Types of marketing activities

Even the best product or service doesn’t sell itself. Every business needs to do some sales and marketing activity, so you need to understand how and where your customers buy your product or service so that you can find the best way of getting them to hear about you. 

Picking the right channel to reach your customers is crucial and with so many to choose from you need to think about the advantages, disadvantages and practicalities of each one. Here we will look at the main types of communication channels and how you can use them to best effect.

Public relations (PR) is the relationship your business has with the public and is developed by working with the press and other media outlets to create positive awareness of your business. Favourable media coverage, such as reports, reviews and articles, is very valuable because PR is often seen as being more credible that advertising. To make the most of your PR campaign your business needs to be ready for the extra interest and sales good publicity will bring but you should also have a mechanism for handling publicity or feedback that is not so favourable.

All businesses can benefit from having an accessible and easy to use web presence. For this to be most effective you need to decide what you want your website to deliver for your business, for example, you might want to build brand awareness, sell directly to customers or improve customer support. Once you have decided what you need your website to achieve you will be able to develop the structure and content for it. You will probably need to work with a web development company to create the structure of your site and possibly a marketing/design agency to help with the content.

Blue Llama a Jersey Digital Agency have developed an e-book, “9 Simple Steps to your Perfect Business Website“. for business owners looking to embark upon a website project, talking them through the decisions they need to make along the way.

Social media, both for advertising and for engagement with your customers, has become a very important communications tool for businesses. Social media platforms you may wish to consider using include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and Trip Advisor. Although it is relatively easy to set up a social media presence it can be tricky to manage as all these platforms needs to be regularly refreshed with new and interesting content. You will also need to consider how you will separate personal and business social media activity particularly if you or your employees are already active on these platforms.