What is the best way to market your business?

[Bjarke Jensen]

I am looking at different ways to market my business, and would love to get some advise on what other have done and where they got most out of the money they spend on marketing their company.

I have a consultancy company that provide Quality Management training and consultancy support for other companies and have been looking at different options like:

Pay per click from Google/Bing/Yahoo
Get flyers created and send to relevant companies
Sponsoring an event
Hiring a sales person
Etc

Anyone with some good advise on what worked well for them, and what was money wasted compared to the result.

 

[ganah-allan]

The most effective marketing so far that I have spent on is a posting of a sticky thread to an advertising section/forum of a related community forums. Define your niche. Join relevant forums. Contribute as an active member. Then, once you gain grounds, post an ad (even paid ads).

 

[BusyVids]

The fastest growing trend in successful online marketing is video marketing. Everyone loves video. Youtube is the largest online video platform and is owned by Google. If video wasn't important then Google would not have paid $1.65 billion for it.

YouTube gets over 1 billion unique visitors worldwide per month, who between them generate more than 180 billion page views.

Video is huge because it engages, entertains and informs. It offers visual and audio options and is relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of advertising. And videos stick around for a long time. Video on your website also helps with SEO.

 

[XanderMarketing]

Hi Bjarke,

We've worked with a number of consulting and training companies supporting them with marketing. My advice is generic now as I don't know your business but some things to consider:

- Make sure you have a great website which is clear, clearly says what you do and who you do it for and has strong call to actions (free consultation, book training course) etc
- Yes consider PPC and SEO, also look at LinkedIn PPC where you can target decision makers directly
- Lots of companies offer quality management training and consulting - content is one way to stand out and be a 'thought leader'. This content could be in the form of white papers, infographics, blogs or anything else... then can be distributed through email, social media, the website, advertising etc.
- I would encourage email marketing over direct mail/flyers - and a mix of content led emails with the occasional offer
- Sponsoring an event would be something to consider for the future

That's a start...you may be interested in our free guide on our website too:

10 ways Professional Service companies can increase their profits through marketing: http://xandermarketing.com/resources/professional-services-marketing-guide/

Hope that helps...

Alex

 

[Bjarke Jensen]

Thanks a lot for the advice, it is very much appreciated.

I am currently looking at different opportunities which I am recording down with all the details, I will then review them against each other, how well they best reach our target group.


@Allan: Thanks, I have just started looking for different forums related to my niche.

@BusyVids: Thanks, I am currently looking at creating some online training sessions and will properly make some short inductions to each of the for promotion and add them on my site.

@Alex, Thanks, your post added a few additional items on my action list that I want to look into, also I just downloaded you guide and will have a read through it.


Regards

Bjarke

 

[dealmegood.co.uk]

google adwords has been very effective marketing tool for us as you can set any price limits and areas we currently come top of google when you type numerous sentences or keywords to do with promoting your business etc... and have seen more traffic due to this

 

[HazelC]

networking - go out and meet real people

 

[abhay_walia]

Hi,
See technically speaking, on-page SEO methods can improve your website's rank on SERP's and can fetch a decent amount of traffic(organic traffic) on your website.A proper optimisation of your website can make it appear at top pages of search engines for a long period of time.On the other hand, off-page methods like content marketing, blogging, video marketing,pdf,ebooks etc can yield fast traffic to your website, if done on regular basis.So, for your website to get a fair amount of traffic,it requires a blend of both. Read Ocodewire's blogs to know more about it. Hope this helps.

 

[boring-friday]

ppc-hire someone who knows what they're doing(probably 10% of people selling it) or complete waste.
flyers- could work, try spending £2-300 on it, do them all the same time and try to monitor results. Probably a waste though
sponsoring a event- almost definitely a waste
sales person- I'd pick/trial this one

 

[StevePoster]

When it comes to marketing your business there are lots of ways to considered such as participating in an active online community which is related to your field and video marketing but this will be effective if seen and reach the targeted audience as well as the important part is the engagement of the users to your product and services.

 

[anhhaoueb]

You can use social network such as LinkedIn. It is great place for people who are seeking for a job so you can take the advantage. For your company, you can try:
- Building an active company page on LinkedIn: To increase brand awareness, you need to produce contents that attracts a wide audience, ex: Company's services, blogs, related articles. You should post frequently but not too much to avoid spams.
- Joining related groups on LinkedIn: It is a way to listen what your audience is talking about, it also is time for your company to interact or offer the advice.
- Creating your own LinkedIn group: Creating and invite relevant members and some prospects to join your group can be useful. With a LinkedIn group, you can message directly to members' email inboxes once a week. It's a great way to deliver special promotions or campaigns to them.
I hope that it will be little help for you.

 

[Bjarke Jensen]

Thanks a lot for all the advice.
I have used adword a little in the past, but decided to start using it again with a small campaign to supplement some of the other things.
Participating in active online communities is one of the things I am focusing on at the moment, as for LinkedIn, then I have company page there, but have not used it for much else. Definitely something I will spend some time on getting setup properly and use a bit more.
Again thanks a lot for the advice.

 

[fisicx]

However....

Whatever marketing methods you use people will end up on your website. And that's where it will all fall to pieces, there is no point in attracting new leads of you then fail to convert. Join the forum as a full member and get a website review. You may be surprised and what this reveals.

 

[telemax]

To the OP. What makes you unique from all the other companies out there doing the same thing? What benefit can you bring to a potential customer? What return on investment would they gain from spending money with you?

 

[Novevan]

If you can pay some money.

You can buy ads

buy lots of ads.

 

[StephenJackson]

Twitter Ads maybe? Depending on your business and target market, you can get some good results if you market it to right demographic and interests and get some low CPC in the process. If your business though is only geared towards the UK, then you'll be paying a premium marketing it to the UK on Twitter, but IF you are worldwide, target some low costing CPC countries.

 

[Marcus Allen]

there are various ways. But content marketing is great. Make sure you know who the influencer in your niche are create great content ideally if you could guest post for them it would increase the amount of eyes.

For instant returns however I would probably use ads in most people don't buy 1st time so use retargeting to follow them around the internet - other websites Facebook etc (the are interested in some way) offer a lead magnet something of value to them in exchange for email. Rather than offer them your flagship product offer them something small i exchange for cash so they become a customer. then offer them your core product. If at any time after they have given you their email they decline an offer you can follow up in an email series offering value and re offering the offers.

 

[Jeff Nev]

There is no right or wrong answer and every type of business is different. What works for one company may never work for you and it's all about finding your target market and where they are responsive.

I think that in this age of multi online channel marketing it's worth remembering that sometimes the tried and tested methods of days gone by can still yield great results.

There are some great free webinars that Vuelio regularly run which often detail methods by which businesses can merge traditional PR and marketing methods with those of the internet age, such as influencing journalists and syndicating high quality press releases. Well worth taking a look through their back catalogue as I've found a whole host of great tips from going through these webinars:

http://www.vuelio.com/uk/pr-marketing-webinar/