Ready to Gain market share over your compettitors? These key aspects of marketing will move the needle for your business.
Starting with a marketing strategy, this is the thing that ties everything together.
Marketing Strategy
The most important and first thing you absolutely must have if you want to grow your market share, is an integrated marketing strategy. An integrated marketing strategy focuses on creating a specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time-bound plan of action.
Your marketing strategy ties several different tactics across different marketing channels and makes them all work together.
When all activities on different platforms, even online and offline work together for the same goal, your spend becomes more efficient. Thus, your results can be tracked and more easily attributed to the correct source.
A great marketing strategy provides clarity not only on what you will be doing, but also how you will do it. It helps you stick to a budget when dealing with multiple platforms over the course of a business year.
Your marketing strategy will also place a time frame around what you’re doing so you ramp up marketing at key times of the year (for example Christmas or Easter), depending on your business cycle.
Many of the elements that follow form part of a great marketing strategy help you Gain Market Share, so let’s dive deeper into the art of Growing Market Share.
Data Insight and Analysis
Analysing data to come up with insights that inform strategy should be part of every marketing campaign you undertake. We help you to find and track the most important data for your business, work out then explain what the data means. Together, we are then able to develop a meaningful strategy.
An example many people may be familiar with is the discussion around the best time to post on social media. The answer to this question is never going to be 9:35 on a Wednesday morning. Sure, you may find that for your industry and your audience that it’s the best time to post, but it’s never going to be true in every instance.
The data involved here could be impressions. How many people have actually seen your post? Twitter and LinkedIn are good examples of platforms that let you see that data. The role of your agency or consultant is to point out the times your audience actually see your posts and also evaluate the times you get interactions such as likes and shares.
This is a simple example, but this kind of analysis is often missing. Where it is present, it isn’t extended to other areas of marketing where the data isn’t always presented on a platter.
Conversion Rate Optimisation
Looking at conversions from all channels, up to and including your website and landing pages, you can create amazing campaigns that convert. Get the right people onto your website via Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on social media, PPC from search engines and visitors from organic search, optimised to get you the most conversions possible.
Consider a situation in which you’ve managed to reach the maximum number of people you can with each campaign. Increasing your close rate by even 2% could mean hundreds of thousands of pounds added to your revenue. Imagine how much that will help you gain market share.
Looking for Better CRO to Gain Market Share?
The first thing to look at could be the productivity of your landing pages. Could the copy be improved? Are you using:
- a dedicated landing page?
- a landing page that forms part of your website?
- a page from your website about your product or service?
- just your homepage?
All of these page types are used in the construction of an effective website, but they don’t all convert at equal levels.
Further considerations for each page type:
- What copy are you using?
- What are the colours on the page?
- What colour is your call to action button?
- Do you even have a call to action at all?
- Are there too many distractions on the page?
Small changes can make a huge difference.
There are so many more elements of your campaigns that can be optimised including demographic targeting, ad images and copy. What elements do you think are most important for you?
User Experience
Arguably, the most important part of marketing your business in any context is being able to provide users with a great experience. Often abbreviated to UX, User Experience is not only how easy it is to move around your website, but also how easy it is to make an order or resolve a complaint.
Colours
One way you can help users to have a great experience, is by avoiding colours that clash. Picking colours that compliment each other makes it easier for people to consume your content. Black text on a purple background is a good (or terrible) example because it’s such a poor example of design. Not only does it look horrible, it also makes things very difficult for people who are colour blind.
We’re sure there’s going to be at least one example of an amazing website with black text on a purple background somewhere on the internet, so please do send them to us on Twitter via @MoreThanVenice.
Button Size
Or how about the experience of having a really small remove from basket button in contrast to an add to basket button which is huge?
In terms of CRO, this might have been a great move, to make sure visitors can easily buy your products. When it comes to UX, however, you will frustrate your visitors. These are aspects of your strategy that need to be balanced and that’s where great marketing consultancy comes in. Your consultant will help you make these kind of difficult decisions.
Business Process Optimisation
An often overlooked aspect of running a successful business is process optimisation. It is the act of looking objectively at all of your business processes, mapping them out and making them more efficient.
Create a bare bones, step-by-step process consisting of one line for each step. Make your sentences as short as possible to tell the reader what is being done. This becomes your standard process and defining a standard process ensures a consistent level of quality regardless of who conducts the task. Looking at these processes, you can then work out if there are any stages you can combine, or remove altogether.
Standard Operating Procedures
Your next step is to flesh out these bare bones processes, creating a set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). The SOPs define your processes in more detail, describing specifically what the team member executing the process needs to do step-by-step. SOPs should be written so simply that someone with zero knowledge of the process should be able to complete it.
You would create a set of SOPs for the same reason you would create a set of brand guidelines. The specific reason for your brand guidelines is to create a uniform image of your business that presents it in a positive light at all times. SOPs work in exactly the same way.
Process optimisation gives you a more streamlined business and employees who require less supervision. You’re empowering them to make decisions within a set framework which means less stress for you as a business owner.
Business Unification
A subset and huge benefit of business process optimisation is the unification of business processes. If you operate a business with several locations, creating standard operating procedures will help to ensure a consistent service across all locations. It’s exactly why you can expect a Big Mac to be a Big Mac in the USA and France, even if it might be called Le Big Mac.
Marketing Consultation
Marketing consultation is there to help you make the best decision possible by offering an independent, strategic perspective to help you make the difficult calls.
The biggest advantage of a using a consultant can be to:
- Acquire knowledge of things you haven’t done before
- Help to inform your decisions
- Balance different marketing needs to get the best of your strategy
- Developing new strategies
- Help you find the best service providers for you at your stage of growth
- Deliver learning and development opportunities
It’s the job of your consultant to highlight things you may not have considered previously, helping you bring everything together. The example given above in the UX section of a change made to benefit CRO that could have negative UX implications is the time a great marketing consultant will be able to step in and advise you.
Gain Market Share Now
Are you ready to Gain Market Share? Start with a quick 30 minute chat to get you started. Contact us to book a time, or if you want to talk to a real person right now, you can pick up the phone, 0121 517 0108.
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