Starting a new business offers you exciting opportunities to reach your professional goals in an industry that you enjoy. However, small business marketing is essential as you search for new customers and let people know about your business.
As you look for ways to build your customer list, high-quality online marketing campaigns can bring you these initial buyers. With over 2 billion online shoppers in 2020, creating a powerful presence can help you build your business. We'll explore some key strategies that you can incorporate to help you grow your business.
5 Small Business Marketing Strategies
Online marketing can build your business in a few ways. A powerful presence online can enhance your visibility to customers. When customers look for businesses in your industry, they'll be more likely to find your company. This enhances brand awareness. Digital marketing can also help get your name in front of potential customers, enticing them to learn more about your business.
However, you can also use the internet to learn more about customers themselves, including how they interact with you, with each other, and with other brands in your industry. This can enhance your marketing efforts moving forward.
Below are five key areas where you should focus your marketing efforts.
Social Media
Whether you're marketing a startup or have a large business, make sure you have profiles across multiple social media platforms. Social media can be an excellent marketing tool for businesses to showcase their products or services and their expertise. However, it's important to know which platforms are best for certain marketing efforts.
For example, a company in the business-to-business (B2B) sector may want to have a stronger presence on LinkedIn. This professional networking platform can allow them to connect with potential buyers from other businesses.
Other platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, may be more casual. People appreciate reading content and sharing images that interest them. This type of social media presents a good way to build a community within your industry. Engage with people appreciative of your work and use the conversations as an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise.
As you engage with customers, track the type of content that interests them, the questions they ask, and the issues that seem to matter most to them. This can help you build stronger engagement with your target customers. You'll have a better understanding of what to post to keep your audience coming back.
Email Marketing
Email marketing helps you stay connected with potential customers so that you can continue to nurture them through making a purchase. Customers can join your email list in a variety of ways. You might offer them the option of registering to receive some sort of gated item, such as a whitepaper or special newsletter. As you build your list of subscribers, send out emails that encourage them to remain engaged with your brand.
You can also send emails with information that might appeal to them based on their buyer's journey. As they get closer to making a purchase, you can let them know about deals and special offers you have that they can take advantage of.
Small business owners also find automation helpful. Email automation allows you to design emails that go automatically to customers when they trigger particular events. For example, if someone visits your pricing page, you can have it automatically trigger an email.
The key to successful email marketing lies in sending potential customers emails they'll find helpful or interesting. Carefully track the types of emails that your customers open and their behavior after reading. This will help you gain a better understanding of what they want to read.
SEO and Content Marketing
As you build your website and begin producing content, use search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing to increase your visibility. SEO works to understand how search engines identify content and line it up with queries that people make on search engines. When you produce high-quality content that aligns well with people's search queries, you increase how often your page appears on the search engine results pages (SERPs). You can also improve your rankings or how high your page appears in the results.
To help you increase your website traffic, from the time you launch your new business, focus on understanding what your target audience searches for online and then produce high-quality content that addresses their interests and concerns. Marketers can increase lead generation by producing content that keeps people on their site and encourages them to investigate their products or services.
Your content marketing can involve strategies like blogging to help you regularly produce fresh content customers will find helpful. You should also keep key SEO practices in mind, including:
- A website that is easy to read, meaning the text and images are not too crowded
- Using high-quality images to encourage people to engage
- Using lists and bullets that are easy for people to read and share
- A variety of types of content, including videos and infographics
- Material that helps to bolster your identity as a leader in the field, such as whitepapers and research results
As you incorporate these marketing tactics, you can track your results through Google Analytics. This will allow you to monitor your website traffic and how people behave as they browse your site. You can also continue to help your search engine results with paid search marketing, which we'll continue to discuss in the next section.
PPC Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows you to further build your presence on the SERPs. You can use paid search to nurture brand recognition and visibility. With paid ads, you can create marketing campaigns that get your website up in front of users looking for particular keywords. For example, if you have a keyword that would benefit your business, but you struggle to rank for it, you can create a campaign that will catapult your website to the top of the SERPs.
Similarly, if you want to promote a new product, you can create a paid search campaign to help customers discover it right away, rather than waiting for organic search to rank your website highly. You want to pair each paid ad with a landing page that addresses the needs of the searcher and encourages them to engage further with your site.
Google AdWords lets you determine how you want to spend your marketing budget, including setting the amount you'd be willing to pay per click on your ad. Your bid then contributes to how likely your ad is to appear. Google looks at a few traits, including the quality of your ad and your bid compared to others who want to appear for the same keyword when ranking websites.
Business owners should also consider the value of incorporating paid social media marketing into their overall paid strategy. Facebook Ads allows you to target people based on particular demographics. For example, you can create ads for people in particular age ranges, who live in certain regions, or who list particular interests on their profiles.
As with other types of marketing, you can track your marketing efforts with paid marketing and gauge your success. This helps you see which ads your customers respond to best.
Local Search Marketing
For businesses that target a particular local population, they should dedicate efforts toward local search marketing. Local businesses can attract customers in their area.
One of the biggest parts of local search marketing is Google My Business. Claim your business on the platform so that you can add quality images of your business, fill out the profile so that customers know important information about the business — such as your hours and phone number — and connect it to your websites. Claiming this profile will allow you to get your business displayed on Google Maps so that customers can find your physical location.
To make your profile even stronger, try to cultivate reviews on Google My Business and other popular review sites, such as Yelp. Let satisfied customers know their reviews are always appreciated.
Tying Your Marketing In With Your Sales Strategies
As you build your marketing strategy, don't forget to work closely with your sales strategy. As qualified leads engage on your website, social media profiles, or through email, hand their information over to a salesperson who has a firm understanding of what this prospect is interested in learning about. As your business grows, you can incorporate customer relationship management (CRM) software that will help you keep track of prospective and existing customers.
Once customers make a purchase, dedicate time to cultivating referrals. Referrals come from satisfied customers, so focus on building a superior customer experience. You can consider creating a referral program, where customers get discounts or other bonuses for their word-of-mouth recommendations.
Succeed With Skynova
Marketing your small business can help take your business further. As you bring in more customers, though, you may have to deal with more paperwork. Don't let bookkeeping impede on achieving business success. See how Skynova's accounting software can help you track your revenue and expenses.
With Skynova, small business accounting has never been more straightforward.
Notice to the Reader
The content within this article is a general guide for marketing and may not apply to your specific situation. Always consult with a professional to ensure you're meeting marketing standards.