Instagram Marketing

If you have products or services you’d like to promote, Instagram marketing can help you grow your
following and get more custom. The site is the world’s most popular photo sharing platform but to
get the most out of it, you need to know what kind of posts your target audience prefers.

Before doing any kind of marketing on Insta, ensure you’ve switched your profile to a Business
account, if you don’t have one already. Having an Instagram Business account gives you some great
free perks like the ability to allow followers to click your contact button to message you straight
from your Instagram page.

A business account will also give you access to Instagram’s suite of analytics tools, named Insights.
These display stats about the impressions and reach of your posts. You can use these free tools to
track your metrics and better understand what posts have max appeal to your audience.

Instagram Analytics lets you view your follower demographics, including age, gender, location, and
most active hours. You’ll be able to use this data to tailor your content, captions, hashtags, and post
timing, to optimise your reach when you create and publish ads on Facebook Business Manager.

You’ll be able to set Instagram Ads up and select which types of campaigns you want to run using
Business Manager, where you can publish ads for both the Instagram and Facebook platforms. You
will need to connect your Instagram Business account to Facebook Business Manager before you can
publish, but it’s much better to promote this way as opposed to directly from Instagram. Not only
will you have more control over your ads, but you can set automatic campaigns as well, gain more
precise targeting, better reach, and have all your stats in one place.

Instagram offers you different types of marketing approaches, from paid sponsored ads to free
user generated content. Before you post anything, choose the approach that best fits your budget,
the size of your audience, and the goals you want to reach for each post.

Encourage purchases with product teasers

If you have products to promote, using Instagram to push subtle teasers is a great way to encourage
people to buy. Instagram can be a superb place to advertise your products, as it’s a highly visual
platform, but don’t come across as too pushy or your follower count will plummet.

Go for a well shot visual or short clip paired with a snappy cation to let other people know about
your product or service, and you’ll increase anticipation without looking desperate. Don’t forget to
hashtag all your posts on Instagram using the most popular tags for your niche. You can discover
these using Instagram, as the stats for each hashtag are displayed in a drop-down menu when you
type it in.

You could also use the product teaser format to promote a free to download app, giveaway, or
discount, while showcasing your products in a gallery. This sideways style of promotion can be
extremely effective at increasing engagement as it’s not in your face, yet it allows you to get your
items in front of interested customers.

The subtle tease really works on Instagram. The idea is to push your products by making them
appear desirable, without blatantly telling people to buy. One example of this is Starbucks who
create desire for their seasonal drinks by posting them alongside stunning season-themed visuals.

Expand your reach with Sponsored Ads

Sponsored Ads are great if you need to expand your reach and don’t have a huge following, as
anyone within your defined target audience can view them, not just your followers. You can control
how much you spend on them by pre-setting a budget and can choose to display one, or multiple
sponsored ads, via Instagram’s carousel feature.

One powerful trick you can use to quickly create high converting sponsored ads is to examine your
top performing posts using analytics. Identify which ones worked well, then turn them into
sponsored ads for a target audience you select. This is a superb way to lower your ad spend risk and
get more for your money, as your content has already proven effective with a similar audience.

Sponsored Ads offer you a lot of flexibility as there are many different forms you can choose to run,
including:

ü Photo
ü Video
ü Carousel/Dynamic Ads
ü Stories
ü Stories Canvas

Increase engagement with Instagram Stories

If you’re looking to increase engagement, Instagram stories should be in your Instagram marketing
toolbox. These are different from normal Insta posts, as they come in a slideshow style format and
are only live for 24 hours, though they can be saved to your device and reused later.

Stories don’t appear in your news feed but in a small area just above it. When a user clicks on one of
your Story icons, a pop-up window will appear, and they’ll be able to view your Story.

Stories offer you several benefits and are an effective way to grab your follower’s attention, as they
are displayed first at the top of follower timelines. Since this is where many users look every day,
there’s a high chance your content will get seen.

