Marketing Techniques: 20 MVP Strategies [+ Marketing Techniques PDF]
The process of growing a business from its humble beginning as a brainchild to thriving storefront is anything but easy — matter of fact, it can be quite daunting. However, when you use effective marketing techniques, you can see immense business growth year over year. But what marketing techniques work best for businesses like yours? What marketing techniques should you use? How many marketing strategies should you combine? These are all important questions to ask as a business owner, and on this page, we’ll answer them all.
20 most valuable marketing techniques of 2024
You’ve likely seen a list like this before — a long catalog of techniques that claim to help your business thrive. However, so many of those lists leave some of the most important strategies out. The difference in our list of marketing techniques? It’s extensive — and we promise not to leave anything out.
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important and effective marketing techniques out there. It can help you achieve a range of marketing goals from increased website traffic to increased revenue year-over-year.
SEO is the process of improving your website to rank higher in search engines. When your content ranks highly in search, you’ll receive more clicks on ranking pages, more website traffic, more qualified leads, and increased revenue for your business.
SEO includes a range of micro-strategies including:
- Keyword research: The process of researching terms to determine which ones mean the most to your target audience. Use a tool like KeywordsFX to help. You’ll use these keywords in your content, which will help you rank for them in search results.
- Content optimization: The process of enhancing your existing site content to include keywords that you find during keyword research. This optimization could also mean increasing the word count of existing content to make it more informative and beneficial to your audience.
- Link building: The process of building links to your website from other high-quality domains. When you build links from reputable websites, it means that those websites link to your content. This is a positive trust signal to Google and helps you rank higher in search.
- Internal linking: The process of linking to other pages on your website within your content. This process essentially creates a roadmap for Google to follow when it crawls and indexes your pages. It can help Google find pages faster, and in turn, rank them faster, too.
2. Local SEO
Similar to traditional SEO, local SEO is used for businesses that serve a specific or small geographic location. When you implement SEO, you’ll rank in local searches on Google which will help you attract leads from your area.
Local SEO consists of micro-strategies like:
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- Optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) profile: Claiming your business on GMB allows you to show up in local searches within your area. It also allows you to show up in your specific local SEO 3-pack. You’ll want to claim and optimize your GMB listing with information like your business address, hours of operation, and more.
- Optimizing your content with local keywords: The process of adding local keywords to your content to rank for keywords specific to your geographic location. For example, adding “Philadelphia flower shop” to your content if you’re a flower shop in Philadelphia will help you drive local leads to your content.
3. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is another popular marketing technique for businesses wanting to opt for a cost-effective strategy.
PPC ads show up above organic results in search engine results pages — helping you achieve a prime piece of search real estate.
PPC provides sellers with a fantastic return on investment (ROI) — mostly because of the model it follows. Instead of paying for ad real estate in search engines, you only pay when a user clicks on your ad. And you get to choose exactly how much you’ll pay every time a user clicks your ad.
We won’t get into keyword bidding here, but you can learn more about it on our page about how PPC bidding works.
PPC ads are also cost-effective since they allow you to target your most valuable and qualified customers with keywords and a wide variety of targeting options.
With PPC ads, you can choose to target your audience based on contextual targeting options including:
- Placement targeting: You provide Google with a list of websites that you want your ads to appear.
- Keyword targeting: You provide Google with a list of keywords that it uses to find relevant content to place your ads.
- Topic targeting: You choose from a list of Google-provided topics.
You can also target users based on the audience:
- In-Market Audiences: Like topic targeting, you can choose the market that you’d like to advertise to for your business.
- Life events: Allow you to target a group of users that have experienced major life events.
- Custom intent: You choose keywords and URLs that speak to what your audience is currently searching for and researching.
- Affinity audiences: This audience is extremely broad and is used for advertisers that aren’t concerned with immediate conversions, but rather brand awareness.
- Similar audiences: This targeting option allows you to advertise to audiences that are similar to audience members who have purchased your products or engaged with your ads in the past.
