TGIF, Friends!

One common but not-so-good trait we marketers (including business owners who do their own marketing) have is we tend to complicate things.

We are always looking for that complex ninja marketing strategy that we would deploy for our business.

Unfortunately, the best and most effective marketing strategies are usually very simple and straightforward.

Not saying a 12-step sales funnel wouldn’t work…but it takes a lot of work and testing and optimisation to make such work.

We’ve seen people without even a website make tens of millions of Naira monthly from just Instagram, without ads.

So yes, strategies help, but there are more important basic things to help your business generate sales and grow. Like your offer. Your copy. Your audience.

So, earlier today, I saw a tweet that says “3 ways to make marketing easier.”

And I agree with the points listed. They are indeed three very simple marketing strategies you can use to boost your business.

Not my personal list or strategies, but yea it’s cool to learn from other people and I’ve recommended some of them in the past. So here they are (with my explanation of each point):

1. Take advantage of your competitors' bigger brand by bidding on their keyword.

If you advertise on Google, then one smart strategy, which you must’ve seen if you use Google a lot, is to bid on competitor keywords.

Caveat though: it might get expensive, depending on the competitor and keyword you’re targeting. 

Two ways to go about this: 

One, you can bid directly on their brand name. This is especially great when they are sleeping on their own brand name — that is when they aren’t running ads to it.

Let me give you an example.

The most popular amala joint in Ibadan, especially outside Ibadan, is Amala Skye.

I googled it now, and they are of course #1 result on Google with Google Places. Other listings are their knockoff in Lagos, food delivery companies like Chowdeck, their original IG page, videos from people who have visited there, etc.

The good thing however is that there is no single ad on that page.

Let’s say I want to open a branch in Ibadan for my brand Amala Ibadan, I can bid on this keyword and get some of the traffic for myself. 

I’d do some keyword research on Google and if I find out that a lot of people are truly searching for that keyword, then I can bid on it and its alternate spelling like “amala sky”.

This would be very cheap for me because no one else is bidding on those keywords.

So whenever someone searches for either keywords, the first thing they see on the page is “Amala Ibadan”. I then put our best foot forward and give them a reason to choose us over the Amala Skye they are looking for — use whatever your USP is.

We’ve seen brands target keywords like “XYZ alternative”. It happens a lot in tech. You can search for a tool like Calendly and you start seeing an ad that says “best calendly alternative”.

The other way to go about this is to actually find out the keywords your competitors are bidding on and then bid on them.

You can find this on Google AdWords if you know how to use it. But there are several other spy tools that can reveal this to you. Just do a quick search and you’ll find a list of tools you can choose from.

As you can imagine though, this is going to be expensive. Because you’re trying to outbid others on a keyword they are already bidding on. It can get even more expensive over time as you guys keep trying to outbid each other.

So, this is a strategy you want to use carefully.

2. Ask your biggest fans to share your product/ service with friends.

This is so simple and straightforward that if you’re not doing this, then you probably don’t like money.

You can just simply make social posts or emails asking your fans to directly share your product/service, or you create a post about your product/service and ask them to share the post.

To make this however more effective, you can add an incentive to their sharing your stuff with their friends.

Could be a challenge, a giveaway where you pick random winners or make it a referral program where they get points for every referral or an affiliate program where they get a commission for each referral.

Just reward them somehow and you’ll see them sharing your stuff. Most importantly though, make sure your product or service is of great quality. People will only share what they like and what they think is useful to their friends and family.

3. Stop marketing to new prospects and follow-up with window-shoppers (via a newsletter).

There’s an entire strategy for this that a summary here can’t do justice to, maybe I’ll talk about it in my next email. And even give you case studies as practical examples.

But for now, just know that one of the easiest ways to market your business is by marketing to those who already showed interest in your business. Aka your warm audience.

How do you find them? How do you reach them? How do you communicate with them? How do you market your product/service to them? It’s a strategy I’ve used since Day 1 of my online marketing career, and it’s still effective till date. I’ll discuss all this in my next *newsletter*. (See what I did there?)

Till then,

Have a beautiful weekend!