Marketing toolbox guide: What should you use in your industry?

When you’re running a business, you always want to know the perfect marketing strategy. What type of marketing should you use to achieve the best results? Often, what you need to implement varies depending on what industry your business is in.

Here, we are going to focus on four key industries, and what tools are the most appropriate to use:

• Retail
• Construction and mining
• Politics
• Fine arts

Retail

If you’re running a retail store, it’s always a good idea to heavily invest in business to consumer (B2C) tactics. B2C is defined as “the marketing or advertising of a product or service by a business directly to the consumer.” While the term is immensely popular with online stores, it can also be used to describe activities offline. In fact, B2C is one of the most popular sales models. Purchases are made on an emotional basis, while also factoring in other considerations such as price, and the benefit of the product.

There are many advantages of engaging in B2C. The main one is you get a better understanding of who your clientele is. Seeing your customers face-to-face and interacting with them in person means you get to know who exactly is buying your products, and why they like your brand. This means you can easily change your marketing and advertising tactics to be more personable and more targeted to a specific audience.

B2C tactics to use in the retail industry include:

• Personal selling: this involves a sales person communicating directly with the consumer. It’s important to make sure your in-store staff are trained and act friendly and professional to encourage customers to complete their shop and purchase their items from your store.
• Merchandising: consider adding a free offer with purchases to encourage consumers to shop at your store. This tactic will increase not only repeat purchases, but word-of-mouth referrals. To make this offer work, it will need to be a unique offer that isn’t available in competitors stores. Consider tactics such as what Harvey Norman implements. The store offers various interest free payment options, which encourages shoppers to purchase items they may not have been able to buy outright.  
• Advertising: have in-store promotions or digital signs to encourage people to buy your products. If budget allows, considering advertising in traditional forms such as on television.
• Direct marketing: consider letter drops to raise awareness of your business to new customers. Direct mail is extremely effective - 99% of people open mail, with 54% storing mail for a later reference. That’s a significantly higher rate than you would get with an email campaign.

Construction and mining

Unlike retail, the construction and mining industries are better served if they focus on business to business (B2B) marketing tactics. B2B is exactly what the name implies - “professionals and managers selling to other professionals and managers.”

B2B activities those within the construction and mining industries should consider undertaking are:

• Trade shows: trade shows are a great way to advertise your business to people who have an interest in your industry. In fact, trade shows are one of the three most important factors influencing the customer’s purchase decision in B2B markets. Trade shows increase the amount of one-on-one communication you can have with influencers, giving you a chance to network. Just be wary that you also know the risks of trade shows, such as the cost of traveling to and from the show, as well as having to be away from the business for the duration of the show.
• Magazines and trade publications: this allows businesses to showcase their best work to other businesses and potential clients. Australian Mining is a great example of a professional trade magazine.  

Politics

Marketing and advertising are clearly important factors in the political industry. How else does a candidate get their message across to the general public and differentiate themselves from the opponent?

The best marketing tools for those in the political industry to use are:

• Direct mail marketing: it may seem old fashioned, but people respond positively to direct mail marketing campaigns from politicians. This can include brochures or leaflets that attempt to persuade consumers to vote for the particular politician in the area. This is so powerful because it is geographically targeted, so you can ensure everyone within the electorate can receive the mail.
• Advertising: consider using traditional forms of advertising, such as television and radio. While these are now considered old because they aren’t digital, they still attract a massive audience. Television and radio advertisements are often a key part of a politician’s campaign. In fact, in 2016 the major Australian political parties spent more than $10 million on advertising. While a lot of people are now online, these figures show just how influential television advertisements still are.
• Public relations: political campaigns are nothing without public relations. This will help politicians to write and publish press releases, as well as organise media opportunities. If you’re not getting much publicity, the general public isn’t going to know they should vote for you. Public relations is big business in the political industry. In 2014, it was announced the former prime minister Tony Abbott spent $4.3 million on spin doctors, hiring just 37 communication and social media specialists.
• Events or speaking engagements: host events, or even simple speaking engagements, and invite people from your electorate. This is a cheap and easy way to have some one-on-one communication with potential voters and directly address their concerns.

Fine Arts

Artists are going to focus their marketing strategies around visual aids - after all, they want to highlight their art. It’s also important to focus on networking. As an artist, you want to expand your reach to gain more clients and sales. So what are the best marketing tools to help artists achieve their goals?

Tools those in the fine arts industry should use are:

• Advertising: fine artists should consider investing in outdoor advertising to promote their work. This can be ads at bus stops, on public transport, or even billboards if you’ve got a big enough budget. Even consider printing paper advertisements and displaying them on bulletin boards, or even just telephone poles. This is a particularly effective way of advertising if you’re holding an event you want people to attend. Outdoor advertising is effective as it targets a large range of people in a particular geographic area. The Queensland Performing Arts Centre is a great example of a business which undertakes outdoor advertising, by placing banners and signs all around the building’s exterior to attract an audience.
• Referral: volunteer your services at a charity event or even a school. This is an effective way to raise awareness of your name as an artist, and to have your work displayed in more places. Referral marketing relies on word of mouth, which is an extremely powerful way to increase the amount of sales you make.

When trying to improve a business, it’s important to know if you’re using the right marketing tools for your industry. Utilising these tools will help professionals expand the reach and awareness of their businesses, while also increasing the amount of sales.

Got any other tips we should know about? Let us know in the comments.