Four States Small Business Blog

4 Tips to Help You Choose the Right Marketing Channels for Your Business

Posted by Pam Larimore on June 27, 2023 at 7:00 AM
As a small business, finding an effective mix of marketing channels is essential to increase your ROI and ensure steady growth for your business. But with an increasing number of available marketing channels every day, especially in the digital space, narrowing down your options and finding the best fit for your company can be difficult. With that in mind, let's look at some helpful tips for finding your ideal marketing channels.

1. Identify Your Marketing Audience

Your first step when planning for any upcoming marketing campaign should be identifying at least one target audience. Doing so will immediately help you eliminate any marketing channel with little reach to your audience or audiences. If you come up with more than one audience segment you would like to market to, you should rank the importance of each listed segment. That way, you can apply limited resources where they will be most effective.

2. Plan for the Buyer's Journey

Individuals that may purchase a product or service from you always occupy a point on a conceptual model called 'the buyer's journey.' Buyers move from the awareness stage through the consideration stage, and finally to the decision stage, where they will decide whether to give you their business. The most successful marketing campaigns reach a person while they are in each step of the journey. For instance, a broad-reach marketing channel such as radio is particularly useful for reaching people in the awareness phase. On the other hand, running ads in a search engine can be ideal for the consideration and decision phases. Choosing the right marketing channels will depend on selecting channels that blend well in an integrated marketing approach.

3. Set Clear Campaign Objectives

Not all marketing campaigns have to culminate in the immediate purchase of one of your products or services. It's important to clearly define your campaign objectives, such as increasing brand awareness, generating leads, driving sales, or enhancing customer engagement. For instance, your primary objective could be building your mailing list so you have an already interested audience segment you can target in future marketing campaigns. 

4. Consider Your Budget

Budget is one of the most essential considerations when deciding on a mix of marketing channels. Opting for marketing channels that you can't allocate enough financial resources to run effectively could be a complete waste. Likewise, your budget may be stretched too thin if you choose too many channels. It's best to opt for a couple of channels that support each other and provide each with ample funding. 
 

Putting It All Together

The ideal marketing mix for your business will reach your market audience at various points in the buyer's journey, satisfies your campaign objectives, and fits your budget. If any of your chosen marketing channels don't align with the above considerations, you should go back to the drawing board and review some other options. Of course, getting some professional support when planning integrated marketing campaigns can also be helpful. If you would like help with your campaign, we invite you to get in touch with one of our marketing consultants.

Contact Zimmer Marketing
 
 
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Topics: Integrated Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing ROI, Digital Marketing, Advertising, Branding

The Status of Print Media Advertising in 2023

Posted by Brett James on June 20, 2023 at 7:00 AM
Advertising in print media has long been an important marketing channel for American businesses of all sizes. But this has been especially true for smaller, local businesses. The access to local audiences plugged into their communities that local newspapers offer is an excellent opportunity for affordable advertising. But with the rise of digital publications, what is the status of print media, and what are some advertising alternatives? In today's blog, we will look at the condition of print media in America and offer some advertising alternatives to diversify your marketing budget and secure your business's growth into the future. 

Print Media in 2023

For companies that have depended on print advertising in local newspapers and magazines, there is good news and bad news. Let's start with the good: The downfall of print media in the United States has not been as precipitous as the worst predictors have warned. That brings us to the bad news. The trend of declining print media, and by extension, advertising opportunities, continues.   "Total estimated weekday circulation of U.S. daily newspapers was 55.8 million in 2000 and dropped to 24.2 million by 2020,"  according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

While the around 20 million people still receiving newspapers can still be reached with newspaper advertising, the last two decades have nonetheless seen the national audience shrink by half. Those with access to stable internet connections, and especially those with smartphones, prefer receiving news and entertainment via various forms of digital media. The remaining audience for traditional print media tends to be older, more rural, and more involved in their local community.

Diversify Your Marketing Media

Depending on the demographics of the audience you are trying to reach with your advertising, print media may still be an important part of your marketing plan. However, print advertising cannot reach anywhere near as many readers as it used to. Now is the time to add in other marketing media to grow the reach of your branding message.
 

Advertising Alternatives to Print Media

There are many alternatives to traditional print advertising that we could talk about. But for the sake of simplicity, we'll cover four options that can help you enhance your marketing mix in light of the decline in print media.

Radio Advertising

Radio stands out as a particularly good alternative for businesses that historically depend on local print advertising. Production and advertising costs are low compared to other media, and it reaches regional audiences with the added benefit of audience segmentation based on station formats. Radio continues to boast high numbers of listeners. 

