How to make your marketing more effective

Sophie says: “Concentrate on only a few social media platforms. What I see a lot with SMEs is they want to do a bit of everything; they feel like they have to be visible on all of the platforms so they can be found. But social media platforms require a time investment and a high level of engagement to perform well, and if you spread yourself too thin, you are not going to get results. So because time is short and there is a lot to do, it is better to concentrate on just one or two platforms, and then do them well.”

Sophie says: “Hopefully you already have a clear idea of where your customers are; if you don’t, you need to go back and work on that because otherwise that will make your marketing very difficult. LinkedIn is really great for B2B businesses, Instagram and Facebook are good for consumer-focused businesses, with younger people on Instagram and older people on Facebook. Definitely don’t jump on the bandwagon of thinking you should be on a platform like Tiktok just because it is new - if your customers are not on there, there is no point.”

Sophie says: “Look at your competitors social media platforms, especially if they are a bit bigger and more established, and see where people are engaging with them. That is probably the one for you to invest time into.”

Sophie says: “Creating content is a really powerful marketing tool because it provides value, but it can take time and effort to come up with ideas. So choose some content pillars. These are three or four key themes based on your expertise that you are going to create your content around. For example I’m a marketing consultant and my three pillars are social media, content, and marketing strategy, so all my blogs and social media posts are about one of these. It means that when you creating a piece of content, for example a social media post, a blog article or an email to send to your mailing list, you are not starting from scratch and spending time wondering what to talk about. It gives you a structure and also means that you get known for those three or four themes, which is very good. Don’t worry about repeating yourself because under your key themes, you have lots of different topics.”

Sophie says: “If you are sending out an email that comes from the CEO, for example, don’t waste time creating a fancy template because it is better for it to look like an email. It will seem a lot more personal. And keep to one topic per email; don’t try to cram a lot of things in there. It will be easy for people to understand and also quicker to put together.”

Sophie says: “Whatever marketing you decide to do, whether it is posting on social media or writing blogs or sending out emails, make sure you do it regularly because consistency in marketing is like winning half of the battle. If there is no consistency, there is never going to be results.”

Sophie says: “Set aside some time each month to look at the analytics for your main social media platform, your website and your email marketing. Decide what key metrics you want to look at and look at what has performed well and what hasn’t, so you can decide to do less of what is not performing well. If hardly any people are reading your blogs, for example, you can take action, perhaps by making them more relevant or promoting them more. There is no point in posting things that people are not interested in.”