As small business marketers, we are big fans of email marketing and often recommend that our clients add it to their marketing efforts overall. What many small business owners do not realize is that email marketing can support your other marketing efforts if used strategically. Learn how you should be using email marketing to support your overall marketing efforts.
Think of email as a vehicle, not just a tactic
While you can create content just for your email efforts, you can actually get more out of your marketing if you start to look at email as a vehicle to help your other marketing efforts as well, not just a marketing tactic in and of itself. Email can support your paid advertising efforts, your content marketing efforts, and even your direct marketing efforts. Any marketing tactic should be part of a broader strategy, whether you have a formal small business marketing strategy in place or not. Not only will it make your efforts more efficient, but it will also help make your marketing more effective as well. See how email marketing can support your other marketing tactics.
Content marketing
Most marketers nowadays are committed to some form of content marketing, whether it is supporting a small business blog or creating videos, infographics, or guides. You might create the best company blog, but if people don’t come to your site to read it, you won’t get the results you’re hoping for. One of the best ways to promote your blog is in your newsletter or email blasts. It makes your content proactively available to those readers who may not have visited your site in a while. This same concept applies to any kind of content you create; typically, content marketers will send emails promoting a blog article, guide, or video. Think like a content marketer and use email to promote all that great content you are creating!
Paid marketing efforts
Paid marketing, such as Google Ads or social ads such as Facebook are a great way to bring people to your site quickly. However, the sales cycle is rarely a one-step process, which is where email marketing can become crucial to support your paid marketing efforts. If you are using paid advertising to promote your product or service, emails are a great way to keep prospects in the sales funnel. Once someone comes to your site from paid ads, capturing an email address ensures you can leverage that marketing to keep those prospects engaged and moving through the sales funnel. Many savvy marketers will promote a substantial content piece such as a guide in their paid ad strategy, bringing people to the site, capturing their email, and using emails as a vehicle to continue supporting their efforts onward. Pairing email marketing with your paid ads will greatly increase the likelihood of conversion, which can make paid advertising more affordable in the long run.
Direct marketing
If you’re selling directly to customers with salespeople, seminars, webinars, you should send emails to support the selling process. Like paid marketing efforts, direct marketing typically takes more than one outreach to bring new business in, which is why it is a good idea to support any direct marketing efforts you have with email marketing. Hosting a seminar or webinar? Ask people to register using their email. You can send reminder emails before the event, and then follow up after the event to keep the conversation going. If your small business attends events such as conferences, email marketing is a crucial vehicle to keep people engaged with your brand before, during, and after the event. Check out “Trade Show Marketing Ideas That Really Work” to see how well email supports event marketing.
Email marketing is the workhorse of all your marketing efforts
Email marketing supports so many aspects of your overall marketing strategy. It can draw people in, keep them engaged, and move them along the sales cycle. It elevates the visibility of your onsite content, supports your sales efforts, and keeps your company in front of current customers, past customers, and future customers. There are many platforms that small business owners can use affordably, such as Constant Contact, Mailchimp, or Zoho, so there is no reason why you can’t use this tactic in your marketing mix. Using email marketing to support your overall marketing efforts will help your marketing be more cost-effective, efficient, and affordable. You will be impressed with the results you see.