You can also use the Story format to showcase behind-the-scenes style footage, or shots that
haven’t been edited like your usual posts. This allows you to post more content quickly, without
affecting the overall look and feel of your Instagram, as it won’t be up forever, and won’t be
displayed with your normal posts.

The Story format gives you several different post options including:

ü Photos
ü Short video
ü Rewind video
ü Live video
ü Boomerangs (GIF like images that loop)

You can also tag other users into your stories, which is great if you are working with another brand
or cross promoting.

To create professional looking content for your stories, make use of free tools like InVideo,
Desygner, and Canva. You can create ads from scratch or use the free templates that make creating
content even easier, as all you need to do is change your details and upload your pictures or video.
Employ authenticity with User Generated Content

User generated content is a great way to get posts for your page, without the hassle of content
creation. If you have an already engaged audience, you can leverage them to generate content for
your brand, by asking them to submit photos or videos. Maybe you could ask for photos of people
using your product in exchange for free entry into a competition? You could collect entries under a
branded hashtag to do this.

Or, you could ask for people’s opinions about a relevant topic, then repost the short clips on your
Insta page.

The good news is people love user-generated content more than branded content because it’s real,
authentic, and not predictable.

By employing user generated content into your Instagram marketing strategy, you can leverage the
tremendous power of authenticity, without having the hassle of creating content.

Quora Marketing
Quora is primarily a question and answer platform but it’s also a social network where users discuss
a huge variety of topics. It offers a great, if overlooked marketing opportunity, which many people
aren’t aware of.

Users on Quora can manage their profiles and connect with others with common interests, but the
main idea behind the site is for people to get expert answers to their questions.

Quora attempts to screen Question responders by asking them to fill out in depth profiles. It also
gets them to state why they are qualified to give their opinion on the topic they are replying to. For
this reason, the site is considered more reliable than Reddit, though the screening process it offers is
by no means fool proof.

Quora is heavy on moderation, and though extensive self-promotion isn’t allowed, a small amount is
acceptable, providing you are also giving valuable responses. Quora also displays ads, giving you the
option of paying to put your content in front of a user base that is often relatively educated and
affluent.

You can use the platform to market your own website, services, or products, when you respond to
questions posted, but do this sparingly, and always within the context of sharing relevant
information that readers will find valuable.

You’ll build your credibility on Quora if you have expert insight to offer, are prepared to respond to
many questions, and don’t always respond with a self-promotional link.

The platform uses AI to select specific questions to send to the most relevant experts. If, for
example, you know a lot about Facebook Ads, and have previously answered other, related
questions users found valuable, you’ll have a higher chance of receiving more question prompts. Do
well in one or more topics and you’ll become a thought leader, which will make any promotion you
post much more credible.

Top tips to quickly become a Quora Thought Leader:

 1. First, sign up for and create your Quora account and fill out your profile with as much
information as you can.
2. Follow topics that relate to your market niche, interest, or expert specialism.
3. Select questions you can answer well and respond to as many as you can with detailed well-
thought out answers. Don’t start self-promoting right away, and make sure to shoot for at
least 100 words when responding. More is better, if possible.
4. After you’ve made at least five to ten answers, you can start to include some promotion in
your posts. You could do this by quoting topic-relevant excerpts from your blog, with the full
links at the end, mentioning that readers can find more information there.
5. Make sure you follow up and respond to any comments or queries, as this will help cement
your Quora reputation.

Reddit Marketing
Reddit can be a difficult platform to crack if you’re marketing a product, brand, or service but if you
can do well, there are some very worthwhile great benefits. The platform is superhot on banning
accounts that over-promote, and major brands such as Business Week have been banned from the
Platform for promotion by moderators.

The primary reason to use Reddit to promote is for Brand Building, as the platform is a highly
effective way of using word of mouth to introduce a new concept, idea, or hot topic.