You can also target users based on demographics:
- Age
- Gender
- Parental status
- Household income
Aside from targeting, you’ll want to follow these PPC best practices to help you get the most out of your campaign:
- Do keyword research to decide what keywords you want to target with your ads
- Go over your budget to help you decide a good cost per click (CPC) for each ad
- Create enticing landing pages that sell your products
- Analyze your ad campaigns to determine what’s working and what’s not
- A/B test your ads to ensure that you’re running the most successful variation
LEARN MORE ABOUT PPC ADVERTISING
4. Landing page optimization
Landing page optimization is a marketing technique that can essentially make or break a sale — making it extremely important.
Arguably, landing page optimization could be considered a sub-strategy to PPC marketing, but to explain it in its entirety, we’ve given it its own category.
Landing pages are where users end up when they click one of your PPC ads.
Below is the landing page for one of the candles that showed up in search as a PPC ad when I searched “healthiest candles.”
The goal of a landing page is to ultimately get a shopper to purchase your product. To entice them to do so, an effective landing page includes information like:
- Product description
- Call-to-action (CTA) button, like “Add to bag”
- Price of the product
- Materials used
- Size options
- Color options
- Usage tips
- Customer reviews
- Customer FAQ
Your landing page should include all the information necessary for a shopper to make the decision to buy your product, and it should always feature the exact product that was featured in the corresponding ad.
LEARN MORE ABOUT LANDING PAGES
SEE WEBFX LANDING PAGE SERVICES
5. Social media marketing
Social media marketing is a fantastic marketing technique for any business, and here’s why:
More than 2 billion people use social media. That means when you use social media platforms to market your products or services, there is guaranteed to be someone interested in what you have to offer.
Social media marketing is the process of marketing and advertising your brand on social media platforms. There are a variety of social platforms that you can use in your marketing strategy. In the list below, click any platform to learn more about how to market on it, and how WebFX can help.
You can even create social media ads to advertise specific products and services. We’ll talk about this next!
Although each platform has its own unique characteristics and features, the benefits of having a social presence for your business remain consistent across all channels.
When you use social media to market your business, you’ll see:
- Increased brand awareness
- Increased brand loyalty
- Increased website traffic
- Increased online sales
- Improved customer service
To successfully implement social media as a marketing technique, you should:
- Post often: Create a social media calendar to keep track of when you post on each platform so that users hear from you consistently.
- Post user-generated content: When you post user-generated content, you repost content that a customer has posted that features your product or service. When you post this kind of content, your followers will be thrilled to see that other shoppers love your products.
- Post in a variety of formats: Most social platforms allow you to post content in a variety of formats. If you can post a photo, a video, or links in addition to written content, do so. Switching up your content and providing different formats keeps your timeline fresh for users.
- Use social platforms as a form of customer service: Most social media platforms have their own direct message platform. Messaging capabilities allow you to directly connect with your followers when they send messages. It gives you an opportunity to directly answer their questions or address their concerns.
- Reply to comments and interact in the comments: When users comment on one of your posts, be sure to interact with them. This interaction shows users that you care about your customers and you enjoy hearing from them.
LEARN MORE ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
SEE WEBFX SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING SERVICES
6. Social media advertising
Social media advertising is a great marketing technique if you’re looking to take your social marketing one step further.
When you market your business on social media, you create posts that lead users back to your website, make connections with your followers, and foster leads.
With social media advertising, you can cut right to the chase and sell your products to your followers with social media ads.
Social ads show up as a part of users’ feeds, although you can also opt for story ads on platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
There are a wide variety of social media advertising strategies to consider, and you should look into them all before planning out your strategy.
As far as ads, most social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, among others, offer proprietary ad platforms that allow you to keep all your social media marketing efforts in the same place.
When you opt for social media ads, you’ll follow these basic steps:
- Perform keyword research to determine what keywords you’ll bid on for your ad
- Decide on your target audience and who you want to target with your ads
- Bid on keywords that you feel will have a high return
- Decide what kind of ad you want to run and create ad creatives to attract users and entice them to click
- Create landing pages that match the product on the corresponding ad
- Launch and analyze your ads to determine if they’re successful
- A/B test different variations of your ads
LEARN MORE ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
SEE WEBFX SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING SERVICES
7. Email marketing
Anyone that said email marketing is dead has never purchased anything from a special offer email. If you subscribe to branded emails, you know how effective they can be at selling products and increasing brand awareness.
