The basics of online marketing aren’t incredibly difficult – invest in Internet advertising, embrace content marketing, and build a social media presence. But when those tactics aren’t providing the growth you want, where do you turn?
There are a number of advanced marketing strategies you can employ, but ultimately, there’s one place to start: narrowing your focus. Niche marketing – maximizing your business’s core strengths – allows you to focus on the ways you outshine your competitors. By embracing the small details in every aspect of your business, you can tailor your marketing efforts to your best customers.
1. Dig Deeper with Google Analytics
Before you wade into advanced marketing techniques, it’s a good idea to verify that your customer personasare on target. In addition to the pageviews and search terms you probably already track, you can set up custom reports and then slice and dice your overall traffic according to six metric groups:
- Acquisition
- Advertising
- Behavior
- Ecommerce
- Goal conversions
- Social
- Users
Use these advanced analytics to confirm what you think you know about your target audience and their habits. You can even create custom reports to track sequential movements through your site – for example, users who came from a specific referrer and landed on page X. This information helps strengthen the backbone of your niche strategy.
2. Micro-Target Your Email Blasts
Email marketing is the juggernaut of customer outreach, and if you’re not currently segmenting your email list, you’re missing the opportunity to attract customers in the ways that speak to them the most powerfully. In order to understand where your subscribers are coming from, use customized forms and landing pages – with unique tracking – for each campaign you run to drive signups.
You then have the option of merging your lists for major mailings, or sending extremely targeted email blasts to your list segments that echo the niche language you used to attract people in the first place. Just make sure to let users know what they’ve signed up for – sending customers things they didn’t ask for will land you in the spam bucket.
3. Build Up Your Team’s Niche Expertise Profile
One of the best ways to make your business stand out involves ensuring you seem like the go-to solution for your customers by publicizing your expertise.
If you don’t have a blog, start one. Consider publishing on LinkedIn’s publishing platform and gain the public-speaking skills you might need to present at targeted industry conferences. Every time you demonstrate yourself as a highly specialized industry thought-leader, you will gain new leads for your business.
4. Tailor Your Social Posts for Each Platform
If your current social media strategy involves posting the same articles and info to every platform, you’re not effectively harnessing each network to your best advantage.
For example, Facebook’s user base is around 75 percent female, with 84 percent of users in the 18-29 age group. Google+ is 63 percent male and tech-savvy. LinkedIn is 60 percent male and most used by high-earners between 25 and 54 years of age. Pinterest skews conservative, while Tumblr skews liberal.
Dig in and do the research, then use this information to tailor both your content and your tone to the segments of your audience that are actually on each of these platforms. Ultimately, you’ll want to consider your overall target audience first – but then, drill down and really think about what appeals to the individual demographic groups.
