When it comes to marketing, there’s definitely no shortage of techniques and strategies that businesses can employ to get their message across and make their products and services known to the world. However, this wide variety of options which is generally regarded as something positive can also pose a challenge to marketers.
With so many options to choose from, it can be quite difficult for them to tell the difference between effective and ineffective marketing strategies and decide which methods would work best in each specific case.
Choice overload not only makes the decision-making process infinitely more complicated, but it can also make marketers focus too much on certain aspects while completely ignoring other elements that can be just as or even more important than the ones they devote their attention to. As a result, marketers often overlook factors or entire marketing areas that can drive great results and make a positive difference to their business.
This doesn’t mean you should test out every marketing strategy under the sun and see if it works for you or not. But given that marketing is a constantly shifting environment, it’s worth exploring your options from time to time and checking to see if there aren’t any details that you might have left out. So, here are some of the most commonly ignored marketing factors you should know about.
Internal marketing
Most marketers get so caught up in promoting the company’s products or services to the outside world that they completely forget about promoting them to their internal audience. In fact, some of these professionals are completely unaware that there’s such a thing as an internal audience.
Wondering why internal marketing matters? When you’re promoting your company’s goals, purpose, vision, products, and services to your team members you make them more aware of their own roles and contribution to the smooth running of the organization, and so they become more knowledgeable and engaged. If you can get employees to care about their job and the business as a whole, their motivation and productivity levels will increase, and that will benefit everyone.
Leveraging data
These days, companies collect tons of data from various sources through a multitude of channels. Theoretically, this data should provide marketers with valuable insights into different aspects of their business, so they can come up with innovative solutions to the challenges they face and make better-informed decisions. Practically, a lot of the data is either useless or is not being used to its full potential, and can even sway them in the wrong direction.
As a marketer, you need to understand that data only becomes valuable when it’s complete, accurate, relevant, and organized so you can extract meaningful insights from it. Therefore, you have to tackle both the volume of information you receive and its quality, to reap the benefits. In the current business environment, that can only be done by employing big data analytics solutions. Get your data in check, and you’ll be able to unlock numerous opportunities for business growth.
Customer experience
A lot of companies boast about going above and beyond to provide the best possible experience to their customers, but do they really know how to do that? In many cases, they do have the willingness and desire to deliver an impeccable experience, but good intentions are worth nothing if they aren’t backed up by actions.
If you want to optimize your customer journey, you need to take into account all the points of contact between your business and your clients. Once you map out every touchpoint in your customer journey, you can work on improving each and every one of them.
Try to see things from the customers’ perspective and figure out what would make the interaction more enjoyable for them. Something as simple as using business hold music instead of greeting customers with silence can influence their response and perception of your business, so every single detail counts.
Existing clients
It’s no news that businesses are always making efforts to attract more people and expand their customer base. That’s what keeps the business going and growing, so it’s a very productive approach. What’s not so great about it is that it often leaves existing customers out of the equation.
Just because someone has purchased products or services from you repeatedly doesn’t mean you’ve won them over forever and your job is done. Customer relationships, like all other types of relationships, need to be nurtured over time if you want people to stick around.
If you don’t put in the effort to convince your existing clients to choose you over and over again, nothing is stopping them from switching over to one of your competitors where they can get the attention and appreciation they deserve.
What other Reads?
Customer support
Every time a client encounters an issue with a company’s product or service, or when they require a bit of guidance and extra information related to the company that they’re doing business with, customer support steps in to provide solutions and meet their needs. No one knows better about clients’ pain points better than the members of the customer support team because this is where direct interactions with clients happen.
Unfortunately, marketers sometimes forget about this valuable resource that they have in their own backyard and continue to work separately. As a marketer, you might want to set up a different dynamic and learn to collaborate with the customer support department. This will give you access to customer feedback and information based on which you can determine the changes you need to make to your marketing strategy to achieve better results.
Marketing, whether it’s traditional or digital, is an extremely complex and continually transforming field. So, your success as a marketer largely depends on your ability to keep up with these developments and identify the best tactics and strategies that can help you reach your business objectives.
