When building your business, you need precise strategies so that your business can move forward and develop. One of them is marketing. Marketing is not done haphazardly either. There are plans and also very effective tools to market the goods or services you sell. Marketing tools are tools that you can use to market your product with digital marketing.
The marketing plan is a plan prepared from start to finish to make the marketing go well. In this article, We invite you to find out what marketing tools you can use in your business. But before that, if you are new to building a business, knowing the importance of marketing itself will help you understand the next points. Let’s get started right now, watch the explanation until the end, okay?
Marketing Meaning
Marketing is an attempt by individuals or companies to promote their products or services to consumers. Marketing is not only advertising but also an activity to communicate and maintain customer relationships.
Essentially, marketing is useful to introduce products to customers so that they are interested and decide to buy the product or use the services you offer.
If we look at the above explanation, marketing is an attempt to sell products, but it also tries to provide solutions to consumer problems. Therefore, when marketing or marketing, it is very important to know who is the target audience or target consumers of your product. For example, your product is an insurance product as a protection for the future.
Of course, your target audience is not school children, is it? Your target group is more likely to be people who are already working and are between 23 and 40 years old. This is because they already have a monthly income to pay for the insurance, whereas children who are still in school have no income of their own.
In addition to determining the target audience, of course, you have already determined what kind of product you want to sell. Once you’ve made all the initial preparations to build your business, the next step is to do marketing or marketing yourself. Here are many ways you can practice to help your business grow.
Importance of Marketing Tools
One way you can promote your business is by making the most of existing marketing tools. At the beginning of this article, it was mentioned that marketing tools are tools that can help you market your product.
Of course, the marketing tools you use must be aligned with the goals you have previously set. This is because each marketing tool has its uses. For example, your goal is to increase traffic or the number of visitors to your website, so the method you use is SEO so that your website is at the top of the search engine results page.
If your goal is to gather data about your consumers or target audience, you can use survey platforms. How. Are you starting to understand how to use marketing tools? If not, you can read on to the next point.
Types of Marketing Tools
As mentioned earlier, each marketing tool has its utility to achieve each of your business goals. Below are some of the many tools available.
1. Social Media
Who is not familiar with social media? Social media has been discussed more and more lately. Especially since the pandemic has made everyone work from home, social media has become a platform where almost everyone gathers. Thus, the use of social media is also considered the most effective online marketing.
This is stated because social media is an online platform that can reach a very large and wide market and can even reach the whole country. Not only for socializing, but today’s social media is also a platform to introduce and offer your products to customers.
Using social media in your marketing is very effective for attracting new customers or markets. With many features available, you can maximize their use to help your business grow. Moreover, the use of social media is very important for you to build consumer trust in your product and business brand.
Social media becomes a platform where you can interact in two ways to make them familiar with your product through various content and information that is useful to consumers. The intended social media varies. You can use Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Path, and many more.
Each social media also has different user characteristics. So, before you choose any of the existing social media, you should again be clear about what kind of audience you want to reach.
2. websites
The use of websites may not be new. Using a website for your business will help to increase the credibility of your product in the eyes of consumers. Using a website in business also shows that your company is doing business professionally and not haphazardly. In addition, the website you use can provide important information that your consumers need to know.
Existing websites can also be placed on the social media accounts you create. This way, there will be many consumers who visit your website and ultimately decide to buy your product or use your service. Remember, when using a website, you need to use a design that is attractive, appealing to the eye, and easy for your consumers to use.
To do this, you can use the website creation services that are available. Currently, many agencies or companies offer website creation services with attractive designs and user-friendly settings, so you don’t have to worry if you don’t understand how to create a website.
3. Surveys
Surveys are another type of marketing. Conducting surveys is very useful for those of you who want to find out some information and thoughts from your consumers about your product or brand. You can find out how satisfied they are, how your service is, or if you want to learn more about what your customers are looking for.
By conducting surveys, you can better meet the needs of your consumers. Apart from that, you can also improve the quality of the products and services you have previously provided. By upgrading certain parts, your business will get better and you will gain more and more new customers.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing or marketing by email is also a kind of marketing tool that is very suitable to build and maintain relationships with your customers. Using email marketing is very important to make every customer who decided to stay loyal to your product feel valued and respected as a customer.
