The ideal mix of marketing and advertising activities to drive sales

This month’s Ask An Expert with Macky and Whitsunday Life asks: What is the ideal mix of marketing and advertising activities to drive sales?

Melinda Louise from Melinda Louise Media, and Megan Taylor from Kapow Interactive, responded.

“An ideal marketing and advertising campaign should align with the strategic focus of your business and is essential to achieving brand awareness and driving sales,” said Melinda.

“The first step is to create a solid foundation by developing a marketing strategy that clearly defines your business objectives and key performance indicators to measure success and track progress.

“For example, is the aim to build brand awareness, generate leads, increase sales, retain customers? Once the objectives have been established, it’s important to identify your target audience so that you can tailor your campaign to connect and engage with them.”

Megan agrees that the first step is knowing what you want to achieve – more sales of product A, and fewer of product B – and think of who has bought this in the past. What are these people like? How can you get your marketing message in front of them specifically?

“Plan your marketing activities to meet these criteria,” Megan said. “This might include car signage, placing business cards or flyers on a noticeboard, targeted online ads, or sponsorship of a local club. The right mix will be different depending on your business, goals, products, and your own preferences.

“Also think about developing partnerships with similar businesses where you can refer each other. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing methods when it comes from a trusted source.”

Both Melinda and Megan believe it is important to optimise and adjust your marketing and advertising mix over time depending on results; finding the ideal marketing and advertising mix is a process that requires research, planning, execution, evaluation, and adaptability.