By Aileen Barron, Green Acre Marketing

There is lots of advice from well-informed marketeers to guide marketing teams through marketing tactics that work, how to implement them and how to measure their success. However, to change tack a little, it is also worth considering the marketing activities that are irritating and should be avoided.

The reforms in the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws in 2018 made companies take note of what was and was not acceptable, in terms of using their customers’ data for marketing purposes.

The public also became well informed in terms of what qualified as unsolicited communications, further compelling companies not to breach these laws.

As a result of GDPR laws, many companies and individuals have gone to great lengths to qualify and build their databases in a way that makes it compliant.

However, due consideration is still required in your marketing efforts, so that your correspondence to this database still adds value, is timely, not relentlessly repetitive and doesn’t border on annoyance.

Relevant and timely

Rolling out generic bland marketing messages will not resonate with anyone and failing to segment your market and target accordingly is a big oversight in marketing practice.

Segmentation is the method of dividing out your market based on demographics, needs, priorities, common interests, and other behaviours relevant to your product or service. Failing to do so can leave you with a broad approach, thus not resonating with anyone, and in some cases, running the risk of making yourself irrelevant to a potential customer.

Sales and marketing teams hold a lot of knowledge about their customers and not using this knowledge is wasteful. From the customers’ perspective, receiving irrelevant information often triggers the ‘unsubscribe’ button!

Some companies will be using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to streamline and optimise marketing campaigns, but human input is fundamental to truly connect with your customers.

Good marketing is about delivering a message that is relevant and timely. It is the actions you take to build trust in what you do and being clever about the platforms you use to do this. From there, it is up to you to ensure you can deliver on these marketing promises.

For any support with your marketing tactics, you can contact: [email protected].