The success of your small business depends on how you market it. Basically, marketing includes everything related to getting and retaining customers. This appears to be the main challenge among small business owners. According to a survey of “One Capital Owners”, 41 percent of small business owners find it difficult to define and reach what they want. Once you solve this marketing challenge, you will have overcome the main obstacle to running and keeping a profitable business.
Small business marketing strategies
Marketing includes everything related to obtaining and retaining customers. (Image source: Envato Elements)
For small business owners, developing solutions in the form of a Marketing Plan will help. Include your sales goals, your description of your target customers, as well as the small business marketing strategies you will use to reach these goals and find those customers.
If you intend to start your own small business marketing plan, here are some lessons that can guide you through your work:
The following marketing strategies are ideal for the scope of a typical budget and small business goals. Here is a list of small business marketing strategies to work with:
1- Email Marketing
Email marketing involves collecting the email addresses of leads and customers, sending them emails regularly, and getting them to open those messages, or click on links in them.
This strategy is suitable for small businesses because of the minimal cost – usually, you only need to pay for the software used in email marketing – and the high returns. Email marketing is the strategy that provides one of the highest returns on investment (ROI), even more than social media or direct mail. Statistics from the Direct Marketing Association say that there is approximately 122 percent revenue generated from email marketing. In other words, it will be very profitable for the small business to include email in their marketing plans.
ROI for different marketing channels
Email marketing has a high return on investment compared to other marketing methods.
Because email works best when you already have at least a small following, it is best to strengthen relationships with leads and customers, convert leads into sales recipients, grow and consolidate recurring customers, and increase sales. If your primary goal is to increase awareness of a particular brand, or showcase your business to potential prospects, it is best to try other small business marketing strategies first.
If you still don’t have a list of leads you should start building your email list. But if you are already building your email list, you can use the following tips to improve your email strategy:
2- Content Marketing
Unlike direct advertising of your products and services, content marketing aims to reach the target audience through informational or entertainment content. The idea is that when your target audience is attracted to this content, they will learn and see about your business as a result. The content used can come in any of the following formats:
- Articles
- Videos
- Audios
- Infographics
- Graphs
- Electronic books
- White pages
- Single case studies
- Certificates
And a copy of the website (such as the text of the home page or “about us” – your text page -).
Because content marketing does not directly require sales, it works better mainly as a brand engagement strategy rather than a sales strategy. Research from the Content Marketing Institute shows that nearly 80 percent of marketers were able to show that content marketing increased audience engagement, and only 58 percent had increased sales. By complementing your content marketing strategy with a more direct approach such as email marketing or advertising, you will be able to ensure that your branding efforts also aid your sales efforts.
3- Blogging
For companies, blogging means regularly posting new updates for your website or blog. Although blogging is technically a part of content marketing, it often requires a separate plan since it is a recurring project. Blogs need to be updated regularly, unlike white pages, case studies, or your “About” page.
Because you will be regularly posting new content on your blog, it is usually best to build your brand awareness, recall, and loyalty. The blog enables you to gain new prospects’ customer interest who will hear about your business for the first time as well as reminding current customers of your business. These branding efforts bring in more customers. Perhaps this is the reason, regardless of company size, according to Hubspot research that business owners who use a blog are more likely to get more clients for you.
4- Marketing through social media
Using sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snap chat, and Pinterest to market your business means that you are using social media marketing.
One of the challenges of social media marketing is that it can be difficult to know if it works and is effective. An online consulting study shows that up to 60% of marketers have difficulty tracking their ROI. In fact, marketers see social media as the basis for brand engagement. Since you can include images, graphics, video, audio and expressions in your social media posts, this makes it a good way to express your brand values in a variety of ways.
5- Paid Per Click Advertising
Paid-per-click advertising is simply a form of advertising on the Internet where you pay for the clicks that get an advertisement on the Internet. Usually, these are the ads you see when you type a word into a search engine and look at the results. But PPC ads are also present on other sites, and even on some social sites. Google Ads and Bing Ads are two examples of networks that allow you to buy a PPC ad as a business.Many telemarketed final expense leads companies implement this strategy.
The success of your PPC ads depends on choosing the right keywords and bidding on the right amount, and having high conversion copies. Because the cost of these ads is determined by the number of clicks on the ad, the best place for them in your small business marketing plan is to aggregate leads or make offers. Here are some of the techniques you can use with your PPC ads:
Re-purpose the ad so that it leads directly to the landing page or leads to a zip page designed to gather future customers.
You can also target your ads directly to product pages using keywords to target customers who are willing to buy.
If you want to get started with your PPC ads, these lessons about Google Ads can help you become more familiar with how they work.