Putting up a solid marketing campaign is a hard job, especially when you have a small business. Because you’re already struggling with product management, customer care and employees. This leaves you with less time to think about innovative marketing ideas to implement with small costs.
Marketing is essential for your success, so you need to find smart ways to put your product in front of your audience. You must come up with a consistent message that tells people how your product is different from the competition.
To make the long story short, you need to market your products in order to sell them and grow your small business. So, check these five marketing tips to find effective methods to promote your business efficiently.
1. Build a Marketing Strategy
Any project needs a plan. And marketing your business makes no exception. Having a consistent marketing strategy can help you see the bigger picture, instead of wasting your time with unpredictable marketing efforts.
You get to set clear, measurable goals and to find the most convenient methods to reach these goals without overspending. In the long run, you save money and energy, as you learn to focus your efforts on the things that matter and can help you grow.
As a small business, you need cost-effective marketing techniques to keep and increase your market share. Traditional advertising methods are expensive and, in most cases, you can’t compete with big names in the industry when it comes to paying for TV commercials, print advertising, cold-calling and street panels.
Instead, you should focus on cheaper channels to promote your business. You need an online marketing strategy, to reach a high number of potential clients with minimum costs. With the right tools, you can build an authentic online image for your business, using your website, social media, and emails to communicate directly to your customers.
2. Identify Your Target Audience
Marketing isn’t only about selling. In fact, marketing is less about you and more about your audience. You need to focus your marketing efforts to improve user experience, to get new leads and eventually convert them into clients. Better than that, you should come up with campaigns to improve your customer retention rates. Because you spend way less on keeping customers than on attracting new ones. And, returning customers spend 67 percent more than new customers.
To be able to build a long-term relationship with your public, you need to identify your target audience. Because you can’t craft great marketing messages when you don’t know whom you’re talking to.
Think about your product and the problems it solves. Who’s interested in what you have to sell? Create a buyer persona and put in the center of your strategy. This way, you’ll manage to customize your message and adapt it to communicate efficiently with your public.
Use Google Analytics to get insights about your current public. When you know more about your audience, you can tailor your messages to get the most of each campaign.
3. Use Various Types of Content to Increase Traffic
Content marketing is a major element in your online marketing strategy. It can help you to increase brand awareness, gain trust and, in the end, to become an authority in your niche.
Good content is the easiest way to connect with your audience. If you alternate evergreen content with news and hot topics, you’ll increase traffic to your website, get engagement and boost conversion rates.
In the long run, content marketing has a significant ROI, as your website will rank higher in search results. Besides search engine optimization, you have to invest in high-quality content that is valuable for your readers.
Create informational blog posts and articles, design infographics to show information in an easy-to-read format, or take time to make videos. Podcasts, ebooks, and research/white papers are good methods to promote your business, as well.
Content consumption on social media has increased in the past years. So, make sure your content is shareable on various social networks. This way, you reach large audiences without spending all your budget, which can bring in new leads.
4. Optimize Your Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing remains the most efficient online marketing strategy. Good emails have high conversion rates, as they manage to engage the public at deeper levels.
Make sure you optimize your emails, to get the most out of your efforts:
- Customize messages – use demographics to send emails based on your customers’ buying history, for example
- Keep subject lines short – if you tell everything right from the start, most people won’t even open your email
- Give access to free content – add some valuable information in your emails, to gain trust
- Send emails in the evening – emails sent between 8 PM and midnight have higher open rates
Marketing automation allows you to schedule emails, depending on your purposes and your clients’ habits. It allows you to customize the user experience, with little resources for increased productivity. And you can use for posting on social media, as well.
5. Go Mobile
Three in four internet users own a smartphone. And, 57 percent of all traffic is mobile. Some millennials visit your blog, website and social media while being in your store. Practically, you either go mobile or you can simply forget about increasing traffic to your website.
Furthermore, Google’s algorithms rank higher websites with mobile versions. You need to make sure all your content is available on smaller screens – smartphone and tablet – to get the most out of your online marketing strategy.
These five marketing tips are just the tip of the iceberg. As you work on your current strategy, you’ll learn new methods and innovative techniques to promote your small business. Test your ideas and measure their impact on your results. Use what works, improve what doesn’t and don’t be afraid to change the path if you feel you’re not getting anywhere with your efforts.
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