I was surprised to learn that Google launched more than 1,600 changes to its search engine in 2016. In fact, Google ran 18,015 experiments last year alone.
Why should you care?
You should care because for over a decade now, Google has made itself the biggest search engine in the world. That is no small feat.
To successfully market online and anywhere, you should copy Google’s most powerful marketing and business tactic.
It’s called growth hacking.
The term itself, “growth hacking” is a vague phrase.
A better way of explaining “growth hacking” is to use the word “experimenting.”
There’s a warning I often hear from smart business people.
Here is it:
“If your business isn’t growing, it’s shrinking.”
To continue growing your business, you need to start experimenting with different things.
A good place to start is your marketing. You should start experimenting with different marketing ideas.
In this article, you’ll discover 15 marketing ideas you should try right now. Test one at a time and see how it impacts your revenue.
Marketing Idea 1: Get a website redesign
If your website isn’t turning visitors into customers, then it’s time to revamp it.
Your product or service may be awesome, but if your site looks like it was designed five years ago, potential customers will move to competitors who have beautiful and better sites.
One Aldwych is a luxury five-star hotel in London. The look and feel of their make you want to use their services.
Your website should be easy to navigate so prospects can find what they are looking for quickly. Your website should create trust and make customers take action.
If your business is struggling to get customers online, it could be that your site is ugly and turning prospects away.
You need a great marketing company or web designer who can develop an attractive and easy-to-use site for your business.
Marketing Idea 2: Join your local chamber of commerce
According to a 2012 study, consumers were more likely to think favourably of a local business if it was a member of the local chamber— and 80% were more likely to purchase a product or service from a chamber member.
People tend to do business with people they know. Being a member of a local chamber lets you connect with other business owners in your community. That’s not to talk about the referrals they can send you.
For example, here are the benefits you gain from being a member of the London Chamber of Commerce as written on their website:
“We offer professional, independent, affordable services that focus on supporting businesses in London
Membership is corporate and members have access to over 200 networking events a year, marketing and business opportunities, tenders, free business, legal and HR advice, a range of exclusive or discounted business services and a Members’ Lounge that provides free meeting space.”
Most local chambers have online and offline publications like newsletters and magazines. If your business is highlighted in one of these publications, it can increase the visibility of your product or service.
Chambers are also a great source of information for visitors and local residents and regularly refer potential clients to their members.
Another big benefit you get from being a member of a local chamber is that they mention your business and link back to your website.
Search engines like Google and Bing recognise the credibility of these local chambers, so they pay attention to the sites they link to. A link like this is high-quality and can help your business rank high on search engines.
For example, here’s a screenshot of transport and storage companies on the member’s list of the North East England Chamber of Commerce, with links to their sites:
Marketing Idea 3: Advertise on reputable business directories
Yelp is one of the most popular business directories in the U.K.
People go to Yelp to find businesses and read what previous customers are saying about those businesses.
Advertising your business in a directory like Yelp puts you in front of people who need your product or service.
Most directories make money from displaying ads. Therefore, advertising on directories ensures that you’re one of the first companies potential customers see.
For example, I searched for dentists near London. Some dentist advertisements were shown before the results. I can easily pick one of the dentists in the ads to save time.
Marketing Idea 4: Create a Facebook page
Your Facebook page is your company’s home on the world’s biggest social network.
A Facebook page is where prospects learn about your product or service. Maintaining an active Facebook page gives your business the opportunity to deeply connect with prospects in a way you can’t do anywhere else.
For example, St Helen’s Farm, a milk farm that sells goats’ milk, uses their Facebook page to create a sense of community among their customers and offer discounts.
Marketing Idea 5: Advertise on Facebook
Your customers are on Facebook. Advertising on Facebook lets you find them.
The good thing is that advertising on Facebook is cheap. In fact, it’s the cheapest way to reach thousands of people both online and offline.
A £50 spend can put your business in front of 4,000 people. No advertising platform can give you such a massive reach for cheap except Facebook ads.
