Expert highlights the importance of good business management and a consistent method for exploring different channels.
Digital transformation, the popularization of the internet and the emergence of social networks have multiplied the opportunities for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to promote and sell their products. Previously, marketing with effective results was restricted to large companies that had the financial resources to invest in mass campaigns, normally carried out on a few super-audience channels (television and radio, for example). Smaller companies were left with “word of mouth”.
Nowadays, advertising channels are fragmented, allowing smaller players to compete in a much less unequal manner with larger competitors. “Smaller-scale initiatives can also be effective. After all, today anyone can write an article and post it on a blog, or create stories on Instagram, and thus attract people’s attention, something that previously only media companies were capable of,” explains André Siqueira, co-founder of the digital marketing company RD Station.
However, for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to be successful in advertising and selling their products in the digital environment, it is not enough to simply define the advertising channels, such as email belize whatsapp data marketing, advertising purchases or social networks. According to Siqueira, who wrote the book Máquina de aceleração de clientes (Customer Acquisition Machine) (Editora Gente), it is mainly necessary to have a strong foundation so that advertising in these channels works in the best possible way.
Therefore, within the logic of an efficient digital marketing strategy, the entrepreneur must first be concerned with the quality of his product. Another fundamental point is to have in-depth knowledge of the target audience of the product, as well as to have a good ideal positioning of the brand, that is, to understand the company's differential. It is also essential to know how much a customer spends with your company, how much the company spends financially to produce a product or deliver a service, what the profit margin is and, finally, how much the company is willing to invest in marketing and sales based on this margin.
But, according to the co-founder of RD Station, one of the most important points for digital marketing applied by companies to be effective is to set up the customer acquisition machine – a methodology developed by Siqueira himself, whose objective is to combine several actions (inbound marketing; outbound marketing; hourglass funnel, among others) using the best of each one.
“What works for one company is not always ideal for another. And there are companies where no methodology fits 100%,” explains Siqueira. According to the co-founder of RD Station, the methodology proposes understanding, prioritizing and transforming possibilities into a system that is effective for different types and sizes of business, with very different investment capacities and expectations of results.
However, the best functioning of the method depends on knowledge and good use of the sales funnel, the representation of the stages of the relationship between consumer and company, in the customer journey. The funnel is composed of the stages Visitors, Contacts and Sales, and it is on this that the structure of the sales machine is built, establishing actions that must be carried out in each of the stages of this funnel. These actions are: attract, convert, relate, sell and analyze.
According to Siqueira, the funnel and the activities that are part of the sales acquisition machine serve as guidance for the company on which marketing and sales methodologies should be used in each part of the process, and which tools should be used together. The content marketing strategy, for example, by creating valuable content that attracts the interest of potential customers, can be used at different times in the funnel stage, not only to attract contacts, but to engage ads, build relationships and boost sales.