The Most Important Marketing Tools – How to Choose the Right One
1. Yourself – your style, personality, expertise, background and so forth.
2. Your marketing communication and message.
3. Your investment such as your time and money.
On the other hand, the marketing tools that you are going to choose so as to convey your marketing messages to your target audience also play a vital role in your marketing strategy. And in order to make this point clearer, I have categorized the different and most commonly utilized marketing tools as well as strategies into three different groups.
1. The direct approach takes in brochures, flyers, cold calling, ads, websites, as well as direct mail: the advertising strategy is certainly obvious, it is a type of one on one communication directly to your target people and mainly focuses on the benefits that your products or services can give to its users.
2. The indirect method such as social media, press releases, articles, presentations as well as networking: the advertising is more understated and more of informative type. The advantages that are being communicated are somewhat generic, for example, it is not linked to the certain product or service your provide, but on the category of the service or product that it belongs. It is transmitted in groups and not individuals which could be comprised of contacts that are also outside your planned as well as immediate target group.
3. A 3rd party appointment method is the common relationship that is contingent on the marketing method; you will not do the marketing yourself, on the other hand, you need to build relationships as well as a group of strategic alliances with individuals who will and can refer your business to other people. In addition, this is called as the word of mouth marketing method.
Basing on your own experience as well as what other people have shared about theirs, we can then organize the different marketing delivery tools by means of their efficiency and effectiveness. Now, these information can be beneficial when you have already come up with a decision on which marketing tools you want to take advantage with and which ones you can do without. Here is a summary for you.
The word of mouth marketing or referral based strategy is seen as very efficient and most effective.
And among the indirect methods, networking is considered as the most effective but somewhat less efficient since in takes in a heavy investment of patience and time.
And when it comes to direct method, the cold calls, advertising as well as the direct mails are considered as the most effective and efficient kind of marketing tools.
Whether what method you choose, be sure to make the most of it.
