The rise of digital marketing means even small businesses can expand their reach to generate brand awareness, customers, and revenue around the world.
But with so many different types of marketing strategies to choose from, how do you know which ones to invest in?
Should content marketing be a top priority? What is the true potential of search engine marketing? Are cold calls and emails still worthwhile strategies?
In this article, we’ll answer these questions, diving into eight strategies that you can use to boost brand awareness and reach more customers.
But first, let’s look at the two major types of marketing.
Traditional vs digital marketing types of marketing
Over the decades, marketing has evolved to encompass a diverse range of traditional and digital marketing tactics.
Traditional marketing strategies take place offline and often include a form of advertising. Examples include print advertising, TV ads, billboard ads, telemarketing — basically, any form of marketing that was around before the internet.
Digital marketing is an umbrella term for any marketing strategy that uses digital channels, including email, social media, search engines, and digital advertising.
Today, many companies use a combination of traditional and digital forms of marketing to reach different audience segments.
In fact, some offline marketing strategies use digital technologies to increase their impact. For example, telemarketing is usually performed via an outbound virtual call center, which provides benefits like omnichannel communications and advanced analytics to boost performance.
8 marketing strategies to expand your reach
So, let’s break down the different types of marketing strategies that can help you reach a wider audience.
1. Content marketing
Content marketing involves creating and distributing informative content to your target audience. The goal is to attract, nurture, and convert leads into customers.
As inbound marketing goes, it’s one of the most effective strategies around, and has grown to encompass various different content types, including:
- Blog posts and guest posts
- Ebooks
- Infographics
- Videos
- Case studies
- Testimonials and reviews
- Podcasts
- How to guides/resources
- Whitepapers
B2B companies generally focus on creating authoritative, informational, and thought-leadership content to establish credibility and educate audiences. This gives prospects the in-depth knowledge and badges of trust they need to progress with their purchase.
B2C companies, on the other hand, typically prioritize creating easily digestible content to entertain and delight consumers.
Both B2B and B2C integrate content marketing with search engine optimization techniques to maximize reach.
2. Social media marketing
Social media marketing strategies involve building your online presence on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. As well as distributing your own posts, images, and videos, you can share user-generated content, engage with followers, and even run paid ads.
Given the nature of social media, this is a brilliant way of reaching a broad audience while building authentic relationships with customers and making more sales.
Plus, marketers gain access to a range of data and customer insights to help you devise more impactful marketing strategies, increasing reach even further in the future.
So, what social media platforms should you put your marketing efforts into? It depends on where your target audience is and what they want to see.
B2C companies tend to use visual, consumer-populated platforms like Instagram and TikTok. B2B marketers, however, typically have more success with LinkedIn — which explains why 96% of B2B marketers use it — along with Facebook, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter).
3. Influencer marketing
An influencer marketing strategy involves propositioning influential people (typically social media influencers) to promote your product or services on their platform.
It’s a strategy with a lot of potential as influencers have a ready-made audience of thousands, sometimes even millions, of engaged followers. They’ve built a relationship with this audience that gives them incredible influence over their buying decisions.
If you follow this strategy, choose your influencer carefully. Make sure their values align with your brand’s and that their audience is genuinely engaged.
Once you’ve found influencers you feel are a good match, work closely with them to create marketing campaigns that will resonate with your audience while getting your message across. This could be in the form of reviews, unboxing videos, video tutorials or explainers, and so on.
4. Email marketing
Over 85% of marketing leaders say email is critical to their success — and for good reason. This marketing strategy is particularly effective at reaching potential leads and connecting with customers through personalized content.
Once a customer subscribes to your company’s email list, your team can send different types of marketing messages, such as informational newsletters, exclusive discounts, stock updates, invitations to in-person events, and product recommendations.
To craft email messages that genuinely resonate with prospects, you need to segment your email list depending on shared interests, location, customer journey stages, and so on.
From there, an effective email campaign uses personalization, automation, and other techniques to increase brand awareness, generate website traffic, build customer relationships, and promote products and services.
Just be aware of email etiquette and best practices, such as:
- Complying with regulations like GDPR.
- Only sending emails to recipients who’ve opted in to receive them.
- Providing easy, clear opt-out options.
5. Search engine marketing (SEM)
Search engines are the first place people go to when researching products. So, you want your business’s website to be as visible on search engine results pages (SERPs) as possible.
One way to do this is through search engine marketing, or SEM.
