture of your buyer persona
It’s impossible to imagine email marketing without a client base. Having the email addresses of engaged users on your list is the basis of a successful email marketing campaign. If you manage to cope with this process, you’ll get such pleasant benefits as:
Wide outreach. List building allows you to find customers all over the world and increase your brand awareness at the same time.
Protection and engagement. List building is a sure way to overcome the Google algorithm. What's more, if a person shares their email address with you, it means the readiness to engage with your brand.
You are getting a picture of your buyer persona. The best way to create a valuable product is to ask your customers about their needs. Sending personalized emails will help you divide clients into segments having something in common.
How to build an email list?
Online events
Offline events
Contests
Landing Pages
Survey
Quiz
Social media accounts
Partner websites
It’s a no-brainer that list building may turn into a real challenge. However, we’ve collected a list of methods that can help you cope with this task. Follow these small tips, and soon, you’ll generate a database of loyal subscribers.
Online events
There are hundreds of online events that attract thousands of visitors. Don’t miss your chance and use this opportunity to promote your brand. Also, you can stage your online event, such as an online webinar to get more subscribers.To engage more people, add teasers, write the list of speakers, and offer a discount.
Offline events
Prepare printed cards and brochures to give them to your shop visitors during events. Don’t forget to include information about the way your potential customers can subscribe to receive the best deals.
Gallery Above Penn Square organizes weekly events and asks the visitors to sign up to continue the relationships in the future. Also, you can take part in trade shows to build a B2B mailing list.
Contests
It’ll be a great idea to use your social media accounts to organize a giveaway in exchange for the contact information of your followers. Promote such online contests from time to time to expand your mailing list.
Landing Pages
The research conducted by HubSpot showed that if you increase the number of your landing pages from 10 to 15, you may get a 55% increase in leads. Take into account that you may have different groups of clients. Your aim is to create some landing pages to satisfy the needs of the most significant groups.
Below is the way LIKE.TG uses landing pages for generating clients. It aims to meet the needs of different brands providing several communication channels.
If you still don't have a landing page or consider several services, try the LIKE.TG landing page builder. It's easy to use since you don't need any coding skills. You can use a pre-designed template or design your page from scratch.Just drag the necessary elements to the layout and edit them using a toolbar. Add images, carousels, videos, subscription forms, links to your chatbots and social media profiles, connect payment options. Check out how it looks like below.
The builder is available for free. Follow these instructions to create a landing page.
Survey
If you want more clients to subscribe, you need to provide them with the chance to have a look at your content before joining the list. Let them provide you with valuable feedback regarding your products or article on the blog. It will help you discover some insights and improve on the go.
Look how Capterra uses this chance to grow their mailing list.
Quiz
There are many types of quizzes, some of them are viral, and the others are just so fun that they won’t let your customers go away. The pleasant fact is that all of them can bring you thousands of new leads. You may either offer users to leave an email address to receive the results or share the results with friends on socials.
Social media accounts
If you have a lot of followers on your social media accounts, you need to pitch your email newsletters there. The people who follow you there already know and like your content. Therefore, they’ll be thankful for the opportunity to receive emails from you.
Partner websites
You can always team up with other companies and industry leaders to find targeted subscribers. Ask your partners to advertise your company or run promotions on their websites and email newsletters.
How to Collect Email Addresses
Create different types of subscription forms
Offer a valuable lead magnet
Provide social proof
Let subscribers set preferences
Several tips can help you collect email addresses of new subscribers more effectively. Follow these simple pieces of advice to grow:
Create different types of subscription forms
LIKE.TG offers four types of forms that you can place on your website.
Pop-ups. It’ll be a great idea to show a pop-up relevant to the content users are currently viewing or when leaving the page
Embedded forms. They appear in a sidebar or footer. Take into consideration that it’s better to make them prominent and eye-catching if you want to draw your users' attention.
Fixed forms. They are located at the set part of the webpage and remain there until a customer has closed or read it. Such form won’t annoy your clients but still can provoke their interest.
Floating forms. It’s essential to use floating forms if you want to expand your email list. They may be attached to any part of the webpage and won’t disappear until a reader takes any action. It’s a great way to promote new products and hot deals.
Find examples of all these forms on ourblog and get inspired.
Below you can see a form created with the LIKE.TG builder.
Offer a valuable lead magnet
Provide your users with useful bonuses in exchange for their email address. For example, you may offer various discounts or access to unique content such as ebooks, research, courses, checklists, etc. This attitude will encourage your potential clients to subscribe.
Provide social proof
According to various researches, people are more inclined to do something when they see someone else is doing that. It’ll be a wise decision to use this knowledge to get more subscribers. All that you need to do is to add a subscriber counter convincing new clients to become a part of your community. However, take into account that it’ll work only in case you have an impressive amount of followers.
