Marketing is critical to any small business, whether it has existed for years or just recently started.
As a small business, you probably do not have the same marketing budget as big companies have.
This means you must research and carefully plan how you’ll do your branding, advertising, social media, pricing, services, promotions, and products to ensure that your brand gets through to enough people to make a difference in your customer’s experience.
Getting Started With Small Business Marketing
Before you start spending money to market your small business, you must set yourself up for success.
The following steps are must-dos before you launch your first marketing campaign.
1. Know Your Audience
Even if you already know your target market and have built buyer personas, it never hurts to do this work again and learn more about your customers. The more you know about your customer, the better you can create your messaging and strategy.
How do you gather data to inform your buyer persona? There are many ways, some easier, some harder, depending on the stage of your company:
- Customer interviews (phone or in-person)
- Digital analytics
- Surveys (on-site polls like Qualaroo and customer surveys)
- User testing
- Live chat transcripts and intelligence via sales and service teams
Audience personas can include:
- Demographics.
- Geographic location.
- Interests.
- Budget.
- Pain points.
- Motivations.
and more!
All of these things will help you
- choose channels
- craft messaging
2. Map out your channels and tactics
When you have a target market and buyer persona, you can narrow your focus by considering different channels for marketing. There are only so many inbound marketing channels:
- Blogging
- SEO
- Social
- Facebook Ads
- Branding
- Referral
- Virality
Some channels will not work for your business, but some could potentially work and will take so much effort and risk that you should probably table them for the time being in favor of higher-impact channels.
When deciding which channels to use for your business, ask yourself: “How does a customer buy this type of product?”
Identify the best channels for your business by thinking about what customers are likely to look for in a product and how they will purchase it.
3. Refine Your Messaging
As you create messaging to reach your various audience personas, remember that one size does not fit all. Depending on the number or scope of your products and service offerings, you may have to create several messages to reach your various audience personas more effectively.
Once you know your customers’ needs, it’s possible to create messages that resonate with them. You can use different approaches—for example; you might want to educate your customers, show value or expertise, differentiate from competitors, and so on.
4. Determine Your Budget
Marketing can be expensive if you do not prioritize and strategize. Some marketing channels are more costly than others.
Therefore, it is essential to determine what you are willing and not willing to spend before launching any campaigns.
5. Setup Your Analytics
Before you start any digital marketing channel, it is essential to be able to measure its impact and effectiveness. You can utilize all sorts of analytics tools, but if you are starting, begin with these two analytics platforms:
- Google Search Console.
- Google Analytics.
Best Marketing Channels For Small Business
Your marketing strategy should consider which channels are most effective for your business and the customers you are trying to reach.
All channels have pros and cons, and no channel guarantees to produce revenue for your small business.
However, the below channels are often ideal for small businesses because of their effectiveness, longevity, and affordability.
1. Content Marketing
Content marketing is the foundation of your marketing efforts. It is vital that your content is high quality, relevant, and meets the needs of your target audience.
Investing in good content will give you permanent assets you can utilize across marketing channels and help build your brand recognition, expertise, and authority.
Without great content, any additional channels listed here cease to be effective.
Here are some ideas on how to execute content marketing
- Plan a free teleconference or webinar.
- Start a podcast
- Submit a press release to local outlets or communications services
- Repurpose your content to share in other places.
- Rewrite your sales copy with a storytelling spin.
- Self-publish a book
2. SEO
Search engine optimization optimizes your small business website to appear in organic search results.
Most internet users first turn to a search engine to find new products and services.
If your small business website shows up for the keywords that those users rely on, it can mean more potential customers are clicking through to your website.
That means more people browsing your products, scheduling a consultation, or making appointments.
Here are the aspects of SEO that are most important for small businesses to prioritize.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing individual web pages on your website to rank higher in search engine results.
Each page on your small business website has the opportunity to rank in search engine results.
The primary steps involve:
- Keyword research: Finding relevant keywords you want your web pages to rank for.
- SEO copywriting: Writing in-depth, high-quality content that explores the topic in depth. You can use content optimization software to help improve the quality signals on your pages and their ranking potential.
- Meta tag optimization: Including the target keyword in your page title, meta description, image alt text, and ensuring other key meta tags are optimized for search engine crawlers.
- Internal and external linking: Including internal links to other relevant pages on your website and linking to relevant, authoritative sources.
You can perform on-page SEO in your CMS.
You can also outsource the work to an SEO provider or digital marketing agency.
Although time-intensive, on-page SEO is one of the easiest ways to start earning impressions and clicks from organic searches.
Local SEO
For a small business that has a brick-and-mortar location or serves a specific geographic region, local SEO strategies can help your website appear in the Google Map Pack and location-based searches.
To get started with local SEO, do the following:
- Set up your Google Business Profile: This will provide Google and users key information about your small business, including location, phone number, store hours, and more.
- Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP): These key details about your small business should be clear, accurate, and consistent throughout your website’s content. If your small business has multiple locations, it is important to create different landing pages for each location featuring their unique NAP information.