The targeting capabilities of Facebook advertising are what makes it even much more effective.
You can target people based on their location, age, gender, language, interest, education, relationship, profession, browsing behaviours, etc. No other advertising platform can offer you these targeting options.
In fact, the Facebook advertising platform is so amazing that it can let you target people based on their anniversaries.
Marketing Idea 6: Advertise on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the largest professional and business platform in the world with over 500 million users.
Fifty percent of B2B buyers use LinkedIn when making purchasing decisions. That makes LinkedIn the perfect platform to be if you’re running a B2B (business to business) company.
Advertising on LinkedIn can be quite expensive, but the investment can easily be justified if a client is worth thousands of pounds to you.
Here are the top three ways to advertise on LinkedIn:
- Sponsored content: You can use sponsored content to promote your company updates on its LinkedIn page to targeted audiences on desktop, mobile, and tablet.
- Sponsored InMail: This lets you reach your ideal clients right inside their LinkedIn inbox. You can use this advertising option to deliver personalised messages that drive conversions.
- Text ads: You pay each time someone clicks on your ad in their LinkedIn News Feeds. This advertising option lets you send people to a highly targeted landing page on your website.
Test all three LinkedIn advertising options and go with the one that generates the best ROI for your business.
Marketing Idea 7: Get active on Twitter
Your business should have an active presence on Twitter.
Twitter may not be as popular as Facebook, but it remains one of the most-used social platforms in the world.
Your customers, business partners, suppliers, contractors, competitors, and trade organisations are on Twitter. You should follow their profiles on the platform.
Your customers can use Twitter to make enquiries and complaints. When your business doesn’t respond, they feel ignored. That is bad for your business reputation.
You should be responsive on every social channel your customers may be. Twitter, of course, is one of the most popular social sites. So get active on Twitter.
Marketing Idea 8: Add your business to Google My Business
If your business hasn’t been claimed on Google My Business, it’s time to do that.
Getting listed on Google My Business lets your business show up on the Google search engine and Google Maps.
Google My Business is like your company’s home on Google. It helps Google recognises your business. So, when web users around your locality type phrases that relate to your product or service, Google displays your business.
For example, when I typed “construction companies in London,” Google returned construction companies in London, their business details and map directions of how to locate their offices.
Getting your business listed on Google My Business will enable Google to organise your business details and present them in a fashionable manner to its users.
Marketing Idea 9: Publish blog posts on a regular basis
One study found that B2B marketers that blog receive 67% more leads.
Another study found that marketers that prioritise blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI.
By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human. That means customers will do more research about your company before making that first contact.
The easiest way to help customers learn about your business is through active blogging.
When you blog on a regular basis, the content you put out there will work for your business 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.
Potential customers can read your content and learn about your company during the weekends and holidays when you’re spending quality time with your family.
By the time your business opens, a prospect would have learnt enough about your product or service.
Marketing Idea 10: Upload videos on YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine and the third most-visited site on the web.
You don’t need to be a professional videographer to shoot videos. A smartphone or DSLR camera, a tripod, a microphone, and low-cost video editing software is well within reach of any small business owner.
Now, is the perfect time to start creating videos. By 2020, 80% of all internet traffic will be video.
If you continue to wait, it could be too late when you finally decide to start.
You may not be comfortable on camera, but practice makes perfect. Most people you see on TV today or YouTube started awkwardly. They learnt video shooting over time.
Eleven years ago, Rick Broida published “8 Ways to Shoot Video Like a Pro” on LifeHacker. The tips in that article are still very much relevant today.
Start with topics that relate to your business and expand from there. The most important thing right now is to start shooting videos and upload them on YouTube.
Gradually, people will start discovering your business on the second largest search engine in the world.
And because a lot of business owners don’t want to do video marketing right now, it gives you a big advantage.
Marketing Idea 11: Advertise with Google AdWords
For years, different kinds of businesses have been using Google AdWords to successfully advertise their products and services.