Let subscribers set preferences
If you provide your audience with tons of different information, it’s wise to let them choose which type of content they want to receive. It may include updates regarding new articles on your blog or exclusive deals and discounts. Give your clients such an opportunity.
Having armed with these list building methods and practical tips, you can create an engaged mailing list into time. Create subscription forms and personalized email campaigns for free in LIKE.TG with a bunch of pro tools.
MLP
A minimum loveable product (MLP) is an initial version of a product with basic functionality a company provides to its target audience. It aims at providing value, understanding customers, andreceiving their positive responses. MLP helps collect feedback,determinewhether people lovea certainproduct, and take into account their requirements.
In this article, we’ll unveil the importance of MLP and compare MLPwith MVP(minimum viable product). We’ll alsotalk about how to build a minimum loveable product.
Why is MLP important?
By creating test versions of products and offering them to customers, companies can get the insightscrucial for further product development. After launching a minimum loveable product, entrepreneurs can understand whether people get thecentral idea of the product and like it.
Launching the initial version of a product for the first time and presenting it toits target audience helps companies in product development.This allows businesses to avoid developing an ideal product that fails in the short run. This way, business owners can improve their products based on customers’ feedback andcreate an excellent product people would love.
MLP helps create a unique and innovative product, provide an excellent customer experience, and integrate with other helpful tools. After exploring customer feedback insights, a brand can create a product people like and establish brand awareness. A unique and exciting product will always drive attention and increase a company’ssales volume.
Now that you know the importance of having a minimum lovable product, let’s move to the difference between MLP and MVP.
MLP vs. MVP
Since MLP and MVP are often used interchangeably, there’s a point in discussing the difference between the two terms.
MLP is a test version of a product designed to delight customers and gain their love. It aims at providing solutions to customers and an excellent buying experience.
MVP is a version of a product a company launches for the first time. Ithasminimal features designed to solve customers’ problems and be viable in the market. It’s also necessary to test the product.
Let’s find out how tocreate a minimum loveable product to boost your product development process.
How to Build a Minimum Loveable Product
Here are thesteps you need to take to develop MLP for your company:
Pay attention to design. Your main aim as a brand owner is to ensure a seamless user experience, especiallywhen it comes tousability. Your website should be clear-cut, intuitive, credible, accessible, and relevant for users. To make customers love your brand and revisit your website, you need to ensure seamless interaction. You can enhance the user experience by developing responsive design, keeping your site simple and visually appealing, and using white space.
Create a community.You can create an online presence by building a community on social media. Collaborate with marketers to establish communities oncommunicationchannels your target audience uses most often and effectively promote your product. Consider conducting research to identify your customers’ preferable platforms. As a result, you’ll be able to gather loyal customers around your brand.
Share your story. Customers need to know more about the company they purchase from. That’s why you need to tell your story, share your goals, and manifest your principles.
Collectvaluable customer feedback. Of course, you can’t get customers’ love and trust simply by collecting data. However, listening to your customers and giving them what they need can do the trick. Feedback from consumers isimperative since it can highlight the areas of your product that require improvement. Your clients can tell what they like and don’t like about your product. Use this information to improve your product and give users the solution they need.
Implementonly minimal features. Remember, it’s vital to launch the minimal features and design to save costs. If you spend a lot ofmoney on a fully developed product your target audience doesn’tactually like, you risk paying twice.
Congrats, now you know the importance of MLP, the difference between MLP and MVP, and how to build MLP. Make use of your knowledge to improve your business, and employ LIKE.TG’s tools to promote your products.
Loyalty program
A loyalty program is a strategy in which a company provides its customers with rewards and discounts for being loyal. It helps businesses retain existing customers and increase product sales. A brand offers to become a part of a reward program to consumers who perform repeat purchases with this company.
In this article, you’ll find out the reasons to implement a loyalty program, its benefits, types, and explore some outstanding examples. You’ll also uncover how to create a loyalty program for your business.
Why should you create a loyalty program?
According to TechJury, 75% of customers will choose a company if it offers a reward program. If a business shows appreciation to its customers, they are more happy and willing to stay. The more clients stay, the better is customer retention. Loyal clients purchase more; that’s why it’s important to retain them in any way. Once a business runs a reward program, it encourages current customers to buy more often and spend more money to get a reward. As a result, a brand obtains huge revenues.
You’ll notice visible positive changes in product sales and customer lifetime value; they will increase with the right strategy. An accurately executed reward program and its incentives empower entrepreneurs to improve customer relationships. A company earns trust and becomes more credible and transparent.
Since acquiring new customers is a time and money-consuming process, it’s always better to retain the existing customers. A loyalty program is a great way to do it. With its help, you’ll reduce a customer churn rate. Moreover, loyal customers spend more and bring you better ROI. Once you have a strong base of loyal customers, you can attract new prospects. Keep in mind, 83% of consumers trust friends’ recommendations. Happy customers will become free promoters. They will recommend your company and its best products to their friends.
