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There's a lot to be said about marketing tactics. While they shouldn't be confused with overall strategy, they're still a very important aspect of any marketing campaign. You should choose your tactics carefully, and bring all your best resources to the table when executing them.
But first, you've got to decide which marketing channels you'll be using to deploy your tactics.
Picking the right channels is incredibly important. The channels you use will have a big impact on what's tactically possible, the audience you'll impact, and how you execute your tactics.
Digital marketing channels
You could be forgiven for thinking that the only channels worth focusing on these days are digital. And, to be fair, digital marketing is pretty cool. It's shiny, exciting, has a ton of potential, and is evolving all the time. You can achieve an incredible amount with digital marketing.
That being said, it's a mistake to focus solely on digital channels. You can still achieve things with traditional channels that aren't possible with digital channels. Even better, you can sometimes combine the two to brilliant effect.
SEO
The purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to make sure that all your web content is optimised for maximum visibility to search engines. A good SEO strategy will work on making sure that your brand's online presence is:
- Easy for search engine crawlers to find
- High quality, since the perceived quality of content has a huge impact on rankings
- Highly relevant for consumers
- Achieving good engagement rates
Keywords are a big part of SEO. Peppering your content with particular keywords will help search engines to favour your content when people search for those keywords. But be careful, search engines are sophisticated enough to know when you're keyword stuffing.
Ultimately, it's high-quality content that will get you the best SEO results. When you do use keywords for SEO, make sure that they're used naturally and are relevant to the topic at hand.
PPC
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is basically a search-engine specific ad channel. You know those ads that appear alongside your Google search results? They're PPC ads.
For example, a search for dog food will throw up a range of sponsored results followed by the organic search results. The advertiser pays Google for each click that their ad receives. In return, Google promises to display their advert beneath relevant searches.
In order to give search engines a fighting chance of partnering your PPC ads with the right searches, pay particular attention to:
- The keywords your ad uses
- The location you're targeting
- The landing page, the content that is displayed after the click
Social media
Social media marketing is a huge topic in its own right. There are many social media channels, all with their own different formats, audiences, strengths, and weaknesses. TikTok will need different tactics to Facebook, and Snapchat is different again.
Social media platforms offer access to enormous audiences. They're also versatile. You can be very inventive with social media marketing, and push your creatives in front of hundreds of thousands of eyes for relatively low cost.
The flipside is that you'll have to work very hard to get the attention of all those people. Social media users tend to log on for the social part of social media, and have learned to filter out the many brands competing for their attention. So, to make an impact, you will need a strong strategy focused around relevant, engaging, attention-grabbing content.
Email marketing is one of the most consistently successful marketing channels of all time. Email gives marketers a direct line to individual customers, making it perfect for lead-nurturing, re-engagement, and general relationship building.
You can also send out a huge variety of content types and formats in an email, making it one of the most versatile channels around. A good email marketing platform will give you in-depth analytics on every campaign and allow you to segment and target your list to a granular level.
Website and e-commerce
Your website is like your digital shopfront. It's often the first place that prospective customers will head. If they like what they see, congratulations, you've acquired yourself some hot leads. But if they don't, they're unlikely to come back.
If you're in eCommerce, your website is doubly important. It isn't just your digital shopfront, it's your actual shop. You need to make sure that it's easy for people to find what they need, and that checkout and delivery are smooth and intuitive.
Traditional (offline) channels
Traditional marketing channels still have a lot going for them. Things like billboards and physical product demos have a substance to them that's hard to replicate digitally. What's more, it's a lot harder for people to filter out or ignore traditional marketing channels the way they do online.
Trade shows and exhibitions
Trade shows and exhibitions are a great way to build up brand recognition and expand your network. They're more common in B2B industries, but there are sometimes opportunities to exhibit B2C, depending on your product.
The great thing about marketing your product in person is that people can interact with your physical product, or chat face-to-face with the people providing your service. If you want to convince people of the quality and usefulness of your product, there's no quicker way than letting them handle and demo it.
Direct mail
Snail mail may seem old fashioned, but especially for older audience demographics, it can still be one of the best ways to get your customers' attention.
For example, many cosmetics companies use the post to send out free samples of their product. If your product can be squished down into a postable sample size, using the post to give out free samples is a great way to quickly generate a lot of highly qualified leads.
Radio
Radio is back in a big way. Podcasts are one of the most popular forms of content in existence, and there are hundreds of thousands to choose from. If you can get your product an ad slot on a popular podcast, you can count on a large and attentive audience.
Pound for pound, radio advertising gives much greater ROI than video advertising, and can be more intensively targeted based on listener demographics.
Television
Television advertising is in a strange place right now. For a long time, it was struggling due to the proliferation of streaming services. People are willing to pay through the nose for an uninterrupted, ad-free stream.
But that looks set to change. Platforms like Amazon and even Netflix have reintroduced limited adverts on their streams. While it's not been very popular with viewers, the move has piqued the interest of powerful advertisers. It's definitely worth keeping an eye on this channel in the near future.