You can also use email to offer products similar to those previously purchased by customers. In addition, information and programs about your product and company brand.
5. Loyalty Program
Loyalty programs are still related to nurturing your loyal customers and are a very effective way of marketing to keep your customers. It is very important to attract new customers and markets for your product. However, if you don’t take care of existing customers, it’s like putting the fruit you’ve collected in a basket with holes.
Keeping your loyal customers is certainly much more important than attracting customers who are completely new to your product. This is because your loyal customers are the “powerful weapon” in your business. Loyal customers who are satisfied with the products and services you offer will inform and advertise to the people around them about how good your product is.
They are the ones who will help you attract new customers because of the testimonials given for your product. It’s those good experiences that you need to make sure that every customer who buys a product from you feels comfortable. It is their good experience that will be the most effective marketing strategy to reach more and more customers.
Up to 70% of people ultimately decide to purchase a product based on the testimonials of your loyal customers. Therefore, providing loyalty programs like discounts, promotional packages, and other benefits that new customers don’t get will make your loyal customers stick with your product and company brand.
Marketing Tools Application You Can Use
If you already understand the types of marketing tools you can use in the previous point, here are some applications you can use to promote your business.
1. Trello
Trello is a website that can help you compile and organize the strategies you have previously set. With Trello, you can group each task based on a group you define. For example, there are several groups such as Instagram feed posting schedules, live schedules, ad usage schedules, ideas, and other groups.
You can also invite your teammates so everyone can see what needs to be done. You can also take full advantage of features like deadlines and other reminders to implement any strategy that has been developed. Using Trello is important so that any goal you set can be achieved according to the schedule you and your team set.
2. Canva
Canva is a website and application that lets you create attractive designs for content that you publish on created social media accounts. Its use is very simple and suitable for those of you who are beginners in the world of design. Canva also offers attractive templates that you can use for free to design your business content.
But of course, if you sign up, you’ll enjoy even more different conveniences that you couldn’t use before. Canva will help you let your imagination and creativity run wild, which you couldn’t do before.
3. Unsplash or Pixel
This online website is a collection of images that you can use for free in your content. All you have to do is type in the keywords you are looking for and the images will appear from your keyword search results. You can freely use the images on this website because they don’t have a copyright license that we have to pay for.
Moreover, there are also many varied images. So it will be very easy for you to find the image you want. Websites that provide images without a license are of course not only these two but there are many websites that you can use.
4. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Of course, you can and must use existing social media. As explained earlier, using social media is very effective to promote your product. Moreover, using these three social media can help you increase brand awareness. This is because social media has the advantage of reaching even the most remote audience.
The existence of social media makes your product very close to the audience and the market wherever they are. These three social media have several similarities and features that you can use. What the three have in common is that you can use ads with goals that you can customize to your needs.
All three also require posting content that is interesting, creative, and relevant to their consumers or audience. In addition, there are excellent features that belong to each social medium. For example, Instagram has story features, feeds, reels, IG TV, and IG Live that you can maximize to interact a lot with the audience.
5. Surveymonkey
SurveyMonkey is a website that allows you to create surveys for your audience. Whether it is to collect data about consumers or collect data for your product and brand. Its look is also more attractive than survey platforms that usually make your consumers fill out the survey.
The advantage of this one platform is the result you get from consumers who filled it. SurveyMonkey can help you display a chart with the results of the answers you have previously given. This will make it easier for you to interpret the survey results you have created.
6. Google Analytics
Still data-driven, you can collect your consumer data with Google Analytics. You can find out various data like the demographics of your consumers. In addition, you can find out how your consumers recognize products, whether from advertising channels, social media, or websites. You can also evaluate every posted strategy and content.
In this way, you can replace or reuse any existing strategy. Essentially, the data generated by Google Analytics will help you monitor any strategy that has been used to help your business grow in a better direction.
7. Online Ads
Advertising is one element that you should not miss. Online ads or online displays are available on different platforms that you can customize to suit your needs. You can advertise with Google Ads on websites, search engines, and applications that work with Google. You can also use YouTube ads and ads on other social media.
Advertising can help you reach new consumers, increase brand awareness and boost your sales. Its use has also been made very simple by its creators. Moreover, the funds required to place online ads are cheaper compared to offline ads. You can also adjust the required funds according to the budget you have created.