When you haven’t got the corporate funding behind you, there are all sorts of challenges that small businesses can face, and marketing is one area in which you, as a small business owner, feel the pressure to get it right. After all, the last thing you want to do is waste money on marketing that isn’t relevant to your business and therefore doesn’t work.
In this article, we’ll be covering key priorities small businesses should focus on in their marketing strategy, and brief guidelines on how to tailor them to what you do.
Understand the basics
Before you embark on some serious marketing action for your small business, you need to get clear on what you’re doing it for – and it isn’t just ‘make more money’; it must be more specific than that. For example, you might want an increase in website traffic, to generate leads, or boost sales of products; these are all clear and measurable, so you’re able to gauge the success of your efforts.
Know your audience
To market your business effectively, you need to understand your target audience’s demographics, behaviours, needs, and pain points; otherwise, you’re working blind.
Conduct market research in order to better understand who needs you, and what they need from you; this could be through surveys, social listening, interviews, or competitive analysis. This way, you can engage with your ideal customers in a way that will appeal to them, in places they’re likely to find you, either physically, or online.
Build a strong online presence
Your website is your online shop window, and, unlike social media, it’s one that you own and have control of, so make the most of it. Creating a user-friendly, mobile-responsive website is half the battle, and getting it found is the remaining portion, which means engaging in search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics to get Google to sit up and take note of your brand. You can enhance your SEO strategy by using SEO Toolkit, which provides step-by-step guidance to monitor your rankings and improve your content.
Achieve better local search results through effective Google Maps SEO techniques. GMBjet’s Google My Business Management Service streamlines your business profile management. Our Google My Business Optimisation Service ensures your information is up-to-date and appealing to potential customers.
Industry experts have mixed reactions, noting potential impacts on SEO and website traffic. Done correctly through on-page optimization, helpful content, technical SEO, and link building, SEO gives your website the best chance of appearing first in Google searches for key terms your audience is actually using.
If you’re a small business that serves a community within a certain area, local SEO is another crucial part of your online presence; you want to be found by people close to you who are searching for what you do, right? Optimising your Google My Business profile, collecting and responding to customer reviews, and local keyword optimisation are all aspects to local SEO success; if in doubt, engage with a professional local SEO service provider.
Content marketing
Think of content marketing as online content that provides value to your target user. Published online, content marketing can take the form of blogs, podcasts, videos, social media content, and infographics that connect with your audience and give them some takeaways they’ll remember. You can then promote this content through channels such as social media and newsletters.
Demonstrate your expertise through content to build trust with your audience, and ultimately increase brand awareness, which can lead to those all-important conversions.
Social media marketing
We can’t the topic that is marketing a small business without talking about social media, the must-have for any business looking to reach its audience. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn will all appeal to different demographics, so ensure you’re up to speed with what your audience is using. Then, it’s time to engage with them.
You can do this through a variety of ways, and almost always by following a regular posting schedule. Live videos, polls, and contests are all a great way to grab attention but ensure that throughout it all you reveal the human element behind your small business – people buy from people after all.
Email marketing
Reaching the inboxes of customers who have either already purchased from you, or have an interest in what you do, has never been easier. A concerted effort to build an email list through lead magnets, sign-up forms, and incentives, as well as personalising the emails you send, segmenting your email list, and creating targeted content will all help to keep your brand front of mind.
This all sounds rather convoluted, but automation tools such as Mailchimp make it easy, saving time and increasing efficiency.
Paid advertising
Of course, there are the good old-fashioned ads – or not so old-fashioned, if you take modern equivalents into consideration. Google ads, Facebook Ads, and local advertising options such as billboards, buses, and local radio can reach large volumes of people quickly. In the case of Google and Facebook ads, you can tailor the demographics they appear to, making your ad campaigns work harder for you, optimising your ad spend.
Tracking and measuring the return on investment from paid ads is essential for any business – particularly small ones with even smaller budgets!
To conclude
Whatever aspects of your marketing strategy you prioritise, it’s essential to monitor the performance, using tools like Google Analytics and social media insights to track how they’re working for you.
Your marketing strategy will always be a work in process, so you want to ensure that you’re making data-driven decisions, refining as you go, and staying up to date with marketing trends.
Written by Aaron James