If you can provide valuable information, an expert view, or are doing something differently you
could use this to stimulate discussion. If you can get Reddit users talking about what you do, this can
boost your search ranking, as you will show up in Google search results whenever people search for
that topic. This is on top of the influx of organic traffic you could get from the huge numbers of users
who frequent the many topics posted on Reddit every day.

Reddit users can submit posts, and upvote or downvote other posts to show whether they liked
them or found the information useful. The more upvotes your posts receive, the more people the
algorithm will display your content too. Receive a lot of downvotes and your content will disappear
to the bottom quickly.

Reddit is user led, with unpaid mods, and its primary purpose is to connect people who have similar
interests. It doesn’t rely on advertisers, though the site does offer the option to run paid
advertisements, which means the users have a lot more say.

This can be a surprisingly good thing, if your content goes down well, as it can offer you extensive
promotion, without you having to spend a lot of money.

The main Reddit benefits for marketers are:

• Off Topic Generation – Great for linking to question keywords that you can tie into your
pillar pages or other deep-dive content.
• Off Page SEO – You can use Reddit to share your useful content on any topic, providing its
high quality and relevant. This is a great way to tap into an already interested community of
targeted users, if you ensure the content you share is related to the topic you’re posting
about or responding too.
 • Direct Engagement with an interested audience- When you expand your audience on
Reddit, you’ll gain the ability to run Ask Me Anything sessions (AMAs). These are live Q&A
sessions, where users will be able to ask you questions in real time.

To access this option, you’ll have to spend time posting quality content, earning Reddit karma, and
commenting on other posts. You need to hold back on promoting at first, so you can get to know
the community you want to engage, and so they can develop trust in you and what you post.

With all your posts on Reddit, your twin goals should be to provide information others will find
useful, and to encourage engagement. When you do promote, do it with a light touch, and ensure
the subreddit you’re posting to doesn’t ban self-promotion outright as some do.

Don’t be tempted to stealth promote or make fake accounts to boost your own posts. Reddit users
are savvy, and this will likely only get you banned. If you’re desperate to start promoting straight
away, it’s better to purchase ad space.

You’ll have an easier time promoting on reddit if you’re a B2B brand, as you can join business
orientated groups that are already focused on your niche. Here, you might well be able to insert
mentions of your brand, blog, or products, as many people posting will be looking for solutions, such
as how to get more search engine traffic, for example. If you’re a consumer brand, you may find it a
struggle to balance promoting your brand and engaging like a regular user. However, Reddit could
still pay off, if you put in the time and make the right approach.

What type of content is best for Digital Marketing on Reddit?

Blog content

Blog content is hugely popular on Reddit but it’s tricky to get it right. When you do, it can be a highly
effective way to get Reddit users viewing, sharing, and talking about your content. Make sure any
blog content you share on Reddit is informative and has been proofread before you share, You also
need to check that your blog content adds to the user experience, and should use emotive headlines
and sub headers to break up long pieces of text.

Text-based posts

On most sites, like Facebook or Twitter, visual content rules, but on Reddit, text content thrives and
regularly receives upvotes. A large part of the reason for this is that Reddit is a platform for sharing
great ideas, so you don’t always need wow graphics to impress.

It’s also worth considering sharing your blog content as a text post on Reddit, instead of posting a
link to your site.

AMAs

AMA or ask me anything sessions are frequently hosted on the subreddit r/IAmA, though they can
be hosted in other places on Reddit too. They are threads where Reddit users with big followings
answer community questions, but you can also gain the ability to do an AMA if you have a unique
story, or high profile.
On the subreddit AMA, users use filters to search for topics like Politics or Non-profit, to find the
sessions they are interested in.

AMAs are great for raising your brand profile, as typically they give you a good opportunity to
connect with a big general audience.

News

Creating original news is difficult for many brands, but news doesn’t always have to be an
investigative piece of journalism. Your news could be talking about valuable content from industry
thought leaders or could be a link to original research or an important new report.

