Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

In order to succeed as a small business owner, you need a solid marketing plan – but you may not know how to do it. Is it best to stick with your tried-and-true marketing strategies or try something new? In a world where there are dozens of options, how do you select and build a marketing strategy that works for your small business?

Here are the steps to creating and implementing a successful small business marketing plan.

Your Small Business Marketing Budget: Experiment, Evaluate, and Scale

It can be overwhelming to develop a marketing strategy for a small business, especially when it comes to your online marketing options. There are hundreds of articles all claiming to know what is "most effective."

It depends on your business model and your audience to determine your small business's best marketing strategy.

Taking a closer look at six of the best marketing tools for small businesses will help you decide which strategy is right for you.

Email Marketing

In order to connect directly with customers and prospects who have expressed explicit interest in your business, small businesses should use email marketing. Creating a relationship with interested leads can turn them into actual customers, which is one of the most effective strategies. One of the most important assets of a small business owner is their email list, which is made up of email addresses that prospective customers (or leads) and customers provide you. This is why it's crucial to build an email list.

Social Media

Small businesses use social media marketing to reach thousands of customers and prospective customers. But how do you choose which platform is right for you?

Consider which platforms are most active among your customers, and do most of your marketing there. Share informative, helpful content related to your industry rather than just producing content designed to drive sales.

Content Marketing

As part of content marketing, your business should create and share useful, thoughtful content related to your brand or your audience's interests. This content should establish your business as an expert and prove to your customers that you can be trusted. A restaurant, for example, can share tips about takeout food safety or cooking, while a dentist's office may publish guides about flossing your teeth or when to take children to the dentist for the first time.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

Using pay-per-click marketing, your business can be displayed to internet users via search engines like Google or Bing through targeted ads. The ads appear in various locations across the web, including at the top, embedded within content, and in the sidebar. PPC allows you to target customers with terms they're likely to use when looking for the products or services your business offers. PPC is a bit complicated, especially for beginners, but it can be a highly effective strategy for driving both website traffic and foot traffic.

Referral Marketing

In referral marketing, customers are rewarded for recommending your products and services to their friends and families. For example, you may offer a 10 percent discount if they share a link or code with their friends. For small businesses, referral marketing encourages word-of-mouth marketing, which is one of the most trusted and effective marketing strategies.

Event Marketing

Brands promote their business through in-person or digital events, such as classes, conferences, or happy hour events, using event marketing as an experience-based marketing strategy. It is possible to increase sales, build brand awareness, and increase brand trust when connecting with people in person or at events.

Let's talk about how to figure out what marketing strategy will work for your brand now that we've covered some core marketing strategies for small businesses.

Your small business needs a marketing strategy.

The key to developing a successful small business marketing strategy is understanding where your business stands and where you want it to go in the future.

Step 1: Do you know where you stand?

Before you develop or revamp your company's marketing strategy, you should understand its strengths and weaknesses. Write down all the marketing strategies you have tried in the past, including the results and costs. Write down what your current marketing assets are — are you able to generate a large following on Facebook, a successful billboard campaign, or a strong email list? These details will guide your next steps.

Step 2: Identify your ideal target audience

There is a misconception that your current audience is your ideal audience, which isn't always true.

Your product solves a problem, so determine who is most likely to need it. Consider comparing the audience to your current customer base. It may turn out that your current customer base isn't the best audience for your product. You may gain additional insights by conducting market research into who your ideal audience is — and who your target customers are.

Step 3: How much budget and resources are available?

An investment of $100,000 on PPC and a billboard campaign might bring in tons of customers, but it's unlikely to fit into a small business's marketing budget.

Consider what resources you have available, such as a marketing platform, and write down your monthly marketing budget. Include how much you can spend specifically on marketing initiatives and the internal resources you can rely on, such as an email list or an employee with experience in social media marketing.

Step 4: Decide which fruit hangs lowest

It's time to figure out which of the strategies from the first section is most easy to implement now that you know where you stand, who you want to target, and what resources you have available.

It may be best to use referral marketing if you have a strong social media following, a target audience of between 20 and 35, and a low monthly budget. A dedicated fan base can magnify the power of this method without requiring much upfront investment. For example, if you have a strong email list but don't send regular email campaigns, you may want to take an email marketing course.

The next step is to outline your goals. Do you want to increase sales of a specific product, site traffic, or brand awareness? Goals should be specific, such as, "increase sales of X product by 20% in three months.".

Step 5: Put your strategies to the test

Having a new marketing strategy and finding out it isn't as effective as you'd hoped can be frustrating as a small business owner.

Instead of getting frustrated, focus on testing different approaches. Do some research to determine whether your content is relevant and where your target audience is in the buying process if your content isn't driving conversions. Conduct A/B tests to see if email marketing isn't increasing sales-qualified leads (SQL): try different subject lines, reword your call to action (CTA), or send emails at different times of the day.

Grow from small beginnings.

Choosing the right marketing strategy for your small business can make all the difference to the success of your business. Although there are many ways to market your products and services, the strategies above are generally the most effective. Choose a couple of strategies and test them to see which ones are most effective for your business.

Need help building a solid digital marketing strategy for your small business? Visit us @ www.sirkle.com and we’re happy to help.