The Sweetest Thing
Marketing Ideas to Help You Stand Tall
In today’s fast-paced world, making your business stand out within a market can be quite the challenge. This can be attributed to the fact that most markets are saturated and thus have extremely high levels of competition.
This 
being said, despite being within saturated markets, multiple companies have still managed to stand out and attract a strong following. Have a look at what it takes to make your marketing efforts more effective!
1. Know your audience.
It’s useless trying sell meat to a vegetarian and the same concept applies to all markets. By drawing out who your target audience members are, you can better customize your content and ensure that it reaches the intended audience. Identifying your target audience is easy, just picture who the end-user of your product/ service is and put yourself in their shoes. Think of what would attract their attention, what would get them to engage in social media posts and even which social networks they are most likely to use.
2. Be Creative
Creativity is defined as the production of novel, useful ideas or solutions to problems, inclusive of both the idea generation process and the final result produced (Amabile, 1996). Just posting products and prices on Facebook will not get you your intended results. It takes creativity to come up with new concepts and new ways of reaching your audience. Something that catches the eye, promotes viewer-engagement or incorporates humour is likely to be well-received. Nonetheless, when it comes to creativity, there are no guidelines so just think outside the box!
3. Content, Content, CONTENT!
In today’s day and age, content should be the foundation of any marketing strategy (Forbes, 2017). This can take different forms, from blog posts, to short video clips to easy- to- consume gifs, what’s important is that the content is actually enticing and not just being posted for the sake of uploading something. It’s important to keep the famous 80/20 ratio in mind, 80% of social media posts should be content aimed at creating a following, while the remainder 20% should aim at selling a particular product/ service. So go on, get creating!
4. Create an emotional connection
We all remember the Man on the Moon Christmas advert from John Lewis in 2015 or the Budweiser lost dog commercial. What made these adverts such a success was that people could relate and moreover, the message was put forward in such a strong way that it hit us all hard and stayed with us. Creating an emotional connection can be difficult at times, but just try to keep it as authentic as possible and give your organisation a human touch!
5. Don’t underestimate the power of video
A staggering 500 million people are watching online videos on Facebook alone. Moreover, 85% of Facebook videos are watched entirely without sound (Insivia, 2017). The power of video is changing the way we gather information, with the custom being to look for an online video for information on a particular topic. Be it a review, a demo or an entertaining advert, video has become an integral part of our life and has become a must in any marketing strategy.
6. Give something back
Once you’ve built up a following, it’s now time to make sure it stays that way. Holding social media competitions periodically can work two-fold, one it will generate more traffic to your page and two it will show your followers that you’re actually willing to give something back. You would be amazed the lengths some people would go to for a chance to win a small gift basket.
7. Don’t forget to beg your family and friends to share your content!
We know we all tend to do it sometime or another!