Google AdWords is one of the most scalable sources of getting a constant amount of leads.
If you create an AdWords ad that’s converting at a profitable rate, there’s no reason to stop spending.
In this case, increasing your investment will only boost your profits. That is why some businesses spend millions of pounds advertising on AdWords and continue to increase their investments.
AdWords is measurable. You can easily track and improve underperforming ads.
AdWords is easier than SEO, and the results are also instant. You start seeing leads the moment your ads go live assuming that everything is well set up. But SEO can take months, or even years before you start seeing real results.
Here are some AdWords’ ads Google displayed when I searched for divorce lawyers in London.
These ads are getting clicked by users who most likely need the service of divorce lawyers.
Marketing Idea 12: Advertise on Bing
There are good reasons you should also consider advertising on Bing.
According to ComScore, Bing receives 6.2 billion searches a month. By not advertising on Bing, you miss appearing on those valuable searches that relate to your business.
Another great thing about Bing Ads is that they’re less expensive and less competitive when compared to Google AdWords.
A “Google AdWords vs. Bing Ads” case study was published on Search Engine Watch, and the results showed that it was 63.23% cheaper to gain a conversion on Bing compared to Google.
Nevertheless, you should still advertise with Google AdWords because Google is the largest search engine in the world and most people use it. It’s a great idea to combine both Google AdWords and Bing Ads.
Marketing Idea 13: Start A/B testing
In addition to trying each marketing idea, you should also be conducting A/B testing.
For example, I mentioned above that redesigning your site is a good step if it’s not delivering a good conversion rate.
To ensure that your redesign effort is truly successful, you should combine it with A/B testing.
After a site redesign, the site can be optimised to achieve a better conversion rate.
For example, your site may be getting a conversion rate of 3% after the redesign. Maybe you can increase that to 5% or even 10% conversion rate. You never know until you start A/B testing every important element on the site.
If your home page has a headline and a sub-headline, what if you remove the sub-headline? That may boost your conversion rate.
If your home page has an image before the call-to-action, what if you replace it with a video that explains your product or service? That may increase your conversion rate.
Alex Schultz, VP of Growth at Facebook said at Startup School that when Facebook changed its call-to-action text from “Advertise” to “Create an ad,” click-through rate went up by 40%.
Marketing Idea 14: Ask your customers to leave reviews
According to a Zendesk survey, 90% of participants claimed that positive online reviews influenced their buying decision, and 86% said their decision was influenced by negative reviews.
Before dealing with a company you found online, you want to know the views of past and current customers.
Customer reviews matter a lot in today’s digital world. I can’t recall dealing with any company without reading reviews about the business.
Consumers read reviews and trust them as if they are coming from their personal friends. That makes online reviews even more powerful. It means prospects see your past customers as their friends.
When your business has a lot of excellent reviews online, prospects are more likely to do business with you.
Local business directories like Google My Business, Yelp and Yell collect reviews from customers.
When you have more legitimate positive reviews on these local business directories, your company will gain more visibility on their platforms. That means more customers.
You should also display reviews from past customers on your website. That increases your chances of turning visitors into customers.
Start asking your past customers to review your business. If you have to provide some incentive for them to give you reviews, do that. It will surely boost your business growth.
Marketing Idea 15: Ask for referrals
As I mentioned above, people will rather do business with people they know instead of strangers.
Why?
Because it takes time to earn someone’s trust. It’s rare, if not impossible for someone you just met to have your complete trust.
Trust takes time to build.
The people in your network trust you because they’ve known you for some time now.
Reaching out to people you know and asking for referrals will enable you to tap into the trust they’ve built over the years in their relationships.
People are more likely to do business with you when you’re recommended to them by people they trust.
So, a good place to start growing your business is to begin tapping into the power of your network.
Want to grow your business even faster?
That’s what we do at Grow. Contact us today to kick-start the growth engine of your business.
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