Email marketing is the process of marketing your products or services via email — and also serves as a great channel for multi-channel marketing.
For example, you can share links to your latest blog post, links to your social profiles, and videos that you’ve created for your YouTube channel.
Email marketing is a great strategy for nurturing leads and appealing to them at every stage of the buyer journey. For example, you could send a generic “welcome” email to those just joining your list, and customer loyalty deals to shoppers who have bought from your brand numerous times.
You can also send monthly newsletters that keep customers in the loop about weekly deals, events you’re hosting, or company news.
To succeed at email marketing as a marketing technique, be sure to:
- Personalize your emails: To make email recipients feel special, personalize your emails with a name or product suggestion.
- Segment your emails: When you segment your email subscribers into groups according to interests, buyer journey, or frequency, for example, you can see a 760% revenue increase.
- Include pictures and videos: Including a video in your emails can increase click-through-rate by 300%. Images are great, too, because they help break up your content.
- Provide links to your website: One of the main goals of email marketing is to increase traffic to your website. Do this by linking to pages on your site like product pages or your blog.
You can accomplish a variety of goals with email marketing including:
- Increased brand awareness
- Improved website traffic
- Increased YouTube subscribers
- More storefront foot traffic
- More purchases overall
LEARN MORE ABOUT EMAIL MARKETING
SEE WEBFX EMAIL MARKETING SERVICES
8. Video marketing
Video marketing is one of the fastest growing and most effective marketing techniques available.
To prove its effectiveness, consider this: Brand association increases by 139% after having watched a video. Not only that, but users are 10 times more likely to interact with a video over text.
Video marketing is the process of marketing your products and services, either directly or indirectly, through animation or live footage.
You can directly market your products or services in your video by:
- Creating a video explaining a product or service
- Creating a video of a customer using your product
- Create a video testimonial of a satisfied customer
You can also create videos that work to boost brand awareness:
- Create a video tour of your facility
- Create videos introducing your employees
- Create videos that inform users about an industry topic
- Create videos that talk about industry news
You can use the videos you create in your website’s content, post them on your social media profiles, or share them in email newsletters. You can also opt for video ads!
LEARN MORE ABOUT VIDEO MARKETING
SEE WEBFX VIDEO MARKETING SERVICES
9. Content marketing
Content is the key to all marketing strategies. That’s because, without content, you’ll have nothing to share in your email newsletters, you won’t have anything to link to in social media posts, and you won’t have anything for Google to rank in search engines.
Creating and posting informational content is a marketing technique that your strategy won’t survive without.
To create content that wins search, you should:
- Research industry keywords to inform your content topics
- Create an outline of your content that includes key terms
- See what ranks well in search engines to determine search intent
- Write long-form content that gives users extensive information about the topic
- Include multimedia in your content to break up long walls of text
The goal of your content is to inform users about a topic while setting yourself up as an expert on that topic. From there, your content should cultivate trust between you and your site visitors, which will lead to conversions, word-of-mouth marketing, and loyal customers.
The overall goal of creating website content is to rank highly in search engines, which you can achieve by targeting the right keywords and optimizing your content for search engines.
LEARN MORE ABOUT CONTENT MARKETING
SEE WEBFX CONTENT MARKETING SERVICES
10. Omnichannel marketing
Omnichannel marketing is one of the keystone marketing techniques since it connects all your marketing channels into one efficient system — making the conversion process seamless no matter what platform your audience uses.
If you opt for more than one marketing strategy, it’s essential that you tie them together to reach users at every touchpoint.
Here are some examples of omnichannel marketing:
- Including YouTube videos from your channel in your email newsletter or on your social media platforms
- Including links to your blogs in your email newsletters or on your social media platforms
- Including social buttons on your website
- Creating an email subscription form on your website
- Serving an email subscription form on a landing page
- Opting for PPC ads on social media platforms
Users trust brands that appear consistently on all platforms and omnichannel marketing can help you do just that.
LEARN MORE ABOUT OMNICHANNEL MARKETING
11. Influencer marketing
More than 90% of users trust an influencer’s recommendation over a brand — making influencer marketing a fantastic marketing technique if you want to build your brand fast.