Besides all the listed reasons to implement a loyalty program, you should also see that it can provide customer insights. You’ll stay in the know of the way members interact with your program and develop new strategies to improve it.
Now that you know about the importance, let’s proceed to the benefits.
Benefits of Loyalty Programs
There are many benefits you can reap after you develop and implement an innovative loyalty program for your clients. With its help, you can
reduce customer acquisition costs;
drive revenue;
improve brand reputation;
gain trust;
encourage customer loyalty;
make more sales;
increase the number of new customers;
receive customers’ contact information;
increase the number of repeat purchases;
increase sales during slow seasons;
reward existing customers for staying loyal.
The pros are clear, so let’s find out how a loyalty program works.
How does a loyalty program work?
Companies’ owners create and run loyalty programs to bring benefits to both customers and businesses. Consumers get special offers, discounts, and gifts, while companies improve customer retention, boost customer lifetime value, and build loyalty.
Customers can become loyalty program members only if they have already completed repeat purchases. Companies reward their current clients in different ways. Most businesses give them points that consumers can redeem for a free product or discount. For example, Starbucks encourages its customers to earn Stars and save them for free drinks or food. If you collect 150 Stars, you’ll get a sandwich, oatmeal, or a handcrafted drink for free. There are also subscription-based programs where consumers can get a reward only after they subscribe.
You know how it works now, so it’s time to figure out the types so that you can choose the most suitable one.
Types of Loyalty Programs
When you consider a loyalty program for your business, you can encounter various types. You should be ready to identify the one that will comply with your purpose. Let’s look through the most popular for you to make a choice.
Subscription-based program. This type entails a customer paying for the service a certain fee to use the benefits of the company. A membership fee creates barriers for customers who can’t afford to pay for the service. This loyalty program is extremely popular among services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.
Points program. This is probably the most popular type. Companies provide customers with points for each purchase. Once they have enough points, clients can redeem them and get something for free or at a lower price. Clients can use their loyalty cards to check the number of points at any time. Starbucks, Petco Pals, and Mariott reward their existing customers with points they can redeem for something useful later.
Cashback program. Customers can get a certain percentage of the money they have spent with a business and use them later for different purposes. Banks often use this type of appreciation. Bank of America rewards their clients with cash back rewards for using their debit cards to pay for various products and services.
Tier-based program. This type relies on the levels customers can unlock only when they purchase and get a certain amount of points. For example, Sephora gives 1 point for $1 spent. Once customers earn a specific number of points, they can enter a new level with higher discounts and exclusive products.
A loyalty program works for you and your customers, so if you are interested in developing it for your brand, it’s time to delve into the process.
How to create a loyalty program?
To develop a loyalty program that brings visible results, you need to consider the following steps.
Conduct research on your current customers. To choose the right type of program and satisfy clients, you need to select an appropriate reward. Your customers will be happier to receive what they want and need. Consider conducting surveys and interviews to figure out the needs of your loyal customers. You should also know the following information: the number of products your existing customers buy and their type, the date they joined your brand, the level of satisfaction, and the revenue each brings to your business.
Get ready for the program. Once you conduct surveys, you need to analyze the results. It’ll help you uncover the things customers are interested in the most. Besides, they will help you know about their level of satisfaction with your company. After, you need to gather a team of representatives who will work with members of the loyalty program. They need to be friendly and outgoing to ensure a seamless experience and support at their best.
Choose CRM to set goals and track them. Setting goals is crucial, so you need to communicate with your team. Identify the targets you want to achieve after implementing the program. Goals should be accurate and achievable. For example, attract 40 new customers and close 150 deals in one month. To keep an eye on the progress, make use of CRM. LIKE.TG’s CRM allows you to control all the deals, receive payments, and collect customer data for free.
Decide on the budget. You should think of the budget you can provide for your team to run an amazing loyalty program. The type of program and its rewards depend a lot on your budget.
Choose customers for your program. Now you need to select people who will use the benefits of your program. Identify customers who purchase big, can buy more items, bring huge revenue to your brand, pay fast, and will be loyal in the future. Once you select these people, you have a list of clients to reward.
Work out the strategies that will interest your clients. At this stage, you need to think about rewarding your customers. It can be a discount when a person buys for a certain sum of money or a premium service. There are many ways to encourage customers to stay loyal: provide them with invitations to special events, reward them with free products, access to free shipping, birthday gifts, etc.
Now that you know how to create a program, let’s jump into some amazing examples to grab some inspiration.
Examples of Customer Loyalty Programs
Companies have hundreds of tactics and strategies to accommodate clients and boost loyalty. Loyalty programs are among the best options. That’s why you can see many programs from brands in different industries. We’ll now look at some of them to figure out how to create a successful one for your business.
