I received several emails requesting me
to provide an insight into the trends and
impact of social media campaign. I will
end the year by sharing some of them.
Trends are only useful when people
understand how they work and how to
use them. The last quarter of a year is not
only a season to learn how to finish well;
it is also the time to identify how to finish
in a strong way. If you have a goal, you
need tactical plans to achieve it. If you
want your business to grow and attract
more customers, you need to identity
where your target audience hangs out.
With everyone on their mobile phones,
how do you get attention?
With an Internet- connected individual
receiving an average of 50 emails every
day, how do you ensure that you get
reasonable attention and that your mail
does not end up in a junk folder?
How do you plan to get more people
online to listen to your promotional
content? How do you sustain the
attention of your target market? What
tactical plans do you have to build a brand
that is strong enough to keep your
customers? Here are some tips to help
you promote your business:
Email marketing
Apart from owning your website, the
email is one of the most common ways
that people are encouraged to promote
their businesses. However, what most
people do is to look for emails and start
sending ‘cold emails’ in the hope that
they will in turn help them to attract new
customers. On the other hand, today’s
customers are becoming smarter and can
identify spam email with ease.
Your website needs to be your most
effective marketer and you need to
ensure it does not only focus on
answering questions from potential
customers, but also provides options for
people to drop their emails through a
marketing system.
Content marketing
Content marketing will be a big business
in 2016. People are already creating
awesome content and businesses are
already leveraging content creators to
grow their businesses. To the uninitiated,
content refers to articles, pictures, videos,
music and slogans. Smart businesses will
allocate more budgets to this, particularly
videos, in the coming year.
The trend is already obvious to those
looking out for it – people will rather
watch your tutorial than read it. Why not
create the content that will demonstrate
your expertise, emphasise the benefits
and attract more customers?
Develop remarkable, interesting,
informative, newsworthy, controversial
and opinionated content and people will
share it with others without having to beg
them to do so. People who love your
content are more likely to buy from you.
Use other people’s websites
This is great, especially if you have
physical products to sell. While it is great
to create your website to sell products,
there are websites that act as middle men
by enabling you to reach out to their
followers.
Popular local websites that are already
doing this include Konga, Jumia, Tafoo and
Gloo. This is because they are also looking
for products to offer their online visitors.
You can also contact online deal sites,
such as Rytedeals and DealDey, which
search for online promotional offers for
the benefit of their teeming website
visitors. It works in two ways for you: it
generates publicity for your business
while bringing traffic to your website.
If what you offer is a service, you can
promote your expertise by contributing
content on well-known websites. This is a
great way to drive referral traffic to your
website from readers. These are people
who are interested in learning about your
insight.
Implement analytics
The days of guesswork marketing is over.
If you will succeed in the coming year, it
will be because you understand the
metrics behind the activities and know
how to use the numbers to your
advantage. Without sounding like a
teacher, analytics is the study of historical
data that relate to consumer behaviour on
websites, social networks and marketing
techniques and using the data and
insights to make business and marketing
decisions.
When online movie distributions portal,
iROKO TV, shut down its website and
replaced it with a web application, it was
because statistics said that over half of its
African website visitors accessed their
website via the mobile devices.
Tactics are great, but they must fit into
your overall strategy. Sometimes, the
problem is that people understand these
techniques but not understand how they
fit into their customer online journey.
How do you plan to market differently in
2016?