Influencer marketing is the process of connecting with famous influencers and getting them to market your product. Typically, influencer marketing takes place on social media platforms where influencers post their content.
When influencers post about your product, your brand is marketed to an expansive audience — allowing you to build brand trust and sell more products.
Keep in mind, not every brand is fit for influencer marketing. If you’re a small business just starting out, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to catch the attention of a movie star and get them to market your product.
However, if you partner with a digital marketing agency like WebFX, they can help you understand the possibilities of influencer marketing for your business and help you connect with influencers to gain traction for your product.
LEARN MORE ABOUT INFLUENCER MARKETING
12. User experience optimization
Google not only ranks your content based on its relevance or how it satisfies search intent. Google also considers the quality of the experience that users have on your website.
In short, Google doesn’t want to send traffic to a website that doesn’t function properly or doesn’t provide users with a seamless, enjoyable experience.
That said, user experience optimization is one of the single most important marketing techniques — simply because it helps you earn your way into search results.
Not only that but providing site visitors with a memorable experience also benefits you in other ways. A great site experience will:
- Keep users on your site for a longer period
- Keep bounce rate low
- Build a positive reputation for your brand
- Keep satisfied visitors coming back
- Help you rank higher in search engine results
LEARN MORE ABOUT USER EXPERIENCE
SEE WEBFX USER EXPERIENCE SERVICES
13. Voice search optimization
Ever since the rise of Siri on iPhones and Amazon’s Alexa voice-activated devices, voice search optimization has become extremely important.
If you want to opt for a marketing technique that will deliver well into the future, voice search optimization is a great option.
Voice-activated devices aren’t going away — given that voice search will account for 50% of all searches this year.
Voice search optimization is the process of implementing keywords and phrases that appeal to users who search for your products and services by voice.
To do this, you’ll want to optimize your content to:
- Read conversationally: Your content should read conversationally since voice searches are made in a conversational style.
- Optimize for the featured snippet: A featured snippet is the one that shows up above all other organic results in search, and the content appears in its own box. Nearly 41% of all voice search answers come from a featured snippet, so optimizing your content for them is key.
- Create longform content: Studies show that voice search seems to favor content that is longer than 2000 words. Matter of fact, the average page used for voice search results is 2312 words.
SEE WEBFX VOICE SEARCH OPTIMIZATION SERVICES
14. Competitor geofencing
Competitor geofencing is a marketing technique that can help you advertise to your target customers when they are within proximity to your storefront. That said, this strategy is meant for businesses that own a storefront.
The goal of competitor geofencing advertising is to provide a push notification or timely advertisement for your product or service when a shopper is close to your physical storefront.
For example, if you’re within a few blocks of a sushi restaurant, that restaurant might have a geofencing strategy that sends a push notification discount to people within a certain proximity.
Geofencing works by drawing a virtual fence around an area where you want to target customers. You can make this fence as big or as small as you’d like, and there are benefits to each — depending on your goal.
For example, a bigger geofence will help you target a wider range of people, but they might not all be quality leads. When you draw a smaller fence, you’re likely to get more foot traffic to your store since you’re targeting people that are physically close.
You can even draw a geofence around your competitor’s location to entice their store visitors to visit your store instead.
15. Reputation management
One of our final marketing techniques is reputation management.
Your online reputation is important. When it comes to shoppers, 80% of them say online reviews have changed their mind about a purchase, so even just a few bad reviews can keep customers from converting.
This statistic makes reputation management a must-use marketing technique.
Reputation management is the practice of creating valuable content that overshadows and even disguises negative content.
Here are a few ways that reputation management can help your business:
- Saturate search results with positive content to suppress negative news about your company
- Monitor search results to ensure that your company is shown in a positive light
- Leverage free social profiles to fill Google search results with positive content about your brand
- Control and shift negative conversations that users have about your brand on social media
- Promote your brand on ranking websites
- Promote articles and blog posts that showcase your brand positively
- Develop multimedia assets that rank highly in search results
LEARN MORE ABOUT REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
SEE WEBFX REPUTATION MANAGEMENT SERVICES
16. Amazon marketing
Every month, more than 197 million people visit Amazon.com. If your business also operates an ecommerce store, Amazon marketing is a fantastic strategy to increase your reach and improve your sales.