If you want to create news about your products or services, you could announce new features, and
talk about their benefits. You could also talk about how unique or technologically advanced they
are if this is true. Be careful that you stay on the right side of informative, as on Reddit you really
don’t want to come across as overly promotional.

To find out what kind of news might be well received on Reddit, monitor how many people are
talking about your keywords and relevant topics.

Has anyone mentioned your brand or your competitor’s brands?

If so, are they talking in a positive way, considering your products or services as a solution? Are they
unhappy with what you do, or with what your competitors are doing? You can use your findings as
an opportunity to offer an alternative solution to your rivals, or to improve where people have
expressed dissatisfaction.

Asking for feedback

You can use Reddit to discover what your target audience really wants, as well as learn what people
think of your brand and products. You can also find out what users feel about industry trends and
developments which can help you tailor your services or products to be more appealing. To use
Reddit in this way, ask topical questions in relevant subreddits, that encourage users to share their
views.

Ads

If you want to advertise on Reddit, your only choice is to opt for a promoted post, though you will be
able to use an image or video in your ad. Reddit users do not appreciate blog content or other posts
that are overly promotional, so if you want to openly push your product, you’ll have to go for a
promoted post.

When it comes to your ad content, Reddit suggests you use creatives that encourage conversation,
so bear the site’s user base in mind when it comes to crafting your promo.

You can define a campaign objective and use segmenting to target better, by selecting audience
criteria based on user interest, location, community subscription, and more.
Don’t forget the promoted tab, as you can use this to see how your competitor’s paid ads perform.
This is useful to get an overview of how Reddit users respond to ad content and will help you
discover whether competitors are promoting to communities who may be interested in your
product.

Building your Brand

Brand Building is the process of establishing a solid brand identity, that evokes a set of values people
instantly connect with your business. It also includes raising consumer awareness of your company
and what you do, as well as reaching out to expand your audience.

You can enhance your brand’s equity, or value, by creating promotional strategies and campaigns
that raise your company profile. One of the best tactics for growing a brand is repetition, showing
up in front of the right people helps solidify you as a viable choice for consumers.

However, Brand Building is about far more than promotion or communication. Though one of the
main aims of brand building is to grow your audience, you should also be attempting to create a
valid identity, that helps your company differentiate itself from the competition. To craft a lasting
brand, your name must be instantly recognisable. People should be able to instantly connect it with
a simple, yet powerful idea.

You also need to establish your brand as being synonymous with value, trust, and quality. To achieve
this, you must constantly monitor your market, as well as your products and services, so you can
tailor them to provide your target market with what they want.

So how should you go about building a solid brand?

While there are many elements to brand building, there are certain steps you’= should pass through,
to create a memorable brand.

1) Defining Your Brand

First, you need to decide what your brand stands for, so you can communicate this clearly to your
potential customers. To do this, create a list of your company’s core strengths. What does your
business do exceptionally well? What does it do better than your competition? What can you bring
to the table that is new and adds value?

As well, you need to define the values that your company stands for. What is the core purpose or
mission of your business? Are you improving the environment, or helping with the economic or
social wellbeing of your customers?

2) Positioning your brand and making it stand out

Differentiating your brand in today’s overcrowded marketplace is essential if you want to enjoy
healthy profits. To succeed in this area, you need to show customers they will be clearly advantaged
by choosing you, over your rivals. Focus on the benefits of your products or services, what is it they
offer people that other products or services can’t?

How does what you do improve your customers lives, or solve a pressing problem they have? The
answers to these questions will form the basis of your brand’s value proposition, which tells people
why they should choose you, and what they can expect when they do. After that, you need to
define a strategy which helps you communicate this to your target audience, so they see why your
company is the superior choice.

3) Continuously build your brand and expose it

Brand building takes time and constant effort if you want to experience results that pay off. You
can’t just invest in a fancy logo and hope for the best or post a couple of blog articles and pray that
Google works its magic. To build a successful brand, you must expose your brand as often as you
can, to as many of the right people as possible. One way of doing this is through social media and
blogging. Don’t just blatantly promote though, you need to build trust first, by showing people you
can add value.