- Get listed in online directories: Google wants to see consistent information about your small business listed on the internet. Using a local citation builder service can help you start building off-site signals. It is an affordable way (under $100) to help Google crawlers better understand your location and the markets you serve.
- Add the local business schema: Local Business structured data tells Google about your business hours, departments, reviews, and more. Adding schema markup will require the assistance of a web developer, but it can be very impactful.
Site Speed Optimization
Google strictly monitors the performance of websites and ranks them in search results according to their Core Web Vitals metrics.
These includes:
- Largest Contentful Paint
- First Input Delay
- Cumulative Layout Shift.
Google also measures mobile usage by examining responsive design metrics (fast loading times, high performance).
Security is also important because it ensures that users’ data is secure from prying eyes.
3. Online Reputation Management
Online reputation management (ORM) is an important part of any business’s digital marketing toolkit.
ORM involves building and monitoring your reputation on popular review sites, which is essentially free.
Estimates show that 94% of consumers have read an online review in the last year.
If your small business does not have profiles on the popular review sites in your industry, or you don’t have reviews about products or services provided by your company, users may choose another service provider or retailer.
Get Your Profiles Set Up
To improve your SEO rankings and gain more organic traffic, look for review sites that your potential customers are actively using and are popular in your industry.
Then make sure your profiles are set up and adequately describe your offering.
These profile pages are also likely to rank for branded search results, so do your best to add high-value keywords in your profile sections.
Add A Product Review App Or Plugin
If your small business operates an eCommerce site, add a plugin or app to your CMS so you can start earning and showcasing reviews on your website.
Here is a list of WordPress product review plugins, and a popular Shopify product review app.
- Ask Your Customers To Leave A Review
To start getting online reviews, simply ask! If you know a customer had a positive experience or really liked your product, sometimes all it takes is asking them to leave a review.
- Incentivize Reviews
If you are having trouble getting customer reviews, offering discounts or promotions on repeat visits or purchases can help encourage your customers to return to your products or services for a second time.
Always Respond To Negative Reviews
ORM plays an important role in managing negative reviews. By responding to your negative reviews, you have the opportunity to repair any negative impact.
Also, you show other potential customers browsing reviews that your small business does what it can to make things right.
4. Pay-Per-Click
Pay-per-click advertising is an online marketing strategy in which you pay when users click on your ad.
PPC – Search Engines and Display Networks
PPC is most commonly associated with top search engines like Google and Bing.
When a user enters a search term, Google and Bing serve ads at the top of their search engine results pages. Small businesses can bid on relevant keywords to get their advertisement to appear at the top of the SERPs.
PPC – Social Media Advertising
Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow small businesses to target their audiences by demographics and interests.
These platforms have so much information about their users that these ads will appear alongside organic posts on social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
5. Email Marketing
You have decided to implement an email marketing strategy for your business. Now what?
First, you need to understand the purpose of email marketing: to create, secure and nurture relationships.
Email marketing is a must-have for businesses, but that does not mean it is easy to get right.
For example, some of the most popular platforms include:
- Get Response
- Convertkit
- Honeybook
- Constant Contact
- MailChimp
- Here are few tips for maximum success in email marketing:
Here are few tips for maximum success in email marketing:
Start with a plan
There is no right or wrong formula for your first email marketing plan, as long as it answers the following questions:
- Why am I sending emails?
- Who am I sending them to?
- What value can I offer subscribers?
- What are my email marketing goals?
Once you have answered these questions, it’s time to map your customers’ journey. Think of this as mapping out a route for marathon runners; make sure the path is clear of barriers and the signs point the right way. You need to be familiar with the journey your customers take from lead to conversion to anticipate any needs or questions they will have along the way.
Segment your audience
When setting up your email subscription form, consider the information you will need long-term. Name and email address are the traditional fields, but collecting additional demographic data will help you segment your audience into groups based on age, gender, location or another variable.
By segmenting your email list, you can send customized and relevant content your subscribers will likely engage with. After all, proper segmentation can double open rates.
Personalize your messages
Once you have categorized your list by purchase history, interest or other variables, it is time to create content specifically for those in that group.
Maybe something they indicated an interest in has gone on sale, an event happening nearby, or you want to address them by name and recommend something they will love.
Scale your efforts
You have mapped out a plan, organized your list into segments, and created personalized content that drives engagement.
At this point, it is time to take all the tools and tactics that work and scale them to reach more people.
Automated messaging is your go-to tool for ensuring that your content is relevant and fulfilling customers’ needs. By scheduling emails to meet subscribers at each point in their customer journey (which you already mapped out in step #1), you will continue to ensure that your message is timely and helpful.
Plus, automated messages can increase open rates by 70.5%.
Measure your success
You have reached the end of this process, which was not bad at all. The best way to continue improving and refining your email marketing skills is to look at the data and find out what works, what you could do better and what you can live without.
Conclusion
A small business marketing strategy can create a positive return on investment for your business.
These benefits include growing revenue, earning loyal customers, finding new employees, opening second locations and more.
Make marketing a priority for your small business, and you will not be disappointed.