As SFI business owner, do you know the types of marketing tools available to grow your business? Knowing them and understanding each one of them will help you identify which one could be effective in building your business.
Some marketing tools are designed to generate leads for your SFI business, drive sales and customer traffic for promoting TC products/services, while other tools are used for gathering customer/prospect data. The key is deciding which marketing tools you need to accomplish your primary objectives. Often, you will use several different marketing tools simultaneously.
The best marketing tools for your SFI business will depend on the following points:
- Your goals, which include short and long term goals. You need to align your marketing tools with your goals to ensure success.
- Your time frame. How much time are you going to invest to establish the growth and momentum of your SFI business leading to your long term goal?
- What kind of budget are you going to commit consistently for your marketing campaign?
Let’s say, you set a goal to sponsor 50 affiliates per month or better find 5 to 10 affiliates who exhibit the qualities of entrepreneurship and duplicate your skills. What marketing tools do you need to accomplish this goal?
There are series of steps involved before you can identify the best marketing tools for your SFI business and come up close to your primary goals:
- You need to brand yourself.
Developing your personal brand is similar to product branding. The overall goal with branding is to differentiate yourself in the market so you can attain your objectives. The process includes defining your brand and brand attributes, positioning your brand in a different way than your competitors and then managing all aspects of your personal brand.
- Establish your presence on the web.
Without web presence, you’ll be missing key opportunities to grow your SFI business. A website is the modern equivalent of a business card. But becoming a recognizable name on the Internet takes more than just finding a place to list your contact info. Building a web presence takes time, effort and persistence. It’s important to build your online presence so that your prospects will find you, interact with you, get to know, like and trust you.
The above steps provide the essential ground for launching your marketing campaign effectively.
To identify the best marketing tool, you have to employ keycodes and Hit Tracking in your advertising effort for the following types of marketing tools:
- Traditional Media
Traditional media which include billboards, banners, newspapers, magazines, television, radio and telephone directories involve marketing tools such as paid print advertisements, commercials and news releases. This approach focuses on a one-way promotion push and relies on reaching high numbers of people to ensure success. Advertising through this marketing tool can be costly and it is highly recommended to take your marketing budget into consideration before committing to this method.
- Digital Media
Computer software technology can reach potential prospects with targeted, measurable communications. Specific digital media marketing tools include search engine optimization, mobile marketing, interactive online advertisements, and opt-in email. A key component of digital marketing tools is Web analytics, which provide information on an Internet user's online activities, IP address and search keywords. To engage in digital media marketing, you can hire digital media marketing agencies or utilize software as a service application.
- Social Media
Social media marketing is a subset of digital media marketing. However, the goal of social media marketing tools is to develop an interactive, online relationship with the prospect rather than to mine covertly for prospect data. Specific examples of social media marketing tools include blogging, tweeting, posting, sharing, networking, pinning, bookmarking, media sharing and commenting on social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit and YouTube.
- Promotional Items
Promotional items, such as ECA brochures, SFI/Eager Zebra/TripleClicks X-cards, Wave3 kits, TC Gift Cards and Wearables (Eager Zebra/SFI/TripleClicks T-Shirts) are tangible marketing tools. Some of these items include large amounts of detailed information and highlight attributes of the product or service; X-cards may display a company logo and provide contact information. In addition to increasing sales/sign ups, promotional items contribute to building brand awareness, but cost is a factor when selecting these items.
less