Are your social posts engaging, intriguing or helpful? Do your blog posts tell people something they
didn’t know before, or do they provide an interesting perspective or hot take?

If you can position your brand as an authority voice on a relevant topic in your industry, you’ll win
people’s trust. You’ll also grow your following faster, with a ready-made market of interested
customers who’ll be more receptive when you do promote your products.

4) Be consistent
It’s important to keep your posts, blogs, and all other online communication consistent, as to build a
solid reputation, you need to establish a pattern. People should be able to instantly recognise your
brand voice in all your communication, from your Facebook and Twitter posts to your company blog,
and ad campaigns. The stronger your brand voice is, the more powerful this effect will be.

Aim to encapsulate what you do and what you stand for in all your customer facing communication.
Is your copywriting and graphic design consistent? Are your posts in keeping with your values,
ethics, and mission statement? Do you blog about relevant topics? Is the tone of your blogs like the
rest of your content?

Another key part of being consistent when you brand build, is to post regularly and often. Can
people rely on you showing up to post or do you leave your Twitter or Facebook feed empty for
weeks? Do you send out your newsletters or post your blogs at regular times?

Make sure you commit to a regular posting schedule if you want to establish your brand as reliable
and trustworthy.

5) Make it personal
If you want to create a successful brand, you need to give it some personality. Your brand identity
must be clearly defined and should evoke strong emotions and desires in your customers. Think of
your customer base as your personal tribe. By belonging to the tribe, what does this say about
them? What advantages do they have? How will that make them feel?

Answering these questions will help you angle your marketing and content to be more appealing to
your ideal customer. An excellent way of adding personality to your brand is by encouraging as
much interaction as possible.

Can you invite customers to personalise the items they purchase from you, or to share their
experiences, or give feedback? Can you go one stage further and share this content with your
following, so your customers really feel their voice matters? You can even consider asking
customers to co-create products or design services that you then offer up to other customers.

6) Assess and adapt

Success isn’t static, and neither is your brand. To thrive you need to constantly monitor your brand
strategies and adapt them to respond to changes in market circumstances. The good news is, with
the right strategies, your brand can enjoy continuous growth. Even if your brand is currently
struggling, you can turn things around by taking an honest look at where you’re going wrong, and
then creating a different strategy.

The more growth your brand enjoys, the more work you’ll have to put in. But by regularly assessing
your metrics and evaluating what you did right, and where you could have improved, you’ll be able
to identify your areas of weakness, as well as your strengths. Analysing your brand’s hits and misses,
enables you to design a flexible, brand strategy, one that helps hone your communication and
identifies opportunities that will raise your profile.

Doing this is key to staying relevant during changing market conditions and will help to steer your
brand in the right direction going forward.

Growth Hacking
Growth Hacking refers to strategies that expand your company’s influence, sales, and reach.
Typically, Growth Hacking techniques are used by start-ups on limited budgets, who want to achieve
significant brand growth over a short period of time.

The ultimate purpose of any Growth Hacking strategy is to get as many new customers or users as
fast as possible, while spending a minimum amount.

Growth Hackers are sometimes called Growth Marketers, but Growth Hacking differs from
marketing because it focuses solely on strategies that grow a business swiftly. Growth Hacking
involves a few different elements, from planning and researching, to testing and implementing, and
then analysing to check what is working.

To Growth Hack successfully, you first need to set growth priorities, areas of your brand where you
require the most expansion quickly. Then you must identify the channels that will give you maximum
customer acquisition. Finally, you must measure your success, so you can learn to scale effectively.

So how does Growth Hacking work exactly?

By discovering how you grow and why, you can look for ways to create growth on purpose. A key
way to start Growth Hacking, is to raise as much awareness of your company as possible. The goal is
to first get traffic, then to turn that traffic into users or customers, and lastly, to keep those
customers or users by ensuring they get what they want.

