How do people learn about businesses today? The short answer would probably be online. And while for some it might be news, for most of you probably it isn’t. And if your customers are looking for you online, it can mean only think — your small business marketing should also be online.
So, whether you are a new business or an established one, looking for a way to spice up its marketing and reach wide audiences, from this guide, you will learn about some smart online (and offline) small business marketing tricks you can use to grow your presence.
Create a buying persona
To make sure you are targeting the right people, you need to create a buying. You have probably heard it thousands of times, but you did because it’s true and can save you a lot of time. By knowing who will buy your product, you will know how you need to be selling.
Write down the age, gender, profession, interesting of someone you will sell your products too or your ideal customer and tailor your campaign towards their interest. Developing a business around a buying person is like create tailored clothes. They should feel people’s lifestyle perfectly, becoming an addition to their overall lifestyle.
Know your pitch
While many businesses spend a lot of time on developing programs and expensive small business marketing campaigns, they forget about something as crucial as a pitch. The concept gained a lot of popularity thanks to the startup culture. But it has also entered the world of regular business.
You should market your business all the time and knowing how to do it in a way that captures imaginations and stays in the memory. You are your best brand ambassador who knows your brand better than no one else. But even if you are doing influencer marketing or sending a salesperson to promote your brand, you still need to make sure they know your pitch.
When you and people representing your brand know your pitch well, you also know your company well. It will help you stay focused on what matters.
Become followable
Content is power. While for many, it might feel like a meaningless buzzword, everyone agrees that it dominates the internet, often being the reason some businesses succeed while others miserably fail.
To prove its importance, you do not even need to go far. Just think about the businesses you are subscribed to. Beautiful images, fun videos, creative posts, daily sales, and news are probably the reason you do. You follow them because you do not want to miss out. You want to be part of the conversation, contributing to it in a meaningful way.
So content is king. If you want people to follow you without spending a fortune, leverage the power of social media, and use it as a platform to create cool content that would connect your brand with creative ideas. Develop a content strategy and follow it, trying new things every time.
Present on local events and thematic festivals
Thematic festivals and events often comprise targeted audiences. So, it is often the best time to use your small business marketing to shine.
If you look out, you see that there are thousands of events happening all around you. And most of them are looking for participants. If you can give them what they are looking for, join the event.
You can join the event as a sponsor or a participant. You can create your display or give a speech. If that is not for you, you can go to an industry expo and create a cool stand that no one would ever forget. Everything that helps your name to get across and stay inside of people’s minds is the right way to go about it. Just choose the right one. If you produce dried food and end up appearing on the books conference, it might not give the effect you want… Or maybe it will have an even better effect.”
Make googling your business easy
Another effective small business marketing technique revolves around your brands’ performance in social networks. The sidebar at google or the page with the most reviewed restaurant in the area, also known as Google My Business (GMB), plays an important role in how noticeable is your business. Logically enough, if you are the first page in Google with all the credentials and high ratings, people will trust you more.
It also means you need to take care of your SEO, also known as search engine optimization. If your goal is to make it easy for people to find your business, you should be looking for ways to make finding your brand easier.
Are you advertising?
While the influence of social media is not exactly certain, there is one industry that has considerably enjoyed it and its small businesses. It used to take people years to establish a strong brand with paying customers. You needed to invest thousands and thousands of dollars into your advertising and marketing to make things happen. Now, you can reach the same amount of people with much less.
Google and Facebook have made it easy and accessible dashboards you can to increase your reach. It might take some time to learn how to use the dashboard, but ultimately it will not take long. A simple YouTube video can teach you the basics. And when you learn it, you will have access to the promotional tool that would help you reach a perfectly selected audience.
Relying only on advertisements is probably not the best tactic. But algorithms get better and better at targeting the people who are genuinely interested in your product. That means your ads use will end up in stories and newsfeeds of the people who genuinely want to purchase your products and use your services. And it is a relatively affordable small business marketing tool, leverage.
Track your results and follow up
So, now you have the website, You have set up the ads, created cool content, and started gaining first followers… But now what?
Now, it is the most interesting part — the part you can use to decide and choose directions. When promoting your small business, make the best from your statistics. Google analytics and many other tools allow tracking your social media presence, performing your hashtag, etc. Not using the large amount of data you generate is an opportunity wasted, and we bet you do not want that.
So, set goals and look at the numbers that help you achieve them. Adapt your tactics if you see that you do not achieve your goals and try changing up your content strategies. Make the most out of the information you are getting — most of it is free!
