If you’re a small business owner and in the process of launching a new business or already have one, having a solid marketing strategy for your brand is a must.
Below we have curated a list of practical tips to help you build and optimize your marketing strategy to meet your customers’ needs.
1. Know your audience
A key mistake is thinking that “anyone” is a potential customer. Knowing your customer will help you avoid blowing up your budget on uninterested individuals.
So, instead of trying to appeal to a wide market, think of targeting your “niches”. A niche means a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service, and this is where you’ll have the most leverage as a small business.
2. Focus on what makes you different
In the business world we call this “Emphasizing your value proposition”. Your value proposition is what differentiates you from others in your sector and encourages your customers that you are the business to use.
3. Determine your brand identity
Having a consistent brand identity, across your digital presence, can help to promote your business and make you look more professional as you work to attract new customers.
4. Stay focused on singular goals and objectives
It is important to know where your customers are. Knowing this can help you focus your marketing strategy and efforts on what works.
If you’re exploring the world of online marketing for the first time, you may be tempted to try different marketing strategies and promote on different channels which may seem very complicated for a beginner.
Instead, identify where the biggest impact will be and where your customers are and focus on that.
5. Build on short-term wins
In your business, you may have one product or service that generate your business the most revenue,
This is what we call the “cash cow” in business. Cash cow is the product or service that generates the most cash to help you use to grow other products. Consider how to continue offering your most popular products, while continuing to engage with customers to grow your business.
6. Double-down on what works
Once you have your marketing strategy ready, your campaigns running, and you’ve experimented with a few activities, pay attention to the data. This can inform you of what’s working and what may not be working.
Set a performance goal around that one key area and focus your resources on the activities and tactics that will achieve that one performance goal.
7. Understand the power of existing customers
Because your existing customers have already made a purchase, they already know, like, and trust you. If you’ve provided a good experience, you’ve given them a reason to do business with you again should the need ever arise.
8. Create a website to own your online presence
Having a professional-looking website can be one of the most important assets for your small business. This is where you can control the message of who you are, what you offer, where you are located, and how a potential customer can get in touch with you.
It is a marketing channel where will always own the content and it has the capability to generate organic traffic, in addition to being a place to send traffic to from advertising and other marketing initiatives. A website can also host your online store to sell products and services.
9. Use email marketing to nurture leads
This online marketing tool is easy, relatively inexpensive to get started, and can be a scalable way to communicate with both new and existing customers, with targeted emails promoting your business.
10. Experiment with photo and video content
More than 50% of consumers are interested to see videos from brands. Additionally, most social media apps, like Facebook and Instagram are embracing more visual layouts. To keep up with these trends, it can be helpful to make a few marketing videos to showcase your products and services.
While marketing your business is a journey, by trying new ideas, seeing what works, and staying close to your customers. Some online marketing activities, like blogging, may take a few months to start kicking in and generating traffic, yet social media posts pay-per-click ads can have immediate effects. If you’re still not sure which direction is the perfect fit for your business, check out more resources and articles in our blog.
