In this week’s blog post we will be discussing…

All things marketing! Making sure you are promoting and advertising your brand the right way can be difficult. We are going to talk you through a few simple steps to help you along the way.

For a chat about marketing or if you would like us to help with your social media get in touch.

Step 1 – Giving your post’s real value

To give real value to your social media posts you need to have a strategy in place. Social media is a huge platform to generate sales and build your brand on, however if you get it wrong you could end up giving yourself a bad reputation.

To start your strategy off we recommend you getting a spreadsheet or whiteboard (whichever you find easiest) and plot your posts. Ask yourself these 3 questions:

  • Who is your target audience?
  • What platforms will you be posting on?
  • What do you want to post about?

Once you have the answers to all these questions you can then start to map out your marketing strategy.

When you have a clear plan set in place, we then recommend that you aim to plan at least 2 weeks worth of posts.

There are platforms out there which allow you to schedule posts and distribute them to multiple social media platforms, alternatively some of the major social media platforms will allow you to schedule posts with them (this can be slightly more time consuming, get in touch with our social media team and we will point you in the right direction).

Scheduling posts is a great way to make sure your posts are consistent, it also allows you to make time to make sure each post follows the same / similar style which will create your brand.

Step 2 – Email marketing

This is probably the oldest marketing trick in the book, and since social media became big, email marketing has not been as popular across some industries. However we believe email marketing is still a great source of marketing.

There are different types of email’s that can either be used for selling a product or service, being informative or to give updates about your company. The key to email marketing is to make your email interesting, be it with a nice image or an interesting message.

Like social media posting you can also schedule emails, however we do recommend that you make sure you post at reasonable times and not too much – the last thing you want is to be moved into someone’s spam folder.

The first step to email marketing is creating your subscribers list, with GDPR now in place you will need to make sure that you have the option for customers to ‘un-subscribe’ from your emails, and make sure you remove the customer from your list.

To build up your email marketing list, you can offer visitor’s something in exchange for their email, for example ‘Free trail’, ‘E-book’, ‘Competitions’ etc. Get in touch if you would like some more ideas on how you can build up your list.

Once you have your list you will need to start creating your email content. We suggest creating some interesting images showcasing your brand, it can also be a good idea to plan what you want to tell your subscribers, be it a new offer you have coming up, a new award or accreditation you have gained, a new blog post or product, etc. Make your email interesting to the customer and watch the sales roll in.

Step 3 – PPC (Pay Per Click)

PPC stands for pay-per-click, a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It’s a way of buying customers to your site instead of waiting for them to find your website naturally.

Creating ads is something we can do for you get in touch with our team for more information. PPC is one of the most popular forms of marketing and advertising and we recommend if it is your first time trying out PPC ads that you get advice or ask a professional to help.

How it works

Advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their online ads, for example have you ever been online and searched for something, and then find that the next time your online be it social media or search engines you are shown adverts of a similar or the same thing you searched for recently? This is because search engines such as Google and social media follow what you search and then show you the adverts relevant to give you the best user experience and because companies have paid to show you those ads because you are now a potential customer.

To get ahead of your competitors you will need to outbid them so plan a marketing budget to give yourself the best chance.

These are just some hints and tips which can help you get ahead of the marketing game, if you would like some more information on any of these services or any other services TOMC have to offer, feel free to get in touch with one of our friendly team members.

Hope to speak to you soon,

Keep an eye out for our next blog post, where we will be discussing the importance of giving your website a refresh!

Thanks for reading,
TOMC Team