When you opt for Amazon marketing as a marketing technique, it involves a few different strategies.
- Amazon Stores and Marketplace launch: Getting your Amazon store up and running is one of the biggest parts of Amazon marketing. Setting up your store allows you to add products to your online marketplace for users to view and purchase.
- Amazon SEO and product optimization: Similar to SEO for your website, if you want to sell your products successfully on Amazon, you’ll want to opt for Amazon SEO, too. This process involves optimizing your product listings to make them attractive and enticing to buyers. It includes things like product keyword research, category optimization, image selection and implementation, and more.
- Amazon advertising: Amazon also provides sellers with advertising options, which allows you to get your products in front of your most qualified audience.
LEARN MORE ABOUT AMAZON MARKETING
SEE WEBFX AMAZON MARKETING SERVICES
17. Target Plus marketing
Online marketplaces have exploded as an effective way to sell products. Not only can you opt to sell on Amazon but you can also advertise on Target’s website as well.
There are stipulations though — one of the most important being that your brand must be personally invited to sell on Target’s site. To be invited, your brand will have to be well established, so Target Plus marketing isn’t a great option for new businesses.
If you do get the invite, your products will stand alongside Target’s own products and you’ll undoubtedly boost brand recognition and revenue.
LEARN MORE ABOUT TARGET MARKETING
SEE WEBFX TARGET MARKETING SERVICES
18. Walmart Marketplace marketing
Walmart Marketplace marketing is a great marketing technique that helps you reach millions of unique visitors. Like selling on Amazon, selling on Walmart’s website associates your brand with a well-known, trusted household name.
However, to sell on Walmart Marketplace, you’ll have to receive selling approval by applying to be a seller and follow Walmart’s pricing model if you get accepted. Walmart charges a small referral fee for each product you sell ranging from 6% to 15%.
If you’re accepted to be a seller, your timeline will look something like this:
1. Add your products to Walmart.com
2. Select your product categories and subcategories
3. Build your product content feed
4. Review the Walmart marketplace best practices guide, shipping guidelines guide, and Walmart pricing structure training guide
5. Create and implement product descriptions
LEARN MORE ABOUT WALMART MARKETING
SEE WEBFX WALMART MARKETING SERVICES
19. Offer free resources
Offering free resources is a fantastic marketing technique since it provides users with something valuable without asking for anything in return.
Free resources might include:
- A free course
- A free guide on how to use a product
- A free workbook that helps users get the most out of your product or service
- An informative how-to guide relating to your industry
Here are some benefits of offering free resources:
- Users will see you as a leader in your industry if you provide informational, trustworthy content
- Users will trust you since you provide content that isn’t focused on selling a product
- Users will appreciate that you offer something for free, without compensation
You can provide these resources on your site pages, within an email, or on social media — among other mediums. You could even use the delivery of your free resource to build your email subscriber list by asking for an email address to send your free resource!
20. Solicit reviews
Collecting positive user reviews are one of the most effective marketing techniques.
With 80% of online shoppers saying that online reviews have changed their mind about a purchase, it’s a no-brainer that the weight of online reviews is heavy.
Not to mention, mobile searches for “product reviews” have grown by more than 35% — showing that shoppers are always interested in finding out what other shoppers have to say about a product before they purchase it for themselves.
You can encourage shoppers to leave reviews by setting up a contest like Anthropologie did on their website, or simply asking for user reviews in emails or on social media.
Anthropologie’s baked-in approach to collecting reviews is an example of a low-hanging review-soliciting opportunity.
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“We measure our success by how much we WOW our clients.”
Bill Craig
WebFX President
Marketing techniques examples
Now, let’s talk about how some of the best brands in the world use the marketing techniques we talked about to grow their brand.
Here are a few of our favorite marketing techniques examples.
The Bouqs Co.: SEO
The Bouqs Co., a popular flower delivery brand, practices SEO on their site by implementing target keywords on their latest article about Mother’s Day flowers.
