There are lots of different approaches to market to consumers. This article considers key different ways of marketing products and services to customers – from mass TV adverts and social media to flyers and word-of-mouth referral approaches.
TV Adverts
Television adverts are one of the most common means of advertising – allowing firms to reach large audiences with short clips of their products. In a 10-30s second short clip, you can highlight key features of your product, or convey the desired image for your brand.
While on-demand streaming is increasingly allowing some degree of targetting in ads, overall, TV adverts are not particularly targeted. Some degree of targetting can be achieved through choosing appropriate television slots, but overall, while TV adverts are a great way of generating awareness among a large audience, they are less suited to targetting a very narrow customer segment.
Billboards and posters
Another relatively mass-market approach is using billboards and posters to promote your firm and products. Similar to TV adverts, this approach allows you to target a very broad audience, although without the time and costs associated with creating a filmed production.
Targetted mailings
While TV adverts and billboards don’t allow significant targetting, mailings to customers can allow you to hone in on specific customers – potentially re-targetting prior customers with promotions. This is more appropriate when you have a narrower group of individuals that you want to concentrate on, or specific promotions that you want to target at certain individuals.
Social media advertising
While TV adverts and billboards are mass-customer-focused, and targetted mailings require you to know who to target, social media advertising is one approach to obtain relatively narrow targetting of new customers. Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram allow you to specify relatively narrow customer segments, allowing you to display your adverts to specific segments that are most likely to buy your products or services.
Internet banner adverts
Internet banner ads are another approach to creating awareness of your products. Like with social media advertising, it is possible to target your adverts on specific audience segments and to narrow where your adverts are displayed to specific sites.
Search ads
Another common marketing approach is via search ads that display on the top of search engines when terms are being searched. This helps get your product displayed when potential customers are searching terms that relate very directly to the products that you want to sell.
Word of mouth and referral marketing
A final form of advertising is word-of-mouth advertising. Your existing customers can be a great source of referrals – and referral marketing promotions can be a great way of encouraging your existing customers to share your product with others that they know.
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