Marketing your products and services can be a challenge when it comes to having nothing more than a shoe-string budget. From as big as strategy building and branding to smaller marketing plans like email marketing and social media campaigns, it becomes quite a hassle for small businesses to excel at marketing while focusing on growing their business. Marketing is essential for businesses to grow and flourish in an interesting world. Word of mouth is great, after all, but it’s often not enough on its own. New business entrepreneurs look for marketing tip online right after searching for how to start a new business. Have you done your marketing research? If not, then don’t worry. This article will provide you with effective marketing tip, which will help your business gain more customers and sales.
Online marketing tools for small businesses
| S.No. | Online marketing tools | Link |
| 1 | HubSpot | https://www.hubspot.com |
| 2 | BuzzSumo | https://buzzsumo.com/ |
| 3 | Trello | https://trello.com/ |
| 4 | Google Analytics | https://analytics.google.com |
| 5 | MailChimp | https://mailchimp.com |
| 6 | Canva | https://www.canva.com |
| 7 | Hootsuite | https://hootsuite.com |
| 8 | Buffer | https://buffer.com |
| 9 | Followerwonk | https://moz.com |
| 9 | Proof | http://useproof.com |
Here are 10 Marketing Tips for small businesses:
- Identify your most powerful marketing channels and focus on them
Thanks to social media, there is a huge range of organic and paid online channels that you can use to promote your business. It would be a waste of time to promote your business on all the channels on the internet. Start with posting on various online channels and experiment with different campaigns. For example, you have a small fashion store. It’s ideal to pay more attention to Instagram and local SEO than any other social channel. This way, you can focus on maximizing your outcomes and minimizing your efforts.
- Your content is the biggest advantage
Learn more about your audience and craft content which helps you connect with them. You should focus on creating a unique brand content voice. Make your content educational and entertaining for your audience. Study industry trends and craft new content based on these trends. When your audience resonates with your content, they’ll certainly become your loyal followers. Take help from content on social media channels like Instagram. Facebook and LinkedIn and customize your content for each social channel.
- Optimize Your Website
Optimizing your website with the best and latest SEO tools and techniques is another marketing hack for your small business. Don’t worry if you are new to the concept of SEO. If your website is built on WordPress (like the majority of business websites), you can install the Yoast SEO plugin for free, and it will help to maintain a good rank on search engines. Being visible among the top searches in the search engine is a beneficial marketing hack.
- Build customer relationships through email marketing
Email marketing is much more popular and effective than you thought. It is one of the most effective marketing strategies to stay in touch with your potential customers. Turn your website visitors into your loyal customers by getting them to sign up to your email list. Use website popups and contact forms to collect email addresses of your potential customers. Once you have a huge list of email addresses, you can then invest your time in creating various email campaigns like Welcome mailers, educational content, discount emails, product launch email, and re-engagement campaigns.
- Claim and monitor your reviews
Claim and monitor your reviews on various review platforms like Yelp, Google My Business, Bing Maps, Apple Maps and Industry review websites. Majority of customers prefer reading online reviews before making a purchase decision. Online reviews will help you maintain a good reputation, which will lead to credibility and amongst the audience. Make sure to enter your contact information, add photos and respond to reviews once you claim your online reviews.
- Build a Referral Network
Network with other small businesses. Connect with service providers that are related to your industry, and you could partner with them for referrals. For instance, a graphic designer could have a few printing agencies on hand that they know are great to work with that they can recommend to their clients. The print agency would hopefully do the same for the graphic designer. You can build this referral network by building the relationships first, so there is an element of familiarity and trust between you and your connection.
- Stock up on your business cards
Business cards give you a quick, fun and creative way to exchange information, and they can depict some credibility and professionalism, too. Once you decide to network, you might meet a potential client, vendors, or even employee anywhere, so you want to be prepared. Get yourself some creative yet professional business cards, that you can give out to every person you lay eyes on. The more people find out about your business, the better it is for your business.
- Host Giveaways, Discounts, or Trials
Host various giveaways, discounts or trials on social channels, to get attention from your potential customers. This is a safe-play marketing technique which involves low-risk and high-reward situation for small businesses. A lot of businesses list these giveaways and discounts on the homepage of their website or within the first few emails to grab user’s attention. If you are planning to host a giveaway, don’t forget to mention complete terms and conditions along with the giveaway details.
- Blog Regularly
Get more exposure via organic search engine results with the help of blogging. Start with just one article per month, then increase up to weekly articles as you get more used to the process. You can also ask your employees to write articles for your websites since the variety of perspectives will add more depth to the blog posts.
- Write Thank You Notes
Showing appreciation for your employees, vendors, and customers goes a long way in terms of marketing. Writing thank you notes can make your business more memorable and more likely to be recommended to friends and colleagues.
Summing UpAs a small business, the key to marketing is establishing a reputation by creating quality content. Promoting this content on a few core channels helps in getting the audience’s attention. Being helpful and authentic is essential for small businesses. Feel free to experiment with different marketing campaigns and never miss an opportunity to connect with your audience.
