Just like other social channels, Instagram has transformed itself over time, and its features have become a great asset for brands that are trying to make an impact on social media. Since this visually focused platform has passionate and highly engagement followers, it can be used as an effective tool for promoting your brand and selling your products online.
Therefore, knowing the best practices to sell your products on Instagram can offer plenty of opportunities to reach your target audience and drive more sales. The following are a few tips that can help you to get started with your Instagram game.
Consumers these days trust the opinions of other people on social media over other forms of traditional advertising. Since Instagram influencers are soon going to replace traditional ads, using them to your campaigns can add significant value to your Instagram marketingstrategy.
In general, marketing through influencers gives your brand a unique opportunity to reach a more targeted group of engaged audiences. This helps to sell your products easily by making the consumers picture themselves with your product.
With Instagram ads, you can target people based on their interests, gender and age group, making it easier to sell through this platform. Paid advertising on Instagram is an excellent option for brands that have trouble finding the right customers and increase sales.
Moreover, advertising through this platform helps in targeting people within your niche and retarget those who have previously shown interest with your products. This would allow you to position your product in front of potential customers without having to rely on organic methods which are time-consuming.
Therefore, creating an advertising campaign on Instagram is the best way to showcase your products to a large and more targeted group of audience. Most successful sponsored posts on Instagram have one thing in common – a clear cut description and an effective call-to-action (Shop Now).
Even if you are a smaller brand, you can try your hands on Instagram advertising, a valuable tool which is sure enough to drive sales for your business. Though creating an Instagram advertising campaign isn’t that difficult, it can be quite tricky for someone who hasn’t done it before – not as hard as you think!
Shoppable posts
Shopping feature allows you to tag products and let users buy directly from the images of your Instagram post (instant purchase option), making the process of buying a lot easier than ever before. Apart from providing the product and pricing details, you can also tag multiple items to a single Instagram post – 5 products per image and 20 products per carousel.
Creating a compelling image along with a clear cut product description is the best way to grab the attention of your target audience and get them interested in making a purchase. However, you should not compromise on the quality of photos at the expense of adding more product images to your feed.
Your brand’s Instagram profile is an extension of your brand’s website. Therefore, creating a lively feed can help to take your online sales to the next level and is easier than you think. Since your Instagram feed can be used as a product catalog, you should make sure that your shoppable posts look similar to other high performing posts on your profile.
So, show some diversity with the pictures and provide a unique visual appeal to keep your audiences interested and engaged. Shoppable posts provide an excellent opportunity to increase sales while also making it easy for people to find your products and make a purchase.
Instagram stories
Due to the rising popularity of Instagram stories, it’s no surprise that brands are finding new and creative ways to sell their products using this feature. So, if you are a brand looking for an alternative way to engage with your target audience and boost sales, an Instagram story is the best option.
Brands that own a business account with over 10k followers have a privilege to add clickable links to their Instagram stories – a huge social media marketing trend. Since Instagram stories can engage your audience on a more personal level, it can help drive traffic to your website and sell more products.
Suppose, if you are a brand that has less than 10,000 followers, you can try partnering with influencers in your niche and promote your product through their stories. You can direct your target audience to various products and landing pages on your website.
Instagram stories also help to create a buzz around a product launch and encourage potential customers to make a purchase. The content that you post to your Instagram stories doesn’t have to be perfect. Instead, it has to be creative to hold your audience attention.
Conclusions
Selling your products on Instagram is not as easy as you think and just posting pictures to your brand’s profile won’t necessarily convert your followers into potential customers. Therefore, it is essential to figure out the best ways to sell through this platform and keep an eye on current trends to achieve desired results.
Moreover, knowing the best tactics and experimenting with the right techniques can help in achieving your sales objectives within time. So, if you haven’t optimized your brand’s Instagram profile for sales, you might be missing out on a tremendous opportunity – give it a chance!
An Instagram Optimizaiton Checklist
How popular is Instagram as a venue for businesses? Currently, about 25 million businesses are already involved. And as Instagram continues to grow in terms of consumer use, that number will only increase.
If you have not yet dipped your toes into business use of Instagram, you need to do so now. Your competitors are probably already there, and you are missing out on a significant opportunity to spread your brand.
So, here’s your “to-do” checklist.
