Effective marketing is a powerful tool for businesses as it builds brand awareness, forms strong relationships with customers and keeps companies competitive in the market. It’s no surprise that some of the leading brands in today’s industry are constantly coming up with new and interesting marketing techniques and focusing on their marketing efforts; they see the results in their millions of social followers, increase in profits and the culture that is cultivated around their products.
It does, however, take time and money to research and figure out what works, so why not just learn from those that have already done it? Let’s take a look at some marketing techniques leading brands have used so you too can reap the benefits.
1. Focus on building your social following
With Facebook having over 1.8 billion active users, Instagram over 400 million and Twitter roughly 320 million, the power of social media is no secret. Whether you’re a new business or an established company, there should always be a strong focus on building a larger following across various platforms and maintaining a reputation online.
How is this done? Red Bull is known for getting close to 70,000 likes per Instagram picture by posting photos of extraordinary people doing unbelievable things. They know their brand values — action and inspiration — and they know that’s what their audiences enjoy, so they maximize engagement by showing them content that they want to see.
You can try using Facebook’s business tools to do comprehensive research into your customers — their likes, dislikes, and interests — and then match that with your product experience to drive traffic to your social content.
2. Confront rumors in a positive way
For a successful business, nasty rumors can be a marketing disaster. They not only have the potential to ruin a brand reputation’s but can very quickly break the customer’s trust that has taken so long to build, impacting future performance of the company. It’s a fear that many marketers have to face every day, and it’s important that if ever faced with negative talk or false statements, you react in a positive way.
Whether it’s a small issue like a disgruntled customer complaining online, or more widespread talk in the industry, there’s nothing worse than meeting the rumor with anger and frustration. Leading company, Amway faced a lot of backlash regarding their business being a pyramid scheme, and how did they react? Through engaging and informative content, the company took the opportunity to educate their customers and teach them more about the brand, turning a negative situation into an incredibly positive result.
3. Be sure your new campaigns have a strong concept and are timely
An engaging and relevant concept that sparks the interest of your target market, coupled with a well-timed release, are two of the biggest factors for consideration when launching new marketing campaigns. McDonalds perfectly encapsulated this idea in 2017 with their Reindeer Ready campaign. It told the story of a little girl who saved a McDonald’s carrot stick for the reindeers.
Not only was it a sweet story that would appeal to the family-focused demographic of the company’s audience, but it related to the upcoming holiday that is on most people’s minds, making it perfectly timed. Doing the appropriate research into your audience to figure out what will attract them is vital to creating an effective concept and finding the right release time so make sure your campaigns are backed by knowledge and always try and be creative.
Marketing your company well can be a time-consuming, expensive and grueling process, but the rewards for your brand are incomparable. If you’re not sure where to start, take a look at leading companies that do it well already and learn from their strategies and ideas.