13 of the Best Marketing Strategy Examples

Laura Caveney
21st October 2020

We’re breaking down the best marketing strategies you can use to optimise your marketing and create tangible improvements to your lead generation.

In fact, most of these tactics are ones we use daily to grow our own leads.

For each, we’ve listed the metrics you need to track so you can best measure your marketing.

We’ll walk you through:

Let’s get into it.

Why do you need marketing strategies?

Driving new leads and customers, or growing brand awareness is no mean feat. Marketing covers a wide range of tactics to help you do that and so much more. But finding the right marketing strategy for your business is difficult too.

There are a lot of variables to consider. Such as, what is your product and which industry does it serve? If your business is B2B or B2C, then there will be some stark differences when it comes to advice for a marketing strategy there too.

And how are your customers going to purchase from you? Is it from an ecommerce store hosted online? Or perhaps it’s via an offline sales team?

All of these variables will factor into how you need to market to your audience. Of course, first steps are:

From there, you can begin to understand which marketing strategy will work best for your business, as you start to get an idea of where your audience is and what messages they want to see.

We share 13 of the best marketing strategies out there which you can pick from or meld together to create a bespoke strategy for your business.

13 of the best marketing strategy examples

Choosing your marketing strategy can be difficult. Especially when you haven’t got any data.

We’ve rounded up some of our favourite best marketing strategy examples:

Let’s look at each one in more detail.

1. Take a data-driven marketing approach

Data-driven marketing is one of the most effective ways to market your business. Without data, you’re marketing blind. Data-driven marketing allows you to close the loop between your sales and marketing.

Editor’s Note: We highly advise using a marketing attribution software solution to help bridge the gap between understanding which sales are driven by which marketing channels, campaigns and keywords.

Ruler Analytics closes the loop between your sales and marketing. Tired of trying to prove your ROI using conversions like form submissions and click-to-call? With Ruler, you can follow each conversion to understand which leads turn into revenue. And even better, Ruler will fire all the data directly into your analytics dashboard so you don’t have to do any of the leg work.

Book a demo of Ruler to find out how you can get started with data-driven marketing.

Book a demo Ruler Analytics

Data-driven marketers use customer insights to predict the needs of prospective leads and customers. Such marketing allows for a degree of personalisation as marketers can understand individual customer journeys and tailor their marketing to encourage micro-conversions.

Marketing attribution is essential to get started with data-driven marketing. Attribution allows you to track conversions like phone calls, live chat sessions and form submissions, and understand which of those go on to become customers.

And it gets better. You can attribute those conversions, and sales, back to the marketing channels, campaigns and keywords that drove them, directly in the analytics dashboard of your choice.

Metrics to track: 

PS. Revenue attribution is the best way to your marketing. Goodbye vanity metrics, hello real data.

2. Educate with content

Content is still king, there’s no escaping it.

Content marketing is a great way to reach users at every stage of the buyers lifecycle. From writing SEO blogs for targeted keywords in the awareness stage, to writing competitor comparisons in the consideration stage and compiling case studies for the decision stage.

There’s a whole host of content that you can create, and reuse across channels. Begin with keyword research to find opportunities for new content that you can use to get your business in front of website users with the right search intent.

Why does it work?

Well, it’s simple. It positions your business as a trusted resource for potential customers. Educational assets of any type are great for nurturing leads and building trust.

Metrics to track: 

3. Capitalise on video

Consumers love video. Just look at the rise of TikTok. And they’re not the only ones.

Instagram, Facebook, and the original kingpin YouTube also have amassed millions of hours of watch time thanks to video creation.

Think about it this way. The second biggest search engine is YouTube. So, make sure you’re present with relevant content.

One great way to get started on YouTube is to convert your most successful blogs into video content. Optimise it for search and watch the views roll in. Hopefully!

Next up is maximising your social media with video. It can feel a bit overwhelming knowing where to get started when you have IGTV, reels, stories, in-stream videos, TikToks and so much more.

The first step is to choose a platform. Pick one and maximise your efforts on that one platform. Once you have grown a sufficient following, then you can branch out to try a new platform.

And remember, the key to winning on social, is to be social.

Metrics to track: 

4. Optimise your content with video

Yes, video is so important we’re checking it twice!

While there are channels out there just waiting for video content, like social media, there are other channels you can optimise with video.

Hear us out.

Your website is an amazing platform for video content. Many websites see huge improvements to their website stats with the addition of video. Wistia reported a 260% growth in dwell time when they added video content to their website.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Video is great for other channels too, like email.

CampaignMonitor reported businesses see 66% more solid leads when they use email in their campaigns.

Test new formats and be original with your video content. It doesn’t need to be Hollywood-quality to make the cut. Authenticity is key to resonating with your audience, so don’t be afraid to be real.

Metrics to watch:

5. Try live streaming

Live streaming is a great, authentic way to reach your audience. Post-Covid, we’re sure 99% of people attended some kind of webinar or Zoom chat during lockdown, and they’re not going anywhere just yet.

We’ve unlocked a new way of learning. One which, when done remotely, has the potential to reach huge audiences.

And it doesn’t stop there. Live streaming is great on social media too. Depending on your product or service, you can find niche opportunities to ‘go live’ to your audience and show behind the scenes of your business to show your authenticity. TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram (and more), lets you go live directly to your audience, and heck, to the world.

Authenticity is one reason that TikTok has overtaken Instagram in popularity . There’s content fatigue with perfectly posed pictures and carefully crafted captions. TikTok allows users to be more real.

Metrics to watch: 

6. Get social

We’ve already talked about social media from a video point of view, but having social channels (even if you’re not doing video) is essential.

