I was thinking about some of the best ways to add value to marketing efforts when I came across this article. While it focuses on bad marketing habits, perhaps a more pressing concern is that of diminished business opportunities with your current online and or offline marketing activities. While there are a number of things that one could look at in terms of conversion rates and site optimization, perhaps some of the fundamentals need to be looked at or at the least re-examined. Take a look at the following marketing habits and let me know how you fare.
1. Not networking with people in the real world
This requires you to actually head out of the office or home and press the flesh and have conversations with people one on one or in groups. On many occasions this marketing habit could potentially lead to a referral or a new customer or acquaintance that could help out with one or more problems that you are facing if not providing a direct dollar increment to your business/project. If you are stumped for ideas try one of the these to start with:
- Find and attend an industry conference or training and pay especial attention to the networking times.
- Attend a local business networking group in your city.
- Invite industry bloggers in your area out for coffee.
- Use Meetup.com to find relevant groups nearby.
- Get out and meet up with your friends and their friends.
2. Ignoring the power of blogs
Business blogs not only provide another touchpoint for your business, but also provide a means whereby the business is no longer seen to be a faceless, nameless entity. In otherwords it provides a human element which in turn encourages customer loyalty and referrals. It also provides SEO benefits in the long run and can provide insight into what interests customers and gain their feedback.
3. Not harnessing the power of social media
While social media provides may of the same benefits to businesses as blogging it can also be used to gain consumer data that can used to tweak or alter products or service offerings. Perhaps one of the bigger issues that businesses seem to ignore with this marketing habit is that social media marketing fuels a websites SEO. Social signals play a role in a website’s natural search result rankings as according to Google and Bing who confirmed this back in 2010.
Going down the social media marketing route does take daily effort but when it can improve your relationship with your customers, connect them to products and/or services they want to buy, increase the chances of ranking highly in the natural search results then why wouldn’t you want to include social media marketing into your online promotional plan?
4. Not providing any value to people
Perhaps what underpins all of the above 3 points is the value that you are imparting to people. Relationships will be harder to maintain and keep if there appears to be no value being provided. So a relevant question to ask would be in what ways are we imparting value to people that we meet and engage with?
Now I am only too aware that these marketing habits apply to me as well so please do let me know what you think of the above and in what areas you would like to hear from me.
