Is your business achieving its full potential? For many small business owners, it isn’t their product or service that’s holding them back, it’s their marketing strategy. After all, a competitive offer doesn’t do much good if no one knows about it.
Fortunately, there have never been more options to choose from in developing a marketing plan. All it takes is an understanding of a few key concepts and available marketing tools to get your product in front of your target audience and increase brand awareness. In this post, we’ll look at nine key aspects of small business marketing.
You Need a Website
It’s no secret that more of life is happening on the internet every day. The stats are staggering: in January of 2019, the average person spent over 6.5 hours on the internet every day. This makes having a website all but essential. It opens up your business to the digital world and provides a wealth of marketing opportunities. By using the latest search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and utilizing effective content marketing, a well-constructed website will allow potential customers to get in touch with you much more easily.
Optimize for Mobile
Having a website is a vital step, but the sky’s the limit for how well your website functions. One of the first steps you should take in making your website the best it can be is making sure it looks great on mobile devices. Overlooking this step can mean that your website won’t load properly on phones or will simply take too long to display. Either of these things can be detrimental to the user experience and reflect poorly on your brand. This is especially important considering how many people prefer to access the internet with a mobile device.
Just think about it this way: how often do you use your phone to access the internet?
Maintain a Blog
Content Marketing is here to stay. By creating blog posts that are engaging and relevant to your target audience, you can increase the online visibility of your brand as well as establish your company as an authority. The trick here is to focus on creating quality content. The internet is saturated with content on every subject imaginable. Only by creating unique, quality content that people are actually interested in engaging with will you be able to capture the attention of potential customers.
You’ve probably heard the buzz around SEO. It’s a way to optimize the content on your site so that it ranks higher in searches. And it’s great for driving more traffic to your site and boosting brand awareness.
However, it’s important to be aware of the fact that the best SEO practices change, though. The best method is no longer to cram as many related keywords into your blog posts as possible. It’s now quite the opposite. Instead of sacrificing quality to rank higher in search engines, the best thing you can do for your website is to focus on creating high-quality content. Another tip is to use long-tail keywords for the best SEO.
Email Marketing
Email is a powerful tool that should play a significant role in your marketing efforts. The vast majority of people have at least one email address that they use frequently. For many, it’s their preferred method of communication with businesses. Having a list of email addresses of potential customers gives you a direct advertising line to your target audience. What more can you ask for?
Email marketing equips you with plenty of ways to reach your customers. With this digital channel, personalization is easy and very effective. By segmenting your target audience into specific categories based on the products or services they’re interested in and the level of engagement they’ve had with your company, you can send highly-effective emails that speak to their specific circumstance.
Social Media Platforms
No online marketing strategy is complete if it doesn’t include a social media aspect. A presence on social media offers businesses the opportunity to reach and interact with potential customers in a unique environment. Social media can be particularly effective at increasing your brand’s exposure because it’s built to help users share content. Create content that goes viral on social media and you’ll open yourself up to a massive new audience.
What’s more, marketing through social media is super inexpensive. Providing a steady stream of engaging content is what will give your company a strong social presence. In the interest of creating content that is highly shareable, don’t neglect the power of video. It’s one of the most frequently shared types of content and is excellent at getting the attention of internet users.
Getting your content shared should be one of the primary goals of your social media strategy. It exposes your content to an even wider audience and adds an element of authenticity to your content.
Google Business Listing
Is your company listed on Google My Business (GMB)? This is one of the simplest and most effective ways to increase the online visibility of your business. This feature groups all of your Google services into one place, including Google Analytics, your Google Maps profile, and the Google reviews for your business. In addition to helping you manage all of your Google resources in one spot, it makes your business much easier to find. When you search Google for a business or a service in a specific area, the first three results get a prime spot. They’re all listed with GMB.
For example, someone searching for printing services in the city of Orlando is likely to go with one of these three companies. Ranking high with GMB gives local businesses a huge advantage.
Google Adwords
This advertising method has been around for quite some time, and it’s remained popular for a reason. Google dominates the search engine market, processing over 40,000 searches every second. This makes chasing high Google search rankings a competitive endeavor. Google Adwords is a reliable way to get an edge on the competition and get your brand noticed.
It isn’t the most inexpensive advertising message out there, but there are ways to get a better price. How much you pay for Google’s Adwords service depends on the SEO on your page. Google’s algorithm uses data such as the landing page of your site and the relevance of your content to determine the quality of your page as a search result. The higher the quality, the less you’ll have to pay for ad space.
Consider Offering Webinars
Interested in providing a different type of content that will generate interest and attract your ideal customers? Consider hosting a webinar. It’s a seminar conducted over the internet and can be a presentation, a demonstration, or even a discussion. Webinars are great ways to establish authority in your industry and build an email list of very interested customers. You can even record a webinar and use the recording on multiple occasions.
If your business needs to generate leads and build an email list, webinars can help. Try offering premium content like this in exchange for email addresses or answers to a quick survey. You’ll get a bunch of qualified leads and gain valuable information to help you market effectively to your target audience.
Word of Mouth
Utilizing referrals and word of mouth as marketing strategies is a powerful tactic. This type of advertising is inexpensive and authentic. More than ever, people are valuing things that feel authentic. It’s hard to think of a more authentic way to learn about a business than from someone who had a great experience with that business.
Fortunately, you don’t have to just sit around and wait for this phenomenon to take place. There are some steps you can take to encourage this type of marketing and reap the benefits.
First, exceed expectations. In fact, go way beyond them. It can look like responsive and personalized customer service or taking the time to get to know your customers. Really “wowing” your customers is one of the best ways to get them talking about you.
Another important step to take is to focus on the relationships you have with your customers. By putting extra effort into fostering a trusting relationship, your customers will feel encouraged to spread the goodwill. Also, strive to be genuine and honest with customers. These things are hard to fake, and people respond to the real deal.
Marketing for Your Small Business
When it comes to promoting your business, it can be difficult to know which of the many marketing ideas is right for your business. The huge number of options available to small business owners is more of a blessing than anything else, though. It means that there’s a tried-and-true marketing strategy out there that will work for businesses of any size.
Whether your business is just budding and the marketing budget is small or you’re part of a larger company looking ahead to the next step, taking the time to research the options available to you is a step in the right direction. There’s never been a better time to take advantage of digital marketing and all it has to offer.
We Can Help
Don’t have time to think through your digital marketing campaign? Let us take care of the details! Schedule a free business growth call here to find out how we can help your business’s marketing efforts. We can help promote your business this year, or next year.
