Cost Effective Marketing Strategies for Wearable Tech Firms
Marketing your firm’s wearable technology products can be an expensive proposition; however, there are a variety of cost-effective and efficient public relations strategies that will project your company’s image and express the unique benefits of your solution to consumer and business clients. Here we will discuss the most relevant strategies for wearable technology firms and products including fashion, medical, business, sports, health and fitness, automotive, gaming, and augmented reality. The Internet of Things (IOT) and the ubiquitous interconnection of all devices used in our daily business and personal lives is rapidly increasing the demand for wearable technologies that feature real-time data and interactivity.
Precise Budgeting for Wearable Technology Firms
Developing and maintaining a precise budget is crucial to keeping your marketing efforts efficient. Creating and maintaining a comprehensive budget provides the certainty and transparency needed to maintain solvency and garner the support of investors and other stakeholders. The determination of whether your strategies are cost-effective will be entirely relative to the financial limits you place for each channel. Limits should be based on market research to understand the costs and requirements associated with available distribution methods. Allocate sufficient amounts to allow marketing that is broadly enough distributed to saturate your market, ensuring that the greatest percentage of potential prospects are reached.
An important rule for every campaign is that marketing must be consistent to be effective. Campaigns should be designed to last for a minimum of six months to a year, with variations depending on the market or product type, but always of adequate length to build your tech firm’s reputation and reach a stable market position. Marketing campaigns tend to have increasing returns, when properly designed and executed, and will gain momentum as the market’s awareness builds with continuous engagement and positive reviews from prospects. Marketing messages that aren’t given the time to penetrate the market will lose their effectiveness and result in wasted advertising dollars.
Avoiding Wasted Ad-Dollars Through Informed Targeting
The most effective way to ensure that capital is not squandered on ineffective, or improperly implemented marketing efforts, is by conducting diligent preliminary market research. Thorough market analysis will provide the data necessary to create precisely targeted campaigns that reach the appropriate audience, with the correct message, using the most effective channels, at the least expense. Incorrectly targeted campaigns invariably result in poor performance, low conversion rates, and advertising funds that could have been allocated to reaching properly defined target markets and distribution channels.
Take care in your budgeting research to calculate the precise amount of capital required for each marketing channel, with a sufficient reserve budget in case of the need to expand scope due to either weak, or excellent performance; either circumstance may require expanding marketing efforts to stimulate demand, or take advantage of momentum in market adoption. Don’t allow a lack of capital to restrict your budget or marketing plans; build into your strategic planning initiative the intent to raise enough capital, an especially critical marketing consideration for wearable tech firms, to push your product at the scale needed to embrace market potential.
Low-Cost Marketing Strategies for Wearable Tech
The advent of digital marketing strategies offers tremendous low-cost marketing potential. Prior to digital media, traditional marketing methods such as TV, radio, print advertising, and direct mail required significant advertising budgets that stood as an imposing barrier to entry for startup firms, and a significant budget consideration for those already established. Today you can achieve the same level of exposure through inexpensive and nearly cost-free approaches.
Some of the most effective methods include press releases, social media, professional networking, blogging platforms, and support/knowledge forums. An appropriate combination of these, fueled by market research, will result in a marketing strategy that is significantly less expensive than alternative means. The primary costs of utilizing these channels is typically the personnel required to develop the content and manage the postings. An additional advantage of digital channels is the ease in anticipating costs. Most mediums have clear expense estimates and provide approximate costs based on anticipated response rates. Channels that provide advertising on a per result basis allow you to pay only for actual clicks, or desired prospect action, rather than for each impression (view or presentation of marketing message).
Interaction with prospects to build rapport and credibility is also an important aspect of an effective digital media strategy. This form of marketing is often termed thought leadership (TL), and involves connecting with potential prospects to provide the information and answers they need to become educated, building the trust required to move forward in the buying cycle. A TL strategy develops a brand position of expertise, innovation, and excellent customer service. Understanding the expectations of prospects, and their buying behaviors, will equip you to develop effective marketing strategies and content.
Long-Term Profitability
Maintaining profitability for a wearable tech firm requires periodic budget updates. At least every fiscal quarter, the budget should be reviewed for accuracy and for relevance to current marketing results and needs. An experienced public relations marketing firm can guide you in determining the appropriate scope of marketing and accurately estimating costs. When either marketing expenses have exceeded budgetary limits, or the results of marketing campaigns have been less than expected, the budget should be reconfigured to support growth.