Get a Business Account
You may already have a personal account and are using that for your brand. If so, you can easily convert it to a business account, and your followers will be switched over automatically. But, if you don’t already have a personal account, you can open a business one easily.
You simply download the Instagram app and sign up for a personal account. (Note: if you already have a Facebook business account you can log in with that account and immediately have your own Instagram business account).
Once you have your personal account set up, you simply log in, go to your profile and click on the hamburger menu at the top. Under setting, you will be given the option to transfer the account to a business one. You will need to fill in your business information, but that is about it.
This is an easy step. Now you need to actually use that account to develop your brand presence and grow your following.
Who is Your Ideal customer?
Hopefully, you have already generated a customer profile, so you know the key demographics of that audience. If not, you must do so. You can develop this profile by some relatively easy research:
Who are your current customers? Create a profile from them
Who are the followers that your competitors have on Facebook and Instagram?
Once you have defined your target customer, craft a clear statement of what value your product or service brings to them. This should drive all that you ultimately post.
What kind of content does your ideal customer want to see?
Again, you can use your current customers as resources. Conduct surveys – ask them what type of content is most helpful or engaging? And check out your competitors’ Instagram accounts. Which types of content are most popular with their followings? Remember, Instagram is visual, and businesses communicate with their audiences with photos, videos, infograms, and such.
At the same time, the small amounts of text that are used are critical. Your bio tells your story – who you are and what value you want to bring to your audience. If you are going to establish relationships, your followers must know you on a personal level.
If you don’t feel skilled in crafting an engaging bio, get one professionally written.
When are Your Targets Online?
There’s plenty of research out there about which demographics are online at what times and on what social media platforms. While it is not foolproof, it is certainly based upon real data and will give you a general idea of when you should be posting. Best times also vary for the type of industry, and there is some research regarding that.
On the other hand, there are hugely successful businesses that have thrown all of that research to the wind and grown amazing followings in a short period. Nathan Chan, for example, launched his digital magazine, Foundr, using only Instagram. He posted several times a day for quite a while in the beginning – literally inundating his following – and he grew his following to 10,000 within three months.
However, you determine to post, do it on a regular schedule. Your followers will expect it. Don’t let them down, or they will bolt.
Content – Obviously, the Critical Key
Unless your posts engage and compel, you will not grow a following, and without a following, there will be no conversions and sales. Instagram is visual, so you know you must focus on photos, drawings, videos, etc. You can do many things with that content:
You can tell stories – You can post photos and videos of yourself and your staff at work. Anything you can do to humanize your brand develops connections with your audience.
If you support charitable causes, post photos or videos of your participation. Today’s Instagram consumer is generally 35 and under, and this demographic wants to do business with companies that demonstrate social responsibility
You can tell stories of your happy customers – post them using your product or service. ModCloth does a great job of this.
How-to videos are popular – WD-40 uses them to show the variety of uses (now up to about 2000) of this little product
Geico and Progressive have the gecko and Flo – they have Instagram accounts.
Get a theme. That’s what Nathan Chan of Foundr did. He posted inspirational quotes layered on amazing photos as backgrounds
Do whatever you can to encourage commenting and discussion. And ALWAYS respond personally.
Offer freebies or discounts if a viewer will share your post with five people
Run contests with deadlines and then post the winners.
Ask questions; take surveys; solicit photos and videos from followers and customers
Leverage Your Profile
Your business account allows profile features that personal account holders do not get. Be sure to leverage these:
This is the one place on Instagram where you can provide a link to your website
Use your profile to create your brand “voice” – is your business professional, casual, a bit cheeky? Consider the difference between Rolex watches and Red Bull. Every business has a “personality.” If you struggle with writing up this profile, get some professional help from a creative writer or journalist.
Include hashtags and perhaps emoji to further your “voice”
Consider using your logo as a profile picture
Be sure to include your contact information
You can also include a call-to-action button for contact, email subscription, etc.
Create the right Hashtags
These make your account easier to find for consumers who search on Instagram. You may want a branded hashtag, of course, but consider others as well. If you sell gardening tools, for example, you will want to create hashtags related to gardens, plants, etc. See what hashtags your competitors are using and use variations of those.