Get Growth Hacking in three easy steps…

Create an amazing product or service
First make sure that what you are offering is the best it can be. Has your product or service been
designed based on the existing wants, or desires of your target audience? Do market research so
you can find out what your ideal customer really needs, then create a prototype and test it out on a
section of your target demographic.

Monitor their feedback and improve areas that require attention, always making sure to keep your
key customer firmly in mind, whenever you make a change.

Would they need this new benefit? What is it your ideal customer really wants from a product or
service like yours?

Keep it fresh
It’s a good idea to offer regular product updates so you keep on top of any industry changes, and
tailor your offering to suit customer’s current circumstances. You’ll also want to ensure your
product or service stays competitive, so continue to monitor customer feedback as well as
competitor activity, and use this data to add new features or enhancements.

Promote smartly
The idea here is to continually market so you encourage continual growth. When you start to
appear in as many places as possible, your brand sticks in the minds of your potential customer. You
don’t just want to spend endlessly though, so track the results you get from your paid ad campaigns
to make sure they are delivering.

A/B tests can be great for discerning what ad copy works better, while experimenting with different
conversion optimization techniques to find out what makes your ideal customer press purchase, will
help you cut down your ad spend.

Growth Hacking Strategies you can start using right now to expand your
brand
There are many different techniques you can employ to increase your brand’s reach but most of
them fall into one of three main areas:

Content Marketing to get people talking

This can be an excellent way to spread the word without blowing a limited budget. Content
marketing includes:

• Blogging and sharing your information, providing useful content

• Guest blogging
• Sharing social media content
• Creating free e-books to give away as bonus subscriber or sign up gifts
• Podcasting
• Running free webinars
• Holding competitions or free giveaways
• Getting influencers to review your product or getting your product reviewed on a prominent
blog
• Joining niche forums, groups, and subreddits and talking about relevant topics related to
your product
• Email marketing campaigns
• Content visibility optimisation strategies like SEO
 • Getting mentioned, featured, or listed on authority sites, or having your content shared
there

Product Promotion
The goal of product promotion is to make your target demographic aware of what you’re selling, and
to do this your marketing needs to tap into their desires, to make your product seem as appealing as
possible.

Successful Growth Hacking techniques you can employ to promote your

products include:
Leverage FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) by employing exclusivity. Make your forum invite-only, have
an area of your website only accessible to those that ask, or have a great giveaway that’s available
only if people sign up to your email list.

Gamifying your onboarding process. Users love it when you gamify sign up tasks and then give
them rewards for their efforts. If something is harder to get, people want it more, so have people
complete a fun game before they can access your email list or give them a short challenge to
complete before they get more access.

Offer useful incentives for new user referrals that benefit referrer AND the user. Giving away gifts
or bonuses to users that bring in more traffic is an excellent way to boost your reach, without any
extra hassle. Make your bonuses as enticing as you can, and don’t give them away anywhere else
for free, and people will be much more likely to refer people, so they can get them.

Cross promotion and Affiliate marketing. You can create affiliate schemes where users earn a
percentage when you get a new sign up or customer and have people act as your online sales reps.
Or, you can partner up with a related brand and agree to cross promote or refer users. By doing this
you automate part of your marketing process and dramatically speed up how fast your brand grows.

Influencer Marketing. Getting key influencers to promote your products, who have an audience
that wants what you are selling, is one of the most effective ways to Growth Hack. This is different
to getting Influencer Reviews, which would come under content marketing, as in this case
influencers are actively endorsing your product.

Advertising for growth

Don’t forget paid ads. They can give a big boost if your brand doesn’t yet have many users or
customers. You can advertise on social media channels like Facebook or Instagram but make sure
you monitor your target audience first to find out what they want. Save more money by checking
your ad metrics regularly, using the free analytics tools that will often be provided. They will help
you get a good overview of your ad performance, so you can see where you are going right with your
ads, and where you need to improve.

