5 Marketing Tips for Small Businesses
Just because you don’t have a huge budget for marketing your merchandise or local business doesn’t mean you can just watch big companies eat yours alive. Every successful small business owner has had tough times, but they eventually elbowed their way through to the top.
Our first tip has something to do with the fact that 81% of shoppers start their purchase on Google. No, they don’t shop on the search engine. But most online buying process starts with searching for an item, a service, a solution.
If you want to stand a chance on search engine results pages, you have to start optimizing your website for search engines. SEO is an intricate process of structuring your content in such a way that search engines will be able to rank your pages and people will be able to find you easily on the search results. It starts with identifying the right keywords to use and incorporating them in your content. SEO doesn’t give results overnight, and it is an activity you have to keep doing for as long as you want your business to be visible to your target audience.
Keep writing to and for your audience. That’s our second tip. Content is an integral aspect of many forms of digital marketing. It’s an important part of SEO. Social media marketing relies heavily on content. Email marketing also entails sending content to your subscribers and prospects.
Content writing practices remain the same. The key is always to deliver value. Write useful articles. Write funny and inspiring stories. Write for your audience, and don’t let your ego get in the way. Write about your customers or followers. Share their success stories with everyone else. Best of all, keep writing.
Search engines are not the only ways to find brands. Social media offers quite a different way for you to present yourself. The other positive is that you don’t need a lot of technical skills to put your brand out there. Putting up pages on different platforms online is a no-brainer. Managing your social media pages and gathering followers are another thing altogether and entail challenging tasks that yield astonishing results when done correctly and consistently. Being visible on social media isn’t just our third tip. It’s also a necessity. Most of your active customers are on Instagram and Facebook. Be there.
When your marketing budget is slim, you most likely can’t do it on your own. You need the help of people who already have significant following. The fourth tip is one crucial way in increasing your online reach. Influencer marketing is challenging on its own, but once you found influencers in your niche and have them on board, you’re going to see drastic changes, such as significant increase in inbound traffic and conversion.
We’ve presented overviews of different aspects of marketing. Each is a multifaceted activity prone to mistakes. Over the course of your business you’ll realize some approaches work better for your business, for the niche you’re in, and for the kind of market you have. Thus, the last tip is always to monitor. Track your marketing efforts. See which ones are actually increasing brand awareness. See which activity engages your audience. See what actually drives people to not just visit your website but also make the purchase.