Marketing | Small Business
Marketing Tips for Small Businesses
The best small business marketing ideas and tips that won’t cost a fortune.
You know you need to market your small business business, but where do you start? What’s the best way to go about it? This blog post will help answer that question and offer 14 of the best small business marketing ideas and tips that won’t cost a fortune.
When production begins, the end target is to have the smiles on the faces of your target audience as your product relieves their pain. But, what happens when having developed a great product, this still seems like mission impossible. You just can’t seem to hit your target. You’re finding it tough to reach your prospects, capture their interest, build their trust and ultimately make them loyal customers who refer others.
Marketing strategy is key to the success of any small business. In this mini-guide, you have a highlight of tips proven to improve your business marketing and ultimately increase your sales and conversion.
14 Marketing Tips for Small Business
1. Determine your brand’s identity.
When it comes to marketing, you don’t want your customers confused. Branding should be consistent so that your prospects can recognize your business at any time.Your brand identity goes a long way in determining the emotions evoked when people hear your company’s name.
Your brand identity is a meal made from many exquisite ingredients. It involves your brand name, brand logo, brand color pallets, aesthetics, etc., and should be carefully built to appeal to your target audience. Plus, data also shows that brand loyalty is on the rise among consumers.
2. Sketch your buyer persona
Quick exercise: Answer these questions.
“Who is your ideal customer?
What do they do?
How do they get their information?”
If your answer to question 1 sounded like everyone, or everyone who is [a certain demographic], or everyone who enjoys [your services] and your answers to questions 2 & 3 is not clearly defined, you might have a huge issue to resolve here and now. The problem? You do not have a buyer persona.
As a small business owner, you must have a buyer persona. This comes from the knowledge and understanding you have about your target audience. This is key to your small business because it dictates your marketing strategy, brand voice, and the form of advertising you adapt.
3. Have a business website
It’s the 21st century and digital marketing is sure taking the lead. Establish a stable online presence for your small business by owning a business website. Your website tells others about your business and informs them of the services and/or products you offer. Plus, your website can be optimized to stand as a salesperson that never sleeps- one that is constantly in your prospects’ faces even when you go to bed.
You could employ an experienced website designer to make you a professional-looking website or create one yourself using web design tools if you’re tech-savvy. You will find a few sites you can hire a web designer here.
4. Advertise on social media
Yes, you are a business owner, not a social media manager. Nonetheless, the impact of social media marketing in marketing cannot be over-emphasized. Establish your business’ presence on social media, create engaging content and employ the advertisement tools. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are social media platforms that allow businesses to advertise.
For small business marketing-specific tools, check out Symposium. Here is an article on What the Symposium App is and How it works.
5. Optimize your website for mobile devices
Have a site that does not only look great on desktop but is also optimized for mobile devices. A lot of individuals carry out searches using their mobile devices. So, why not have your site designed to reach as many as possible by optimizing for all devices?
Some CMS platforms offer mobile-optimized templates so you need not be a tech pro to have your site optimized for mobile devices.
6. Create a default market strategy
Draw out a market strategy that nurtures your target audience through awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation, and the final purchase process. This process would involve incorporating the tools you’ve established that are needed to promote your service. Here is a free template to craft your go-to-market plan.
7. Write optimized blog posts
Draw traffic to your website and eventually convert these prospects into customers using optimized blog posts. People are constantly in search of certain info related to your business services. Writing informative blog posts on the pain points of your target audience is a means to pull in traffic as well as establish your small business as an authority in that niche.
If you’d like to do this yourself, here is a guide on how to write SEO-friendly blogs. Alternatively, you could contact a professional content creator to do this for you. Sites like Upwork, Fiverr, and freelancer give you access to a wide ocean of greatly experienced writers.
8. Consider showing rather than just telling
Visual contents are becoming more and more prominent. Plus, humans process videos way faster than any other content form. Thinking about marketing strategy small business? Consider using videos. Now is the perfect time to take a step back from typing behind the screen and get in front of a camera.
Use Snapchat, Instagram stories, Instagram live, Tik Tok, Facebook live, Facebook stories, and other visual social media platforms to your advantage. Here are a few video marketing platforms to include in your marketing strategies.
9. Have an email marketing strategy
Now you have a website. You’ve made creating optimized blogs a routine. You’ve even offered a freebie and now you have their email addresses. But, what next? Follow up! As a small business owner, you should continually be in the faces of your prospects literally. Email marketing helps you do this.
Be careful not to bombard their mails with too many emails but be sure to keep them informed. Your email marketing strategy should help you stay in touch with previous customers as well as reach out to prospects who have shown interest in your products or services.
10. Try Co-marketing
Dear business owner, you need not do it all on your own. Reach out to small businesses around you that have access to your target audience. Partner with small non-competing businesses. The goal of the partnership is to co-advertise each other. While your partner gives you access to their established fan base, you also promote their services to your customers.
11. Encourage satisfied customers to give their honest reviews
Anyone can say something good about their business but it takes a satisfied consumer to speak well of your product. In marketing, positive reviews from your customers go a long way in establishing your authority and building trust with your prospects. Encourage your customers to share their experiences on a social media platform and also refer others to you. Plus, 71% of individuals are more likely to buy based on social media referrals.
12. Offer a freebie
As a small business owner, you should never forget that humans love free things. Yes, we all do. You could offer a free webinar, a free guide, a free e-book… an offer that your target audience is bound to find attractive and irresistible. This helps you draw in potential customers and also establishes you as an authority in your field. This is a key element in small business marketing strategies. Your freebie should be a strategic attempt to collate the contact info of your prospects.
13. Optimize your emails
Yep, optimize dem mails!
It is not enough to just write and ship off mails. For small businesses, email marketing is an effective nonetheless tricky tool. Having great mail content doesn’t guarantee that your recipients will read your mail. There are however proven ways to improve your email marketing conversion. Here is a quick checklist for a start.
- Recognizable sender address
Ensure your emails are coming from an easily identifiable sender name, not some name that leaves your recipient confused. Remember, confusion is the arch-enemy of conversion.
- Attractive subject line
Why should your recipient even open your mail? Your subject line should scream “open me else you’d miss out on a great deal”. Not literally, of course.
- Visually appealing design
Have your mails optimized for desktops as well as mobile devices. You don’t want to lose your prospect’s attention after working so hard to get it.
- Clear call to action
Again, eliminate confusion. What would you have them do? Check out a blog post, join in a challenge, be part of a promo sale, become premium members… Whatever it is, have a clear, concise call to action.
14. Experiment with marketing
While it is key that you double down on marketing strategies that work, don’t get stuck on it. If there’s a new marketing idea that pops up in your head, feel free to try it out. However, make sure you are making your decisions based on a solid hypothesis or possible theory. Plus, you could always lead a successful marketing experiment.
Ultimately, keep forging ahead, taking each bold step one after the other. Reach out to professionals and business coaches if need be. An easy way to do this is to employ the symposium app. With the right tools and timely information, your marketing strategy-small business is continuously fine-tuned to perfection.
Getting Started — Small Business Marketing
Creating a small business marketing plan is not easy if you do not know exactly what to do. Simply brainstorm ideas for productive ways to promote your small business. Keep your goals simple. Focus on your target audience. Take advantage of all of the platforms, channels, and marketing techniques that are available.
With Symposium is a terrific way to market your small business while making money online. You can sell your knowledge and connect with people who want to purchase your services using the app. It can also be a resource when you are looking for advice or wanting to learn something new yourself.
