Small business marketing is pretty much the same as any other. Of course, you may not have the same freedom with the budget. But there are some ways around this. Yet spend you must! Marketing will help your venture get off the ground, become noticed and attract more customers.
Obviously, no one is born with this knowledge, and it can take planning with short and long-term goals. From using email campaigns to marketing tools and apps, here are some suggestions.
Small Business Marketing Begins with a Blog
It all begins with a blog! If you don’t yet have one, you need to think about setting up a website ASAP. A website is the main gateway between your business and customers. There are many marketing strategies for small businesses, but none compare to the results you can get from a simple blog. Of course, there is a cost. However, pay monthly websites offer excellent value for money when setting up a small blog to attract customers using company info and SEO.
Create Effective Email Campaigns
There are many methods to expand a blog’s effectiveness, such as backlinking, SEO and paid ad campaigns. However, don’t think that a good email is dead! Email campaigns are very effective, and some businesses see a 36:1 return on investment! Here’s how to get started:
- Focus on a purpose for the campaign and create content around it.
- Select products and services you want to promote and offer to customers.
- Create segmented lists for customers most likely to buy specific products.
- Ensure the content for the emails, such as copy and images, is impeccable.
- Automate your campaigns using apps like MailChimp to save time and money.
Emails are effective at acquiring customers and pushing sales. Yet they require focusing on specific products and intimate audience knowledge. Automation can help with mass marketing.
Ensure You Use the Right Ad Strategy
Businesses use many ad strategies. Finding the right one is critical to staying within budget and maximising the ROI. Any ad agency and platform is more than happy to take your money whether you get the results you want or not. It is down to you to figure out the strategy you need. Pay-per-click ads through services such as Google offer a good return and almost immediate results. However, traditional TV and radio ads are also good for local businesses.
Reach Out to Influencers
What’s an influencer? An influencer is an internet or social media personality with lots of followers. They are called influencers because they have a lot of power when it comes to directing their audience. Influencer audiences are pretty loyal and will buy something they promote. They also have a much wider reach than you could ever hope to achieve with an ad. Most influencers are happy to partner with brands and promote products they believe in.
Attract Customers with Promotions
Good old promotions will get customers through the door or clicking through your site. Seasonal deals are effective. Yet limited time deals similar to the way Amazon does business will also help. Promotions typically cost very little and won’t harm your budget or balance if you time them right and maximise sales. However, you will need to understand your audience buying habits and trends for this to work. Google Analytics, Google Trends and platform tools will help.
Leverage Online Reviews
Don’t be afraid of bad reviews. Any genuine review is a good one. Not all customers will be happy with a product or service. That’s just the nature of business. You can leverage bad reviews and turn them into positive interactions that attract customers. What customers do like, however, is engagement. Instead of angrily disagreeing with a review, ask what you can do to resolve the issue and offer compensation. Other customers see this and see that you care.
Small Business Marketing FAQs
Naturally, you will have many questions when it comes to low cost marketing ideas for small businesses. Books have been written! But here are a few of the most common from Google.
What type of marketing is best for small businesses?
There is almost no limit to the type of marketing you can use. However, with budget constraints, you will save money through social media marketing, SEO, and automated email campaigns.
What is the best marketing platform for small businesses?
As a small business, you will benefit from powerful marketing platforms. Some of the most effective include SEMrush for SEO, MailChimp for email and Slack for project management.
How do I start marketing myself?
There is a lot involved when it comes to marketing. Agencies are skilled, but on a budget, you can market yourself with a well-designed website and free branding from Canva and SEO.
Why is marketing hard for small businesses?
There is much more to marketing than a logo and a blog. These are essential. However, a marketing plan requires many resources that SMBs typically don’t have, like a marketing team.
What is the best free advertising platform for small businesses?
There are a few ways you can advertise your small business for free. Platforms like Yelp, Angie’s List and Facebook Business are excellent resources with a large potential audience.
Marketing as a small business can be hard to grasp. There are many common questions around it. The best types of marketing for an SMB include SEO and social media campaigns. A solid site or blog with branding will help, and free platforms like Yelp have a broad existing audience.
Partner with Other Local Businesses
Local businesses should stick together and support each other. With so many multinational corporations these days, it is getting harder and harder for smaller companies to stay in business. However, small ventures supporting each other are having a positive impact in local communities and local supply chains. This is evident with food for example where restaurants are supplied by local artisanal producers, and local customers will support such cooperation.
Get to Know Your Audience
You really can’t run an effective campaign without knowing your audience. Without understanding who you are selling to and their behaviour, you will just waste money. This isn’t optimal when running marketing campaigns on a shoestring! This applies to B2C and B2B strategies too. There are differences when selling between regular consumers and businesses, and they each look for different things. Tailoring to a niche audience makes it easier to sell.
Focus on Short Term Goals
It helps to have a plan of attack when coming up with a marketing strategy. This helps save time and money because you understand what needs to be done. Short-term goals should be your main focus when money is tight. This allows you to yield immediate results for making money, which you can then use to fund the larger campaign. Pay-per-click ads are more effective at achieving quicker marketing goals and can help give your company the early boost it needs.
Develop Long-Term Strategies
Short term goals are necessary and form part of a larger plan. They are a means to an end and can help propel a business forward in the early days. So what about long term marketing goals? Long term marketing strategies take more time to mature but you end up with powerful results. SEO is a perfect example. You should begin using SEO to your advantage as early as possible, starting with your blog. Yet SEO takes a long time to yield results and forms a longer plan.
Use Marketing Tools and Apps
We all use apps all the time. Even as a somewhat average adopter of modern technology, you are probably familiar with how apps work. The average business uses 130 SaaS apps as part of the corporate function! You don’t need that many, but there are some you can use for marketing:
- Learn to use CRM apps such as Zoho, Zendesk and Moosend.
- Run and manage online ads with tools such as AdStafe, AdRoll and WordStream.
- Master social media engagement with tools like Buffer, Hootsuite and BuzzSumo.
- Improve your SEO ranking with tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs and Moz.
- Leverage the creativity of content tools such as Canva, Adobe Spark and Kap.
Managing a small business is challenging and standard apps such as CRM make it much easier. Social media is also a must-have; it costs very little and delivers powerful results. Branding also plays a core role in modern marketing and tools like Canva will help you out.
Free Social Media Small Business Marketing
Social media marketing is something your business needs, no matter the size. The potential audience size is something traditional marketing cannot match. However, the biggest attraction is that you can begin an effective campaign on social sites such as Facebook for free! Of course, you will get the best from the platform with an ad budget. However, it pales in comparison to other mediums, such as TV and radio. You will also connect with the audience.
Summary
A blog is the first thing you need to develop as part of your small business marketing strategy. It also helps to learn what you can about marketing as a small enterprise, as well as SEO and PPC. CRM, branding and ad platforms are powerful. Yet you can start with social media for free.