You can also use PPC (Pay Per Click) ads like Google Ads to start showing up on the Google
Advertising Network, as well as in search results. Again, do your market research first so you create
an ad with appeal, use metrics, and constantly experiment with your ad creatives, to see what gives
you the best results.
Product Marketing
Product Marketing differs from conventional marketing because it focuses on the lifecycle of a
product as well as the product user, whereas conventional marketing’s goal is to drive conversions
and generate sales. Product Marketing is also used to generate new product pipelines by identifying
consumer demand and interest.

The two can complement each other, as conventional marketing can help you get more exposure,
while product marketing helps make your product more appealing.

Product marketing strategies are useful to get a product and advertising campaign that’s highly
attractive to a target audience. The goal here is to strike the perfect balance between your
customers and the way you position your product in the market.

With product marketing, your campaigns should be consumer led. Make sure that your key buyer
personas, competitor analysis, and market research informs your marketing strategy. All your sales
materials should be designed to help your team close, with the focus being the products or services,
over the brand.

Your easy guide to product marketing in five simple steps:

Successful product marketing depends primarily on smart project management, social listening, and
in-depth market research.

Though you’ll need to tailor your own strategy to suit your unique products and services, there are
some essential steps that will help you product market effectively:

Step 1: Conduct thorough consumer and market research

First you need to take a close look at the people you want to purchase your product, as well as your
closest competitors. With this step, your three main goals should be to identify and understand:

• Similar products that are thriving and their positioning

• How companies who make successful competitive products present those products
• The primary consumer pain points that successful products in your niche overcome

Step 2: Position your product and shape your message

Now you’ve got the data, you need to use it. You can do this by drawing on your insights to inform
your messaging and product positioning. This is where your creative team can help. From graphic
design to copywriter, your team needs to craft messaging that tells people how your product can
solve their problems.

You also need to know how your user base consumes content, as well as what content type they
prefer, as this will dictate where your messaging will appear, and how.

Your messaging should stand out from your competitor’s, letting customers know what makes you
better or different and should resonate well with your ideal customer avatar. The best messaging
has enough detail to appeal to specific audience segments but is high level enough to have appeal to
a wider audience.

Step 3: Craft your go-to-market strategy

An effective go-to market strategy combines your market research, messaging, and strategic plan to
roll out your product.

It should lay out the platforms you will be promoting on, the types of messaging you will use, and
the audience you will be targeting. It confirms your branding and creative and unifies this across the
platforms you promote on. It can also include elements of traditional marketing as well.

You can get granular with your go-to strategy, identifying which customer personas to target and
with what material, and outlining your ideal outcomes. This can be a powerful way of honing in and
pressing customer pain points and can keep your marketing cohesive and on track.

Step 4: Pull everything together

Once you’ve created a workable go-to market strategy, you need to make sure all your sales and
marketing is in sync. Every member of your team should be engaged in your strategy, and your
branding, sales, and marketing materials should be complimentary to it as well. Doing this will
optimise the impact your product has and will give you and your team members the tools you need
to promote your product’s benefits.

Your sales and marketing materials can include pitch decks, product videos, social media
announcements, email campaigns, as well as any other creative collateral that you’ll use to promote
your product.

Step 5: Launch product and monitor performance

Once you have all the steps of a good product marketing strategy firmly in place, you can go ahead
and launch your product. Monitor your marketing impact, as well as product reception, as this data
will be useful in refining your approach. You can also use it to improve the way you market your
product, and for any future related products.

Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing can be a great way of earning a second income stream while you’re building your
business and can help you grow and expand your brand reach faster.