Use Instagram Ads
The beauty of Instagram Ads is that you can target your audience and you can include CTA buttons that will allow users to take action directly from your ad. This makes it a lot easier for your targets to get to your website, to a promotion, etc.
Measure the Success of Your Efforts
Instagram offers an entire array of metrics that you can track – it’s part of having a business account. Use these analytics tools to track the growth of following, the success of specific posts and/or ads. Start with the Instagram Insights tool and then, as you grow, there are other external analytics tools that you can use too.
Ready, Set, Go…
There you have it – a checklist of 10 tasks that will put your best foot forward on Instagram. There are others of course, and you will learn them as you go along. But these ten will be the first and most important.
Set up your Instagram Strategy
The most used and most popular Advertisement platform is Instagram. Every other brand is now hopping on to Instagram and creating a vivacious presence using its content, strategy, and action plan. Instagram can be integrated into a digital strategy to build a strong brand and generate demand for your products.
Set your goals for Instagram.
Before you begin posting on Instagram, ask yourself (or your team) one thing: Why are you on Instagram? As popular because the platform is, your answer should not be, “… because everyone else is.” To achieve success on Instagram within the long-run, you want to have a group purpose and goals so you’ll justify some time, energy, and monetary investment.
There’s no right answer here.
Maybe you want to use your Instagram feed to post and sell your products to customers. regardless of the reason, make certain to define your Instagram goals very first thing. And, guess what? Your Instagram can have multiple goals — you’ll post product images while also sharing user-generated content (UGC).
It’s less about the sort of posts you share and more about why you’re sharing them. If you recognize the why, you’ll skill to live your performance and use Instagram Analytics tools.
Determine your Instagram audience.
Determine the audience you would like to succeed in before you start marketing on Instagram. If you’ve got other marketing strategies in situ, draw from those to stay your efforts consistent. Don’t forget to think about factors like age, location, gender, income, interests, motivations, and pain points.
Don’t know where to start? Monitor popular event and interest hashtags associated with your business. See who’s using and interesting in these hashtags and inspect their profiles. you’ll also take a glance at your competitor’s followers. Instagram makes it easy to define your audience.
Conduct a competitive analysis
After you identify your Instagram audience, do a competitive analysis to ascertain what other marketers in your field are posting.
If you already know your top competitors, start by reviewing their Instagram profiles. If not, look for terms associated with your business and industry to seek out similar accounts.
Conduct a fast audit of related accounts to ascertain what posts are becoming the very best engagement, what popular hashtags they’re using, what their captions are, how often they post, and the way quickly they’re growing. This information can function as a benchmark as you begin growing your account.
While auditing your competitors’ content, a note of any opportunities they might’ve missed. Adding unique content into the combination will help your business to face out from the remainder.
Build a banger brand on Instagram.
Random or disjointed content confuses your audience and may cause you to lose followers. to stop this, maintain a uniform brand aesthetic on your Instagram account.
Determine what this seems like by brooding about your brand personality. What are your brand values? How would your customers and employees define your brand? Are you bold, playful, gritty, or adventurous?
Apartment Therapy’s brand personality is bright, clean, and arranged, and its account reflects all three of these traits. Ideally, brand aesthetic helps your brand become recognizable, meaning someone could see your picture in their feed and instantly know it’s yours … without seeing the name.
Grow your Instagram follower base.
Growing your following takes serious time and energy. you’ll be tempted to require the straightforward answer and buy followers … don’t do this! Purchasing followers won’t drive engagement, which is basically what you would like to make sure your posts are being seen. (Also, Instagram’s recent API changes will automatically delete those followers!)
Make sure your username is recognizable and searchable. If people can’t find you, they can’t follow you! Fill out your bio. It’s the last item someone sees before they create the choice to follow you so make certain to incorporate who you’re and what you are doing. Once your profile is optimized, start posting. It’s an honest idea to populate your feed with ten to fifteen high-quality posts before you start engaging people. If users visit your profile and find it empty, they probably won’t follow you.
Then, start following accounts that interest you and relate to your business. consider Instagram sort of a community and appearance for other businesses in your area or influencers who might enjoy your product or service. As you follow accounts, Instagram will suggest related ones that you simply can follow, too.
