Promoting your business is almost as important as running it in 2021. Advertising was less complex in decades prior to the evolution and rapid expansion of the internet and social media. Sometimes it feels as if some of the best marketing & promotional tools one day experience obsoletion the next. Fortunately, multiple advertising platforms provide consistent results for you and your company.
Free and paid advertising methods are both available today. Occasionally free advertising pays huge long-lasting dividends, so it is important to research all options prior to spending money on expensive albeit ineffective promotion platforms. For example, social media, once considered a platform for young adults and children has become one of the most potently effective advertising sources in the entire world. If you are looking for productive new ways to promote your business, read ahead for important tips on the best ways to market & promote your business in modern times.
Importance of Marketing & Promotion Today
Marketing and promotion have an increased importance to businesses in the modern world. Advertising has been important since the age-old creation of business in general. Without advertising, even in word-of-mouth form, most of your current customers are unlikely to know about your company. Marketing is just as important to maintaining a repeat customer base as it is to attract new customers. Paid and free marketing methods are available to help grow your business today. Read below for promotional tips and examples of how to use some of the most popular marketing platforms in 2021.
Classic Online Presence - Websites
Most business owners considering the concept of an online presence think of a company website. Well-designed websites are the result of front and back-end programming and creativity. A company website is the modern business card with customer-engaging features including audio, video, blogs, e-stores and more. A well-designed website also utilizes intensive & effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies. Good SEO gets the attention of Google crawlers and requirements, which helps boost your business to the top of search queries around the world. Websites are also highly important to prospective customers. If your business does not have website/online presence it is highly likely to lose customers/clients to the very next competitor company that does.
Modern Online Presence - Social Media
Websites might have previously defined the concept of an online presence in its entirety, but that was before the advent & explosive surge of social media popularity commandeered the internet. Between 2014 and 2016 marketing and advertising budgets nearly doubled in size, increasing from sixteen billion to thirty-one billion, respectively. In January of 2021, Statista reported how anticipated total social media advertising expenses would reach almost fifty billion dollars for the year, which is another thirty-eight percent increase since 2016. It is also an advertising share-total equaling over one-quarter the entire amount of expected revenue dedicated to advertising for all of 2021.
In addition to increasing promotional budgets, current social media marketing strategies must adhere to more sociopathic tendencies from consumers in modern times to gain their business. For example, seventy-seven percent of Twitter users express increased brand appreciation when a company responds to their personal tweets - within four hours max. While Twitter users and Twitter ads are both important to business growth today, Facebook ads are still the most used and most effective form of social media advertisements today. A few other popular/effective social media ad platforms include:
Affective Condition
Affective condition is something many viewers (aka targeted customers) feel on a visceral level but are unaware is happening on a conscious level. The process of affected condition places products in visible vicinity with items, locations & scenarios consumers are known to like and feel happy about. Affective condition is why babies are shown in laundry detergent commercials or people eating McDonald’s food are skateboarding, falling in love, enjoying time with friends or driving attractive cars.
Smartphone Apps
Like how consumers want brands and companies to respond to messages within short (if not unrealistic) amounts of time, both new and repeat customers also want their purchasing experiences to epitomize convenience. Smartphone apps are perhaps the best way to literally get your products into the hands of new/repeat customers. As it is with websites and an online presence, if your company does not provide an instant gratification-producing app from which your customers can buy your products with as few clicks as possible, you are likely to lose them to the next company in line with an available free app for consumer phones/devices.
YouTube & Embedded Videos
YouTube ads are extraordinarily successful and popular forms of advertising in 2021. While YouTube is technically a form of social media (owned by Google), its primary focus is streaming videos and television shows via YouTubeTV. Properly placed YouTube ads get your product/company in front of customers searching for and streaming their favorite videos/TV shows. Websites with embedded videos also have higher performance and traffic statistics than sites without videos. While exact levels of success vary with each brand/product, embedding at least one professionally recorded video on your company website is bound to draw in some new customers.
Free Advertising
Not all social media advertising is paid promotion. Simply having a free (albeit well-run) Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube page is the modern-day version of word-of-mouth advertising. Using the free Yoast SEO plugin helps optimize your website for search engines, getting your links & information in front of customers at no cost to you. Google My Business, Bing Places, Reddit, BizSugar and Quora are all fantastic platforms for promoting your business for free in 2021.
Affiliate Marketing & Targeted Digital Advertising
Affiliate marketing involves earning revenue in the form of commissions each time you promote another company’s products via your website. Reverse this process and place your links/brand on other people’s virtual real estate to generate extra advertising success. Targeted digital marketing is an advertising strategy through which you literally target specific audience demographics via text, banner, cost-per-mile (CPM) and/or pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Content in targeted digital marketing is also distributed via search engines and various social media platforms as well as spots on Hulu and other television/movie streaming sites.