Improve your marketing with these 7 tips

Marketing is the art of bringing the demand and supply sides of the market together. It is an important part of doing business, even though you may be tempted to cut your marketing costs in these uncertain times. Influencer and marketing, technology, and innovation expert Jesse van Doren shares 7 tips to take your marketing efforts to the next level.

Jesse van Doren started improving websites with Search Engine Optimisation at the tender age of 11. Now, he helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses. He has lots of experience with marketing issues like improving customer loyalty and finding new customers. .

To improve his customers’ business processes, Van Doren uses data-driven marketing. Recently, he was brought in by a Tesla leasing company: “I helped them track visitor behaviour on their websites. We monitored where they came from and what articles they read, for example. Now, they can use these data to predict next month’s sales figures.”

Accelerate your business with Van Doren’s 7 valuable tips:

1. Focus on the changing needs of your target audience

Good marketing stresses how your product or service will benefit the target audience. During the Corona pandemic, these benefits might be different than before. Van Doren recommends calling your customers or doing a small survey. “How are they doing? What are they doing? Have their priorities changed?” This input will provide insight that can help you respond.

2. Automate your marketing

Do you send practically identical emails to several customers every week? And do you post on social media every day? “Chances are you will save time and reach more customers by automating your marketing.” Think about the following:

• Support questions

  Do you often find yourself writing the same email over and over again? There is a simple solution: create a template (in Dutch). With these ready-made texts, you can answer questions with the press of a button.

• Quote requests

  If you get lots of quote requests, automation software that sends quotes based on benchmarks may be a good idea. “It is particularly interesting for businesses that send out vast quantities of quotes”, Van Doren adds. Go to offerte.tips (in Dutch) for a list of online quote software (in Dutch).

• Dashboards

  Dashboards like Hootsuite and Tailwind will let you schedule social media posts and tweets in advance. These solutions can save you a lot of time.

3. Build your network

Van Doren is very clear: “Too many business owners are overly focussed on direct business. In the long run, brand awareness will help you more. If you have a reputation, people will flock to you on their own accord. Why invest in reaching out to customers if you can have them come to you? Having a big network can be very valuable.”

Setting marketing goals for your social media posts is a good place to start. “Try to collect email addresses of potential customers online and build a relationship with them.”

Networking goes beyond the meet-ups of your local business association. “You can also expand your network by joining forces with other business owners to promote a particular topic that you all care about. That is how I started working with my suppliers to find ways to combat food waste. It is interesting to see what others are doing and what you can improve yourself. Through Facebook and LinkedIn, you build on that. Somehow, you will always get an assignment out of it."

4. Start with people you know

Your existing customers are the easiest audience to reach. Think about what else you can do for them. You do not have to introduce yourself, because they already know you and your excellent service. “It might be a bit scary, but it has never been more important to reach out to people you already know”, Van Doren stresses. “You do not have to sell them anything: even asking good customers, friends, or family to share something on social media can be a great help. Alternatively, you can ask them to write you a testimonial.”

5. Experiment and duplicate your success

Repeat successful campaigns. In other words: test, test, and test again. And monitor the results. Run A/B tests and check which of the 2 versions is most successful. Are you looking to collect contact details? In that case, you could try to tweak your landing page. Launch both versions and see which one performs best. The change can be small, like turning a sentence into a question to get people to ask themselves: ‘Do I need this?’. “I have seen how changing even a single sentence can boost the response rate by 10%.”

Alternatively, you could create a landing page on which the contact form is at the top rather than at the bottom. Useful tools for such A/B testing include www.unbounce.com (not free), Survey Talent (free) or a plugin (free) for a Wordpress website.

6. Do not skimp on marketing

Experience shows that good marketing pays for itself. “The pandemic might have forced you to cut costs, but remember that less marketing means fewer customers and less turnover. And who knows, the competition may have even stepped up their marketing efforts.”

Before terminating all your campaigns in one swoop, analyse how you benefited from them. Taking the previous tip to heart will tell you which campaigns were most successful. Cut back on underperforming campaigns.

You can also consider low-budget marketing options, like long-term Search Engine Optimisation and social media. “Try to look beyond the Corona pandemic.”

7. Fail fast

“Your first time riding a bike was probably a big failure. Conclusion: you learn by doing. Making mistakes is fine.” The trick is to avoid spending too much time on a perfect first draft. Look for quick wins and low-hanging fruit. “You do not have to be perfect right away. You could take a whole month to write a whitepaper, for example: spending weeks on the first draft, proofreading, and layout. Alternatively, you could run a campaign first. Do people want a whitepaper? If people sign up, promise that you will send them a whitepaper in a month’s time. While you are at it, you can also ask your customers what they are most interested in.”

KVK Business Challenge

Ready to seize new opportunities and acquire new customers with these tips? Head to the KVK Business Challenge online innovation platform. Major companies present new challenges on the platform every month. Do you think that your company has a solution for these corporate problems? Then take on the challenge and chat with innovation managers at major corporates. Who knows, you might be working with one of the participating companies in no time.