As you can see, they’re likely trying to rank for keywords including:
- Mother’s Day flower arrangement
- Mother’s Day flowers
- Flowers for delivery on Mother’s Day
- Flowers on Mother’s Day
- Mother’s Day flower delivery
They use all these keyword variations in their content, which they likely curated by doing keyword research making them a great marketing techniques example.
Taqueria Feliz: Local SEO and PPC
Taqueria Feliz, a popular taco joint in Philadelphia, combines local SEO and PPC to dominate search results for the keyword “tacos near me.”
As you can see in the first box, the restaurant opted for a PPC ad targeting local users with the keyword “tacos near me”, which you can determine from the “Ad” tag in the upper left corner.
The eatery also claimed and optimized their Google My Business profile — making them stand out as number one in Google’s local SEO 3-pack.
Baskin Robbins: Social media
The popular ice cream chain Baskin Robbins took to Facebook recently to share one of their new product offerings — their DIY sundae kit.
Instead of posting an all-text post or a static image of the ice cream supplies provided, Baskin Robbins elevates their post (and their engagement) by posting in video format instead. Not only does the video give users a better idea of what’s included in the kit — making them more likely to buy, but it also entertains users and increases engagement.
Old Navy: Email
Old Navy has long been a favorite clothing brand, and they hit the nail on the head when it comes to email marketing.
First, check out their engaging and enticing subject line — “Alert: You ALMOST missed our Thank You event.” With a subject line like that, users will be more likely to open the email, simply because they’re worried about missing out on something. Not only that, but the word “alert” at the front of the subject line creates a sense of urgency.
Their email includes multiple CTAs, giving users more than enough opportunities to visit their website and purchase a product.
Not to mention, most of their CTAs are special offers and deals.
Anthropologie: Omni-channel marketing
The clothing and home furnishings brand, Anthropologie, provides a fantastic marketing technique example with their multi-channel marketing.
In the footer of their website, they provide an email subscription form, a button to “get email,” and a block of social buttons.
Their website footer alone ties all their website pages to two other marketing channels — social and email.
If you visit their Twitter, they share links to their website in almost every post, connecting their social efforts to their website and increasing leads through Twitter.
Which marketing techniques should you use?
So how do you know what marketing techniques will be the most effective for your business? We’ve specked out some customized marketing strategies based on the type of business you own and the goals you want to accomplish.
If you’re an SMB (small- to medium-sized business):
As an SMB, it’s most important to focus on brand awareness and lead generation. We recommend the following marketing techniques:
If you’re an enterprise business:
If you’re an enterprise business that’s been around the block, we suggest a few additional marketing techniques. You’ll want to opt for all of the suggestions that we mentioned for SMBs, plus the ones below.
If you’re focused on increasing qualified leads:
If you’re hyper-focused on increasing qualified leads to your website, these are the marketing strategies you should adopt:
If you’re focused on increasing website traffic:
If you’re hyper-focused on increasing traffic to your website, these marketing strategies are for you:
If you’re focused on increasing brand awareness:
Increasing brand awareness is important for new businesses, or businesses that want to grow their reach. Here are some 2024 marketing techniques that we recommend for increasing brand awareness:
If you’re focused on staying in budget:
Budget is important to any marketing strategy. Here are the strategies we recommend if you’re operating on a smaller budget:
Your free marketing techniques PDF
If you market your business properly online, you can see astronomical growth. Our guide to the best marketing techniques of 2024 is a great resource to help you boost brand awareness, increase leads, and sell more products year over year.
That’s why we’ve decided to create a free resource in the form of our marketing techniques PDF to help you keep valuable marketing strategies handy at all times.
Download below for free!
Download my free marketing techniques PDF
Whether you’re looking to improve your current marketing strategy or starting from scratch, WebFX can help.
We don’t believe in cookie-cutter strategies — and neither should you. Every business is different, and every business requires a different combination of marketing techniques to thrive online.
If you’re looking for an agency that provides, expertise, dedication, and real results, WebFX is it.
Our team of over 500 in-house marketing specialists are trained in every marketing technique mentioned above and will work with your unique business to create a custom marketing strategy that helps you grow your brand online.
We believe that our more than 1,100 client testimonials are proof of our dedication to our clients — but don’t take it from them, see for yourself.
For a free quote, contact us online, or give us a call directly at 888-601-5359!