Bharat Bhise HNA, a marketing executive and long-standing friend and business partner of mine has been working tirelessly to help businesses in their digital marketing efforts for a number of years. In fact, Bharat was one of the first people who I know that was banging the drum about digital marketing before it even took off. I do feel for Bharat from time to time as he had so many doors closed in his face back in the day, by many people who didn’t have the foresight that he did about what would happen in the world of marketing, and digital marketing especially.
I, on the other hand, was fortunate enough to be friends with Bharat becasue although I wasn’t completely sold on the idea of internet marketing for my vegan restaurant back in 2009/10, I had enough faith in my buddy to pay attention. Now, of course, the world and her husband are looking to invest in digital marketing which is why I am very happy that I was able to get ahead of the curve. With this in mind, I wanted to share some of my most successful marketing techniques which I have implemented with Bharat’s help, to show you which ones work the best.
Social Media Marketing
I have to say that of all the techniques which we have tried for the business that social media has really been the most impactful of them all and it has also been the easiest to maintain. As soon as platforms like Facebook started springing up I decided to use them becasue I figured that this would be the best place to find vegans, who at the time were a very niche group of people. I had some degree of success when I was just posting things and looking to build a community but in the last 5 years things have gone stratospheric and I have been paying for social media ads that have been getting me so much traction and providing a massive return on my investment. If you are looking to really create a buzz around a product or a business then this is the way for you to do it.
Email Marketing
The first marketing campaign that we ever did was an email marketing drive which had some pretty good results. Unfortunately over the years email marketing kind of dried up as not enough people were bothered by clicking on your emails, not to mention the number businesses who decided to start spamming customers, ruining it for the rest of us. Around 4 years ago however Bharat spoke to me about how he thought that email marketing was making a comeback becasue of mobile usage and that we could also target like never before. This turned out to be a real game-changer and as always I implicitly trusted Bharat, as he had never been wrong before. Once again he was proved to be right and whilst click-through rates aren’t what they used to be, those who do engage with the emails that they receive are very likely to become a sale.
SEO
There is no marketing strategy in the world that you should be looking for that doesn’t include search engine optimization and this should always form the foundation of whatever you plan to do online. SEO is not only good for boosting you up the rankings on the search engines so that you can be found via organic search, but it does also way more than that. Brand building is what it is all about in the current day becasue there is just so much competition in every industry and sector. To get customers through your door they need to be able to trust you and with SEO you can create a better brand image through increased visibility online. In order to perform SEO, there are also a number of additional benefits such as better content and a cleaner website for your business, which of course carries with it additional benefits.
PPC
I have always liked pay per click advertising because when it is done right it targets the right people and you will only pay for it when someone actively engages with one of your ads. This can be used as a free ad platform that introduces people to who you are and what you do, it can also brig them to your business and convert them to sales. PPC is a great and easy to manage digital marketing option which I believe to be the perfect solution to small businesses who don’t want to splash out huge amounts of money and who want to be able to control their own budget at all times.
If you run a business then these are the strategies that you should be looking into.