Levi’s Loyalty Red Tab
Levi’s invites its customers to participate in a program and take advantage of it. Consumers can join the subscription-based loyalty program for free by simply providing personal details. Once you become a member of the program, you get instant access to new arrivals and limited-edition launches before other customers can. You get free shipping, birthday rewards, and access to exclusive promotions. As a program member, you can use the discount on custom embroidery.
Booking.com and Genius loyalty program
The famous booking service implemented a program based on levels. Users can create an account with lifetime access for free and enjoy the benefits. Once you create an account, you unlock Level 1 and its discounts. If you move forward and complete a certain amount of stays, you can get even more rewards. For example, a 15% discount, a free room upgrade, or a free breakfast.
Congrats, now you know how to design an outstanding program. Hope our examples will serve you as a hint in creating your perfect reward program.
Local marketing
Local marketing is a brand promotion strategy that targets consumers who live nearby. Usually, consumers can purchase products at offline points of sale.
In the article, we explain what local marketing is and why it is important. Also, we provide the top 6 ideas for small businesses.
Why is local marketing important?
According to GoGulf, 46% of Google users search for local information. Imagine how many clients you will be able to attract with a strong strategy focused on people who live nearby. This fact highlights the necessity of local marketing. Below we explain why it is so important and how it influences companies’ growth.
Local marketing is particularly vital for small businesses and brands producing perishable or fragile goods. It allows them to generate more leads and ensure that consumers will visit their store. Such a strategy is often cheaper because business owners don’t need to spend much money to reach a wide audience. Local marketing focuses only on consumers nearby that are more likely to buy your products.
Also, the local promotion allows companies to discover more about their clients and interact with them better. You can gain more insights into the needs, preferences, and behavior of people who live in a certain area. Moreover, concentrating on a specific audience helps businesses provide a better experience, leading to higher customer satisfaction and increasing loyalty.
Finally, the local promotion allows companies to get more word-of-mouth referrals. Semrush Blog states that 90% of consumers are more likely to trust a recommended brand; consequently, positive reviews can help you save money on advertising and significantly increase the number of clients.
Now you understand why local marketing is a powerful tool to boost your company and generate more sales. Let’s go further to discover ideas for small business promotion.
6 Local Marketing Ideas for Your Small Business
According to Nectafy, 88% of people who search for a local business visit it within 24 hours. This percentage is really impressive and means that discovering a local company is an incredibly vital step in the customer journey. Therefore, the main aim of local marketing is to increase the brand awareness of consumers who live nearby. Below we provide 6 ideas for small businesses to attract more potential clients to their company.
Partner with other companies in the area. Building strong networks is especially important for small businesses and can help them promote each other. For example, if you bake cakes and cookies, you can partner with coffee-to-go points in the area to sell your products to their clients. This strategy is extremely powerful when companies have similar values, buyer personas, and aims for future development.
Encourage people to create UGC and leave feedback. According to Forrester, 48% of people believe that user-generated content helps them discover new products. These statistics prove the importance of UGC in increasing the audience’s brand awareness and generating more potential clients. Collecting feedback can boost your company even further because 58% of people are ready to pay more to a company with good reviews. Moreover, testimonials help companies rank higher in search results and increase the click-through rate. That is why 88% of small companies actively track their online reputation.
Optimize your website and use local SEO. To attract more clients in your region, your company should have a user-friendly website that loads quickly. It is better to make it handy for mobile consumers because 61% of them are more likely to contact a local business with a convenient website. SEO is also essential as ‘Near me’ searches have grown more than 5 times in the last two years. To make your website rank higher in the results, you should add local-based keywords, provide data about your working hours, give contact information, and collect positive reviews.
Focus on the local audience on social media. Firstly, you should make your content more specific. You can set a location in your profile, tag it in each post, write more about local events and share photos from popular places nearby. Collaborate with local influencers whose audience may include your potential customers. Secondly, you can use hyperlocal advertising on social media to target people within a small area. Narrow your audience according to their place of living to save money and reach more consumers nearby.
Become a sponsor of events nearby. This way of offline marketing allows small brands to increase citizens’ awareness of their products. You can finance local concerts, sports competitions, or charity events to attract the attention of local media and make consumers more loyal to your company.
Try email marketing. Lots ofmarketers use email campaigns as the main channel to generate leads. It proves the effectiveness of email marketing, particularly for small companies. You can collect consumers’ email addresses by offering some discounts or providing free online materials after purchase. Staying in touch with such consumers will encourage them to come back again and again, which is extremely important for small businesses. With LIKE.TG, you can launch bulk email campaigns for free to help your business save money and make product promotions more effective.
Use these ideas to attract more clients and create a strong competitive advantage in the local market.
Congrats, now you know what local marketing is and why it is important. You can use our ideas to launch successful promotional campaigns.