Digital Display Ads

Digital Display Ads can be shown across hundreds of websites while only appearing in front of people matching the characteristics you've identified in your target audience. This is often a useful option if you're trying to reach people getting their news online, whom you may have once reached with newspaper advertising.

Organic Search Strategy

An organic search strategy focuses on ranking your business website high in search engines for keywords relevant to your products and services. Typically this is done with regular topical blogging designed to serve the needs of your audience members. Time is key with this marketing method, as building up your website's competitiveness can take a while. But it is well worth the wait for those businesses that stick with it. 

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing is like the 'fast version' of an organic search strategy and is often abbreviated as "SEM." With this method, you pay search engines to run ads on your strategic keywords. It is more expensive than organic, but you can begin driving traffic to your website immediately. Businesses with many competitors often use SEM when an organic strategy would be more difficult and time-consuming. 

Revamp Your Marketing Strategy

If you're interested in exploring other marketing options to reduce reliance on print advertising, please reach out to a marketing consultant at Zimmer Marketing. We've helped dozens of local businesses create marketing and branding plans to accelerate growth and secure market share. We would love to help your business, too!

Contact Zimmer Marketing
 
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Topics: Integrated Marketing, Radio Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Marketing ROI, Digital Marketing, Advertising

Growing Your Business Online: Answer Customer Questions

Posted by Kylie Davis on May 9, 2023 at 7:00 AM
We've reached part three of our series covering online content strategies to help your business grow. In the past two weeks, we've covered   blogging about projects  and   publishing customer testimonials. Now, we will look at a powerful way to brainstorm and create web content for your business: answering customer questions. Let's look at some practical steps to create content based on the questions of your customers and potential customers.

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Topics: Marketing Strategy, Digital Marketing, E-commerce

How Radio and Digital Marketing Work Together

Posted by Jeannette Royle on March 7, 2023 at 7:00 AM
Radio has long been a staple of successful marketing campaigns, but there are an ever-growing number of ways to reach audiences with your messaging through digital marketing. That raises the question,   How should I allocate my marketing budget between radio and new digital channels? The short answer is that traditional marketing media, such as radio, works well with digital as part of a multi-channel marketing campaign. So, it's almost always best to use a blend. Below, we'll explain how best to balance radio and digital marketing.

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Topics: Radio Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Marketing ROI, Digital Marketing, Advertising

How to Guide Your Business Through Economic Turmoil

Posted by Mark Zimmer on January 24, 2023 at 7:00 AM
It's no secret that we've been in strange economic times. The last several years have presented unprecedented challenges to businesses, especially small, midsized, and local ones. Of course, there are ways to navigate economic challenges, and some are more effective than others. Let's consider some problems and solutions to these issues.

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Topics: Marketing Strategy, BrandsFormation, Branding

The Power of Running 3 Radio Ads Per Day

Posted by Brett James on January 17, 2023 at 7:00 AM
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Topics: Radio Advertising, Marketing Strategy, BrandsFormation, Branding

What is Inbound Marketing?

Posted by Kylie Davis on January 10, 2023 at 8:10 AM
As we've discussed on this blog, numerous tools, such as the   SWOT analysis, can help you visualize, plan, and hone your business's strategy and tactics. This week, we'll be looking at yet another way of looking at your business to increase sales and retain customers: inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a perfect tool for synchronizing all parts of your business for growth.

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Topics: Integrated Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Digital Marketing

4 Building Blocks for Your Marketing Bridge

Posted by Pam Larimore on December 6, 2022 at 7:00 AM
As you wrap up 2022 and move into 2023, it's important as a business owner to work out a solid marketing strategy. Although there are many tools at your disposal for creating effective business strategies, we'll share one of our favorites this week: the marketing bridge.

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Topics: Marketing Strategy

What's the Difference Between Aided and Unaided Awareness?

Posted by Pam Larimore on November 1, 2022 at 7:00 AM
The goal of any brand is to be instantly recognizable. Each year, businesses, both big and small, spend untold amounts of effort to earn a place in the minds of their target audiences. That brings up a couple of important questions. First, how can you be sure that your marketing efforts are working? And second, how can you take advantage of that knowledge? Let's explore both these questions.

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Topics: Radio Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Branding

Take Stock of Your Business with a SWOT Analysis

Posted by Kylie Davis on October 25, 2022 at 9:07 AM
It's always important for any business to have a solid strategy. That's especially true when the business environment is challenging. While we often talk about the importance of branding for business on this blog, this week, we wanted to take a step back and discuss a more general tool to help you strategize for your whole business. The tool we'll be talking about is the SWOT analysis. And, as you would expect, this tool also helps you to brand successfully. 

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Topics: Marketing Strategy