Some marketing tools are essential for sound business

Marketing strategy needs to be individually tailored to your business – but there are certain basics no one should ignore

Marketing strategy is a highly individual thing. Each business should tailor its marketing in the way that will serve that business best. However, there are a few common denominators – strategies and technologies that every business, large or small, should be using, according to business.com.

Analytics
First up is analytics. Tracking customer data can help businesses see where they might have problems in their advertising strategy, according to business.com – and even free programs like Google Analytics provide amazing tools for businesses to find out who’s visiting their sites.

Conversion optimization
Simply put, conversion optimization is a process in which a business gets consumers to do what it wants them to do. This can be as simple as getting customers to provide their email address on an online form, according to business.com.

Remarketing
You’ve probably had this experience: You look at a product on a company’s website and then move on to another site. And, lo and behold, ads for the previous site pop up on the next site you visit. That’s remarketing, and according to business.com, it’s an effective tool because it’s marketing specifically to customers who’ve already shown an interest in your product.

Mobile
According to business.com, nearly half of all emails are opened on phones and tablets. And it’s projected that half of all web searches will soon be done from smartphones. With that in mind, it’s essential that your website is optimized for mobile devices. But according to business.com, less than a third of websites are mobile-friendly. That hurts those businesses in a couple of ways. First, if a site is taking forever to load on your phone, there’s a good chance you’ll give up and move on. And secondly, non-mobile-friendly websites get penalized by search engines.