There are two main ways you can use affiliate marketing:

1) To expand your influence. By creating an affiliate program for your brand, you give people
the opportunity to earn commission when they send traffic or sales your way. Your affiliates
 will agree to post your affiliate links, embed your content, or recommend your brand, and
you’ll agree to give them percentage of any sales or traffic that follow from their work.
2) You can also use affiliate marketing to earn extra income promoting other brands. This is a
good idea if you have a lot of traffic, don’t have your own business, or don’t have many
products in your online store. You get a unique affiliate link, which you post when you
promote the brand you’ve signed up to. If you’re already a content creator, promoting an
affiliate brand in your posts could provide you with some handy extra cash, without you
having to make too much effort.

Let’s take a deeper dive in to the two ways you can use affiliate marketing to give yourself a cash
boost.

Get others to grow your brand

Creating your own affiliate program is a great way to automate your marketing, as your affiliates act
like online sales reps to promote your products. It’s especially effective if your sign ups have larger
followings, but you can incentive your affiliates to work harder by offering higher commission
amounts, or bonus incentives. You can also make your affiliate marketing more exclusive, by
approving only those affiliates who have a large following of niche users, or those who have been
approved for Google Ad sense, for example.

How to get started

There are a few different ways to create your own affiliate program. If you have a Word Press
website, you can use a Word Press Plugin like AffiliateWP, and host your store and products on the
platform. Alternatively, you can use affiliate themes like Elegant Themes or StudioPress. If you
don’t have a Word Press site, or don’t want to use WordPress, you can use an affiliate platform like
Amazon or Shopify to host your products.

To recruit affiliates to your program you should promote in the same way you would promote your
other content, using emails, blog posts, and social media posts. You should also construct an
effective landing page that you point to whenever you advertise your affiliate scheme, so interested
people can sign up to your program.

Why you should do it…

A good affiliate program can dramatically boost your traffic and sales and can increase your SEO and
help to generate high quality leads. Not only that, it will broaden your brand’s influence and can
even help to promote products you sell that aren’t a part of your affiliate program.

Make Money promoting other people’s products

If need extra cash and are great at promotion, have a big following, or are prepared to put in a bit of
work, you might benefit from signing up to an affiliate program. Different programs have different
requirements, some might want you to post links, while others, like SEMrush, might expect you to
create content as well.

Commission varies wildly, so check the deal you’re getting before you sign up, as well as the terms or
conditions, and pay out limit. Pick a high quality product, so you feel confident when you talk about
the product and opt for a product in a niche you know well, as then you’ll find it easier to create
promotional content.
How to get started
If you want to give affiliate marketing a try, look at a few programs before jumping in and
committing yourself. Platforms like HubSpot and Aweber are a good start, as their commission rates
are generous, but there is a plethora of affiliate programs out there, so shop around to find one that
suits. Whether you want to promote online courses, website builders, or gym equipment, there are
so many opportunities out there, you’ll be sure to find something that fits.

Authority Hacker lists the best affiliate programs, but you can find similar lists by typing in

“best affiliate programs” into Google search. When choosing your program, consider your audience,
as this may influence the scheme you select, as well as the way you promote it.

Do they prefer to read blog content?

If so, signing up for a program like SEM Rush might be ideal. SEMrush offers monthly bonuses of up
to $1000, making them a good bet, if you’re confident content creator.

Do they appreciate a great deal and are always looking for a bargain?

If so, affiliate sites that offer coupons or money off will be ideal.

Once you sign up to your chosen program, you’ll be given a unique link, which works like a cookie to
tell the brand you’re promoting when you send traffic their way. You’ll need to embed this in your
promotional content whenever you promote the affiliate scheme you’ve signed up to.

There are numerous ways you can promote as an affiliate, from influencer outreach, to reviews on
review sites, as well as social media posts, blogs, and vlogs. Try to be as creative as you can in your
approach to promotion, and keep being consistent, as this will deliver the best results.

Why you should do it….

Affiliate marketing can be a rewarding way to gain a second income stream, without the hassle of
setting up your own store, or creating your own products. It’s especially recommended if you have a
talent for sales and marketing, or access to a large audience, but if you’re prepared to put in a small
amount of regular effort, almost anyone can earn money from affiliate marketing.