Building a business in the Southeast of England can be a wonderful experience. The Southeast has a varied and exciting population, allowing for many different kinds of businesses to thrive on its turf.
However, there is also a lot of competition, simply because the Southeast contains some of the biggest cities and is bustling with shops full of commercial magic and offices offering every service you can think of.
With this in mind, you really have to have a clear-cut marketing plan in place when launching or running a business in the Southeast, to give you a chance to stand out from your competitors.
This article will map out some ideas of how you can create a marketing strategy that will get customer eyes on your website and products!
*Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
Social Media
Social media is a growing presence in our lives. In fact, NBC reports that people with smartphones check their social media channels on average 14 times per day, which means there is plenty of opportunities to grab users’ attention.
Paid ads now have the edge on social media (more on this later). However, you can still get good traction with organic postings if you do it correctly.
Posts that gain a lot of engagement and shares are more likely to get exposure from Facebook (or whichever platform you are using). So, with this in mind, consider the kind of content you are posting. If you are posting simple links to blog posts with no excitement, you’re probably not going to get a lot of people to click through.
The alternative to this is to post things like competitions and free giveaways, which get people sharing and engaging with your post quickly, leading to more people seeing it and, hopefully, in turn, more likes.
The downside of organic social media is that it’s difficult to pinpoint the intention of the traffic. Someone who is just browsing Facebook is less likely to be in a shopping mood than someone searching Google shopping ads, for example.
Whilst it does have limitations, it’s still a good way to build an audience. Try less commonly used social media platforms to rank content with your town name in the title; this has been a successful organic social strategy for a lot of businesses as there is less competition.
PPC (Pay Per Click)
PPC is the process of paying to appear in people’s newsfeeds or at the top of a search engine. It’s highly targeted and allows you to reach people easily.
Use the Facebook (Meta) Pixel to target people who have visited certain pages of your website and shown interest in certain products to create marketing that speaks directly to them.
PPC gives fast traffic, so is perfect for a short-term strategy whilst building long-term channels.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
SEO is a long-term approach to marketing. It can be a slow process but is worthwhile as it allows free traffic to your website via search engines.
You can attempt to do SEO yourself via blogs, link building, and digital PR. However, it is a lengthy process and in a lot of cases, it’s best to hire someone for SEO link-building services as they will be more likely to be able to get you ranked faster than you could, due to their skill set and connections with blogs for guest posting.
Organic traffic is the best converting traffic source you can get, so it is worthwhile pursuing this marketing method as part of your long-term strategy.
Summary
Having a good marketing plan will ensure you can stand out from the crowd with your Southeast business and guarantee long-term success for your business.
*Header image courtesy of Rodeo Project Management Software on Unsplash
