Patty Hughes
Small business owners often ask where the best place is to spend their marketing efforts and dollars. Social media? Email marketing? Paid ads? Direct mail?
The answer is, there is no one answer. As a matter of fact, it’s critical to use a variety of marketing tactics to reach your audience and get the best results out of your efforts.
There are a few considerations when deciding where you should spend your marketing dollars. First and foremost, you need to know where your target audience resides. Are the people you’re trying to reach more likely to be on social media, getting their information by email, or by print or direct mail? Chances are, it’s a combination of several platforms, so why choose only one?
SOCIAL MEDIA
Using social media helps you build brand awareness, increase your customer base, and connect with current and past customers to build better relationships. In fact, one study revealed 90 percent of marketers say social media is important to their business. Unless you pay for ads, social media is free (except for your time!).
EMAIL MARKETING
Email marketing can be affordable as well, with options for free platforms like Mailchimp, or reasonably priced options like Constant Contact. You have more control over your marketing message with email, as you can segment your lists to customize your marketing to your intended audience. Typical ROI on email marketing is 30 percent.
DIRECT MAIL
Direct mail, while more of an initial investment than social media or email marketing, actually has one of the highest returns on investment of all marketing tactics, right behind social media and email marketing, at 29 percent ROI. That might not seem very high, but when you consider that paid search has an ROI of 23 percent and online display at 16 percent, that number looks a lot more attractive.
Which brings us to the last consideration: being able to measure results. Social media platforms provide analytics to see how well your efforts are performing. Email marketing platforms also provide insights such as delivery rate, open rate and click through rate. Direct mail provides very specific demographics since the recipient list is predetermined, making measurement of results easier.
These are just three examples of marketing tactics available, but it helps drive home the point: small business owners would be wise to incorporate several strategies into their marketing efforts. If you’re not sure which tactics are right for your small business, engage the help of a marketing professional to help determine what will work for you.
Visit azstrategicmarketingservices.com to get a free marketing quote for your small business.