Instagram Ads can be created in a similar way how you created Facebook Ads, just select the placement for Instagram Ads. If your ad is for Feed you need to select that, and for Stories also you will be having an option. So you need to understand whether your audience is on Instagram or no and run ads that engage them with your content.
Measures the percentage of users clicking on shopping posts.
(Total Clicks on Shopping Posts / Total Shopping Post Views) x 100%
When using shopping posts for sales.
Indicates product interest and conversions.
High click rate may not guarantee sales.
Abandoned Checkout Recovery Rate
Evaluates the percentage of abandoned checkouts that are recovered through follow-up actions.
(Recovered Checkouts / Total Abandoned Checkouts) x 100%
When implementing cart recovery strategies.
Increases conversion rates and revenue.
Depends on recovery tactics and timing.
Sponsored Post Performance
Assesses the effectiveness of sponsored posts in driving sales and engagement.
(Engagement on Sponsored Posts / Total Impressions) x 100%
When using sponsored content for sales.
Measures sponsored content ROI.
Sponsored posts may not align with audience.
Influencer Collaboration Frequency
Tracks the frequency of collaborations with influencers for product promotion.
(Total Influencer Collaborations / Total Posts) x 100%
To evaluate influencer marketing strategy.
Indicates influencer campaign activity.
Over-reliance on influencers may be risky.
Instagram Stories Swipe-up Rate
Measures the percentage of users swiping up on Stories with swipe-up links.
(Total Swipes Up on Stories / Total Story Views) x 100%
When using Stories for link-driven sales.
Indicates interest in linked content.
Swipe-up feature may not be available to all.
Post Feedback and Comments
Tracks the quantity and quality of feedback and comments on posts.
(Total Comments + Total Positive Feedback)
When assessing user interaction and sentiment.
Enhances engagement and communication.
Negative feedback may require response.
Customer Churn Rate
Calculates the percentage of customers who stopped making purchases on Instagram.
(Churned Customers / Total Customers) x 100%
To assess customer retention challenges.
Identifies areas for retention improvement.
High churn rate impacts revenue.
Competitor Benchmarking
Compares Instagram sales and engagement metrics with key competitors.
(Your Metric / Competitor’s Metric)
When analyzing market positioning.
Provides insights for strategy adjustments.
Limited access to competitor data.
Ad Frequency
Measures how often users are exposed to your ads on Instagram.
(Total Ad Impressions / Total Reach)
When running ad campaigns.
Helps control ad fatigue and costs.
High frequency may lead to ad annoyance.
Instagram Checkout Usage Rate
Measures the percentage of users who complete purchases using Instagram Checkout.
(Completed Checkout / Total Shopping Post Clicks) x 100%
When using Instagram Checkout for sales.
Indicates ease of purchase process.
Relies on Checkout feature adoption.
Key Highlights:
Instagram as a Marketing Platform: Instagram is a powerful platform for promoting brands and selling products online due to its passionate and highly engaged followers.
Utilizing Influencers: Leveraging Instagram influencers in your marketing campaigns can help reach a more targeted and engaged audience, enhancing the effectiveness of your Instagram marketingstrategy.
Instagram Ads: Using Instagram ads allows you to target specific demographics and interests, making it easier to reach the right customers and increase sales. It also provides opportunities for retargeting previous potential customers.
Shoppable Posts: The shopping feature on Instagram allows users to buy products directly from the images of your posts, streamlining the purchasing process and increasing sales potential.
Instagram Stories: Utilizing Instagram Stories can engage your audience on a more personal level, drive traffic to your website, and boost product sales.
Set Clear Goals: Defining your goals on Instagram, such as brand promotion, product sales, or user engagement, is crucial to measuring success and using Instagram Analytics effectively.
Identify Target Audience: Understanding your target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points is essential for tailoring your content to meet their needs.
Build a Consistent Brand Aesthetic: Maintaining a uniform brand aesthetic on Instagram helps create a recognizable and cohesive brand presence.
Grow Your Follower Base Organically: Avoid buying followers and instead focus on optimizing your profile, posting high-quality content, and engaging with other relevant accounts to grow your following authentically.
Instagram Ads: Consider using Instagram Ads to reach a wider audience and engage potential customers with compelling content.
Instagram Insights: Monitor the performance of your Instagram account using Instagram Insights and external analytics tools to measure growth and engagement.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