SEM strategies aim to increase your visibility on search engines (Google, mostly). There are two main SEM strategies: SEO and paid advertising.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) involves integrating relevant keywords into your online content to help your website rank highly on SERPs. The higher your content ranks, the more organic traffic it generates.
To put this into perspective, research shows that the top three spots on Google receive 54% of all clicks. And, moving up just one position increases click-through rate by 32%, on average.
SEO isn’t all about keywords though. Link-building, high-quality content, and technical SEO (such as site structure and loading speed) are equally as important.
- Paid advertising, or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is when you bid on keywords to secure a Google ads placement. This can significantly expand your reach by generating what’s known as “paid traffic”.
6. Account-based marketing (ABM)
Rather than targeting large groups, account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on high-value prospects with personalized campaigns and account-specific messaging. Essentially, it targets the account as though it’s an individual market.
Using ABM, you can curate individualized experiences for high-value customers to drive peak revenue. Examples of ABM marketing strategies include:
- Inviting key prospects from target accounts to attend a video call with your CEO.
- Inviting a prospect to be a special guest on your podcast or webinar.
- Hosting exclusive VIP dinners or conferences.
- Sending personalized gifts.
- Creating custom landing pages that target the account’s unique needs.
ABM requires considerable resources and effort, which can make it challenging. But today you can find various account based marketing software to streamline and automate ABM across your sales and marketing funnel, increasing efficiency and results.
7. Outbound marketing
Many of the strategies we’ve discussed so far have been forms of inbound marketing. In contrast, outbound marketing is any type of marketing that’s unsolicited. This includes cold calls, cold emails, billboard ads, and TV ads.
Essentially, it targets potential customers who haven’t previously expressed interest in your company.
Outbound marketing sometimes gets a bad reputation. But, especially in B2B marketing, proactively communicating with leads can give you a competitive advantage over companies that wait for the customer to initiate contact.
Plus, many B2B customers still consider radio, print, TV, and other types of traditional marketing advertisements more credible and professional due to higher standards for publication.
That said, there are a few things to consider before diving into outbound marketing.
- Research the company you’re targeting: Before making contact, you need to understand the company’s unique needs and pain points so you can personalize outbound messages and tailor your value proposition.
- Leverage a virtual phone number: If you’re making cold calls to customers in an area where you don’t have a physical presence, it’s best to use a virtual phone number to give your brand a local identity.
8. Word-of-mouth marketing
Of all the different marketing types, word-of-mouth marketing is the most cost-effective — and, perhaps, the most valuable — strategy of all.
Word-of-mouth marketing encourages current customers to share their positive brand experiences with others. This can be done in several ways, such as:
- Online reviews
- User-generated content (such as videos and social media posts)
- Customer testimonials
- Referral and loyalty programs
You can also create viral-worthy content, incentivizing customers to share it on their own platforms. In doing so, these customers organically spread the word about your brand, increasing reputation, awareness, and of course, potential leads.
Why is it so effective? Well, customers trust the recommendations of friends, family, and other customers more than they’ll ever trust branded ads. This is why it remains the most popular form of brand/product discovery at 55%, and has the highest research-to-purchase ratio of all types of marketing.
Final thoughts
Customer behavior is constantly changing, and that means exploring the different types of marketing strategies at your disposal.
Each has its own benefits, but all of them can help you reach a wider audience, particularly if you use a combination of strategies. Remember, the strategies and channels you choose will depend on your business structure, goals, and target audience’s preferences.
Research and experiment with different options to create a marketing strategy that drives new leads and boosts your revenue.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best types of marketing strategies for B2B?
Effective marketing strategies for B2B include content marketing, social media marketing via LinkedIn, outbound marketing like cold calls, and email marketing. Keep in mind that unlike B2C marketing, which is more transactional and emotion-driven, B2B marketing hyper-focuses on establishing trust, building long-term relationships, and empowering customers to make educated decisions.
What are the four types of audience segmentation?
To understand what marketing strategies to use, you need to understand your customers on an intrinsic level — their buying motivations, pain points, and preferred content types and channels. To do this, you should start by using the four types of segmentation to categorize your target audience.
These are:
- Demographics: Age, occupation, income, etc.
- Psychographics: Personality, interests, and pain points.
- Behaviors: Browsing and purchasing habits.
- Geographical: Location, time-zone, culture, etc.
B2B companies also need to understand firmographics, which includes company size, structure, industry, and performance.
Originally published Sep 02, 2024
