Marketing Hacks For Small Business – Whether you are in the process of starting a new business or already have one, your brand’s online presence is very important. In fact, consumers are learning more about local businesses than anywhere else, and Statista predicts that the number of e-commerce users will grow to nearly 274 million by 2025. If you’re a small business owner with little experience in online marketing, create a strategy to grow your presence online can feel overwhelming. Fear not – we’ve got you covered. In this post, we’ll help you build and optimize your small business marketing strategy using inbound marketing, setting you up to attract new customers and ultimately grow your business. Small business marketing is all about building brand awareness and building a pipeline of qualified leads that convert into sales. With a small business, getting the word out can be challenging due to less visibility and lack of resources (like budget or time). However, there are key strategies that can help you maximize your small business marketing efforts. Whether you’re struggling with a limited budget, time constraints caused by a smaller team, or even a lack of direction, a marketing plan that’s right for your business can provide guidance as you scale. Small Business Marketing Strategies Know Your Audience. Emphasize your value. Stay focused on singular goals and objectives. Take advantage of short-term plays. Double what works. Understand the power of existing customers. Use free promotional tools. Create a website to own your online presence. Consider ging to attract leads to your website. Promote yourself on social networks. Invest in advertising. Make sure you capture the information of potential customers on the web. Use email marketing to nurture leads. Manage relationships with CRM. Rely on word of mouth as a promotion channel. These strategies are fundamental as you build awareness and revenue for your organization: 1. Know your audience. A key mistake is thinking that “anyone” is your customer. Larger companies may be able to appeal to a broad market, but they say “niche wealth” is there for a reason. A niche is where you will have the most impact as a small business. And to develop a niche and attract customers within the niche, you need to understand their pain points, problems, triggers and priorities. What makes them make a purchase decision? What does it look like if they succeed? Knowing these things will help you create messages that resonate and make a compelling case for your solution. Start by thinking about your existing clients and who you would like to work with. Next, create a buyer persona to begin the process of getting inside the head of your ideal customer. Download Free Customer Persona 2 Templates Emphasize your value. If there is no difference between you and your competition, there is no reason why a customer should be forced to work with you. Your value proposition is what will differentiate you from others in your space and make the decision to your potential clients that you are the service provider. What do you do better than anyone else in the industry? Communicating this makes a compelling argument. 3. Stay focused on singular goals and objectives. If you’ve been exploring the world of marketing, you may have noticed that there are a gazillion directions you can go. It’s tempting to do everything at once and build a complicated machine in the hope that you’ve covered all your bases, and it’s easy to take on too much. Instead, determine where the impact will be greatest. Where is the biggest blind spot in your marketing that is preventing you from growing? Set a performance goal around that one key area and focus your resources on the activities and tactics that will achieve that one performance goal. You can expand your efforts or turn to other initiatives as you make more progress toward that singular goal. 4. Take advantage of short-term plays. Start scrappy. As you scale, it’s critical to see ROI early. This will give you momentum and cash flow for bigger projects, long-term plays and more sustainable growth models. Tactics that take time to build (like SEO) are a poor match for your primary initiatives because you won’t see a return quickly enough for your liking. If you have enough resources to start there, great, but don’t put all your eggs in that basket. If you have evidence that people are turning to Google with the intention of purchasing your particular solution, you may find that paid ads will give you that short-term ROI. 5. Double what works. Once you’ve launched your initiatives and experimented with a few things, pay attention to the data. This can inform you of what it is doing. As you scale, it’s a good idea to double down on proven revenue generation methods. 6. Understand the power of existing customers. On average, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to close an existing one. This means you shouldn’t stop marketing after they’ve made a purchase. Identify your repeat purchase, upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Because your existing customers have already made a purchase, they already know, like and trust you. If you’ve provided a good experience, you’ve given them a reason to do business with you again if the need ever arises. Even if the need does not arise (in cases where it is a one-time purchase with almost no possibility of additional sales), you should still delight your customers. Word of mouth is a powerful (and free) promotional tool. 7. Use free promotional tools. Speaking of free promotional tools, it’s important to note that since you’ve committed to a limited goal and scope, there’s no need to inflate your costs with gadgets. Use free promotional tools where possible and only commit to paid tools if you know they will drastically improve existing operations or performance. Here is a useful list of marketing tools (some free and some paid). 8. Create a website to own your online presence. Having a professional looking website is one of the most important assets you will create for your small business. Here you will show who you are, what you offer, where you are located and how a potential customer can get in touch with you. It’s a channel you’ll always own (unlike other platforms that can change policies or go in and out of style), and it has the ability to generate organic traffic in addition to being a place to send traffic from advertising and other marketing initiatives. Your website is not just a simple brochure either. You have the ability to turn it into a 24-7 seller by understanding how to convert traffic and convert them into leads (more on that later). For one of the best website tools, check out HubSpot’s CMS. 9. Consider driving leads to your website. ging is a great way to generate organic traffic, especially for those prospects who have not yet made a purchase decision. Additionally, it can establish credibility in your space and position you as a thought leader. To get started, you can use a cheap or free website tool to create a free site and use one of their templates. Even if you only post once a week, it will improve your website’s online visibility and help educate your potential customers on why they should trust your company. If you plan to write your own posts, check out this beginner’s guide to writing. Once you start writing, you can add a call to action to your posts to get visitors to subscribe to your posts and receive emails. This is a great way to start generating leads and offer potential customers a way to get information if they aren’t ready to buy from you yet. Download free post templates 10. Promote yourself on social media. With billions of potential customers using various platforms every day, social media is a powerful business tool. Social media marketing can help you connect with potential customers, build brand awareness and promote your products. Why wouldn’t you want to be seen where your potential customers spend their time? Download Free Social Media Content Calendar Template 11. Invest in Ads. Organic traffic takes time to build, and as a small business, you want to invest in short-term plays. Pay-to-play tactics that target high-intent customers are great for short-term wins to drive other goals. Google Ads are perfect if you know your target audience is searching the web for your product or solution. If not, consider social media ads. Individuals on social media have less purchase intent, but with highly targeted ads and enough impressions, you’ll gain the interest of your audience. Download Free Advertising Planning Kit 12. Make sure you’re capturing leads on the web. We’ve talked a lot about visibility and traffic, but we haven’t yet covered how it will help increase revenue. One easy way to start generating leads or customers from your website is to implement a conversion tool.
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