The first step is to undertake a competitor analysis. List your main competitors and take a look at their social channels.

Ask yourself:

Doing this will allow you to understand how you should approach social media too.

Second, start creating content. And the clue is in the word, be creative! Building your social media strategy will help you understand tone of voice, messaging and branding channel by channel. From there, you can create content to resonate with your audience, and build your following.

best-marketing-strategies-social-media

And remember, the key to dominating any marketing platform is to report. Use your data to understand what content is working well for its purpose. Not every social post will be to sell a product or service, so if a post gets engagement but no clicks, that’s not a failure.

Metrics to watch: 

7. Jump on the podcast bandwagon

Podcasts are huge right now.

Starting one takes a lot of work, time and money, getting featured on one is a great alternative if you don’t have the resource.

Try a quick search for your niche market to see what ones already exist on the usual channels like Spotify, Google and Amazon.

It’s also worth having a look on LinkedIn too. Identify some key influencers in your niche, and see what they’re listening to. Chances are, you’d be a good fit.

And if you’ve worked hard promoting your personal social channels, it’ll be easier to score a guest spot.

Metrics to watch: 

8. Use employees as personal influencers

Business pages on social media have long been struggling. And while you can cut through the noise and resonate if you work on your niche offering, pushing employees as advocates is a great option too.

LinkedIn for example, when done well by an individual, can be a hugely beneficial tool for generating leads.

best-marketing-strategies-advocacy

Combining your email cadences as a route to connect on LinkedIn is a great way to start an organic conversation. Or, you can start building your network by connecting with potential leads, and using articles and posts to start building engagement. Remember, the key to LinkedIn is to engage. Connecting with a member, and immediately sending a sales message basically never results in a sale.

Start slow and build a relevant network and you’ll see good results.

And advocacy isn’t limited to LinkedIn anymore. Twitter and Instagram are both growing platforms for individual influencers. And YouTube too!

If a colleague or business leader already has a big platform, guide them on how best to utilise it. Or, start those who are already social savvy off with some pre-written posts to get them started on their chosen channel.

Metrics to watch: 

9. Trial influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is constantly evolving, but it isn’t going anywhere just yet. The best thing about influencer marketing is there’s a niche for everyone.

No matter what your business is, we can guarantee that there’ll be someone out there who has a following dedicated to the cause.

Influencer marketing can be expensive, so make sure to do your research first and find Instagram influencers that fit your brand.

Top tip, get social on social media before you reach out for partnership deals. Chances are, you could be sitting on some social media advocates who are promoting your business for free already. And if they are, well they’re primed for paid collaborations!

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, the key with social media is to be authentic. Don’t strike up a contract with a celebrity who has no relevance or affinity with your product or service. We guarantee it won’t be worth the investment.

Metrics to watch: 

10. Prioritise local search

As search has evolved, so have search engine result pages.

With features like snippets, maps, ads and more changing the landscape of our search results, one that has really come into its own is local search.

Internet browsers are savvy, and search engines are savvier. Local search intent is growing, with services followed by locations now the key to finding local, trusted businesses.

best-marketing-strategies-local-search

And it doesn’t stop there. In fact, Google has reported a 900% growth in searches for keywords like ‘near me’ across the last two years. And these searches result in visits. Think with Google highlighted that 76% of local mobile searches for nearby services result in a same-day store visit. And 26% of those visits result in a purchase.

So what does this mean for your marketing strategy?

Get ready for voice search. Wordstream predicts 50% of searches will be done by voice. So maximise reviews on search engines as this will help you to be favourable ranked. And optimise your content for voice search.

Metrics to watch: 

11. Personalise your marketing

Personalisation, done right, is extremely effective. Done wrong, it can come across a bit creepy.

Just look at how Netflix and Amazon do personalisation for their products based on data.

For every marketing message, look at how you can personalise it so your audience gets the most out of it. Take email marketing for example, segmentation has always been a trend but now, there’s dynamic content.

That’s when you can create one email, but serve lots of different emails to subscribers based on their activity and browsing history. So, if you’re a furniture company and you’re sending a new email campaign to promote offers, you can tailor your message so that subscribers see products they’ve already looked at.

And it’s not just limited to email. You can personalise content across many channels. We suggest digging deep first with email and your website, and going from there.

12. Invest in research

It’s traditional but it works. Conducting your own research, or using existing data to create a report is a great way to get your name in relevant press and grow backlinks.

But remember, it needs to be something new and something your audience is going to be interested in. Having proprietary data allows you to cover an old angle in a fresh way that will result in top coverage.

While it might be a costly investment, done right it can reap huge rewards.

13. Try smart bidding

Sorry Bing, while we just focus on Google right now, but smart bidding is here and we’re loving it.

Smart bidding is a new feature for Google Ads users where you can give Google your conversion data and its machine learning will process the data to optimise your ad campaigns.

Sounds too good to be true, right?

Odolena Kostova, Account Manager at Google shared her insight for a recent blog, the ultimate guide to smart bidding. Check it out to learn how to get started with the feature.

With a variety of bidding options so you can create ads to hit your targets, Google’s smart bidding looks set to revolutionise the PPC world.

Metrics to watch: 

Conclusion

Whatever marketing strategy you choose, remember, the key to success is always reporting. There’s no point trying new marketing strategies without understanding how they’re affecting your bottom line.

With Ruler Analytics, you can take the manual work out of calculating your marketing’s impact. Ruler will fire all the data you need to understand your ROI, right into the analytics dashboards of your choice.

And remember, because Ruler connects to your CRM, it can update you of current leads, and their progression to customers.

Book a demo to find out more about getting started with marketing attribution. Take the legwork out of your marketing reports and confidently attribute your sales back to your marketing.