So you’re a business and you’re ready to start working with a marketing company but your not sure what company to pick or how to pick it.
There are a couple of things you need to identify before you can pick any contenders to see whom you’re going to spend your money on. The last thing you want to do as a company is to spend money on a company that doesn’t specialize in a part of marketing that is going to be most successful with your company.
What are the most prominent types of marketing a small businesses can do?
Before we proceed, I do need to say that yes, there are hundreds of ways to do marketing, but these are a few primary used.
The primary types of marketing are Outbound Digital, Inbound Digital, and physical.
To determine what kind of marketing is going to be best for you is to look at the three primary types of marketing to see what will work for you.
Physical Marketing:
This is great for businesses that need to have a physical presence or a tangible item that they sell. What does that mean?
Companies like window cleaners, landscapers, and retail companies. Physical marketing is a conglomerate of various methods. Each of them is typically associated with cost.
It’s not a bad thing but something to consider; printing flyers, direct mailings, signs, and signage that may exist in places around the business. The cost associated with these is usually higher because they cost money, Think: materials, ink, and then the normally associated cost of a marketing company designing it.
For older businesses that physical marketing has worked for years, it’s slowly making a comeback. As time goes on, physical marketing – especially direct mailing -is dying out. This is making it cheaper for companies to do, and even better, it’s becoming more effective.
Businesses have started to get into more digital marketing, making the number of direct mailings significantly less allowing postings to work better.
Physical marketing is also changing with local businesses allowing a TV to be placed in their business for people to view with revolving ads. Yes, that may be digital but the company that organizes it has to pay for the physical device.
Other forms of this marketing are making promotional products for your company to give away that will allow the recipient to remember you. This covers fliers, backpacks, bottles, and anything else you can put your logo on.
This can be very effective if, for example, you’re a wine company and give out drip stops with your logo on it. It’s something relevant and has your logo on it.
Is it going to drive sales?
Possibly! It will help you stay top of mind though.
Another example is a doctor’s office handing out tiny bottles of hand sanitizer or small first aid kits. It’s a simple, effective, and relevant way to stay top of mind.
Outbound Marketing:
This form of marketing is among the most common for marketing companies to sell.
Why is that? Outbound marketing companies were some of the first companies to come to the market when digital started to become popular.
What are the typical services sold by these companies?
They sell everything from TV ads, social media ads, website ad space, Google ads, geo-targeting, and most other forms of digital ads.
This form of advertising can be highly effective for companies that can perform a service anywhere or have a broader geographic location that you can work in. Typically it’s a rapid ROI on money spent.
Hyper-targeted ads are very useful and cost friendly if you’re a business looking to grow your presence.
The catch with ads is you can only be targeted to a certain extent. If it’s a marketing company that doesn’t know exactly what they are doing it can be a costly mistake.
If you do work with a company that does more of an outbound marketing style, then you may want to get some references on clients they have worked with.
That may sound silly, but if they don’t have a proven track record going with them, it may be something you want to air on the side of caution with.
They are usually experts in various ways to get you “clicks” people to visit your website. They get those “clicks” from all the above methods to pay for ad space on the major platforms.
If your goods and services are for a target audience or demographic, these platforms are very good at getting you in front of the right people, but that doesn’t mean those people are ready to buy. However, it will help get you the traffic you need.
This method is especially good at generating revenue for your company quickly. Their results are good but do come at a cost because of the paid ad space.
Inbound Marketing:
What is inbound marketing?
It’s very new to the media and marketing world and is quickly becoming the very best way to grow companies.
Inbound marketing works by utilizing several techniques of outbound marketing techniques as well as many more. It uses content creation to help grow your business. What is content creation?
It’s the methods of using blogs, social media, email marketing, website development, and plans to bring in leads. Why so many different techniques?
In the inbound marketing method, creating content on multiple streams is very important.
The website is the primary source of leads from the internet, so you can make sure you have a site that can correctly funnel your traffic into qualified leads.
Why not regular leads instead of qualified leads?
Simply because not all traffic to your website is going to be leads. It’s people doing research or people not ready to buy.
“But they are visiting my website because they need my services.”
That’s not true! They could be doing many different things on your website. They could be doing research, shopping around, or laying out people that are the most qualified for their need. All in all, having them on your website is a good thing, avery good thing. Because now it’s time for inbound marketing to work its magic.
Creating meaningful content to keep your viewers engaged – using blogs, videos, photos and more – will not only help with your SEO but also allow customers to feel more comfortable with the buying process. Ideally, they are going to buy from you.
If you can show that you or your company is knowledgeable and can walk your customer through the process, they are going to feel much more comfortable buying from you. Having your potential clients see the process and know what to expect is going to get them to buy from you.
But in all honesty, there are some negatives of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is like going to the gym with your company.
You can’t and shouldn’t expect results overnight. Inbound marketing is a long-term game.
The rewards, however, do last for a very long time.
This is also something that needs to be done for at least a 6-month period of time but ideally 1-year minimum. Having a company do inbound marketing for your business takes time to reach the right people and adding content regularly keeps you, not only top of mind, but proves to your customer you know what you’re doing.
Making your website appear high on Google lasts far longer than any ad campaign otherwise.
At the end of the day, our goal is to help you decide what method of marketing is going to be best for you.
If you have questions, please reach out. We are always looking to help guide people even if they decide not to buy from us.
Thank you for reading!