Increasing your small business’s marketing exposure is no easy task whether it is paid, or organic. Every industry and market are different and what works for some businesses may not work for yours. In 2020 you have to find the delicate balance between old-school principles and new-school digital techniques. No matter how you mix up the elements, everything starts with a well-planned marketing strategy. Without that, all the various tools available can suck up a lot of energy and money without producing real results. So here are 10 marketing tips from Website Design Kingston for small businesses anyone can use, starting with the planning first.
1. What’s Your Value Proposition?
Have a solid idea of what you are going to offer to consumers or businesses in terms of a service or product and confirm objectively that it is really wanted by the market. There’s no point in making a business work if nobody wants what you are selling. Your value proposition has to be clear from the start and makes up the foundation of everything else you do. What’s your proposition that the rest of your marketing will be built on? If you don’t know, don’t start on anything else until this question is answered clearly and affirmatively.2. Who’s Your Audience?
Who exactly are going to be the customers you want coming back again and again? This is known as your target market. Their details are referred to as demographics. Look at the customer base you have and who is your biggest revenue accounts. These are your targets. Now, what makes them unique and different from others? That’s their demographics. It could be age, gender, education, personal interest, whatever. Among free marketing tips for business, this is one of the most important to understand.You can also find out more about your customers from them directly. Surveys, idea cards, thank you’s and responses to them, and talking with your customers are all great ways to learn more and more for free. Take advantage of these avenues and jot down notes. The more you know your revenue-generating audience, the better you will be at marketing to them.3. Build Lots of Interesting Content
You’re going to need a digital platform to put the above into action, just like you need a brick and mortar address if you want a physical business. When it comes to digital, however, the most successful ventures are those that build a portfolio of website pages, blogs, videos, and information content that is really interesting for viewers and readers. Nobody has to be a programming geek or webmaster genius to get started. There are lots of plug-and-play tools available through which you can build a website (see Wix.com), a blog (see WordPress.com), a social media page (see LinkedIn or Facebook.com), and a marketing push channel (see MailChimp.com). Just remember, you will need to maintain a steady stream of new content. One website page or blog post is not enough. You have to maintain a steady stream of material to keep things interesting and draw traffic.4. SEO The World
And, as you build your content through various channels, make a point to load it carefully with specific words and links to your business. This is known as search engine optimization (SEO). Doing so will make your content easier to find, track, and produce in search engines, which are the primary way people find things on the Internet. Your goal, of course, is to be one of the top sources listed when someone does a search for your product or service.5. Use Local Search Actively
Local search or Local SEO is one of the most powerful Internet results for small businesses. Almost 50 percent of users looking for something with a mobile device will visit that business and buy if they make a connection that day. So, you want to make sure your SEO is also geographically connected, showing people where your business can be found.6. Get Reviewed
Think online reviews are a waste of time? Think again. People judge a service or product by what others say about it in their experiences and that can be a direct impact on a small business’s revenue. Ask your existing customers to post 5-Star Google Reviews if they’re happy with your service or product on sites like Yelp, Google, TripAdvisor, and similar. Then monitor those same sites and respond if someone raises a concern. Consumers are more likely to engage with a business that actively shows it cares about reviews than one that is oblivious or callous to them. Other review sites to pay attention to as well include Bing Maps, industry review sites, and Apple Maps.7. Online Analytics
Among the top 10 marketing tips, this might be the most technical part of small business marketing today, but it’s worth the trouble to learn. Fortunately, Google provides most of the tools, and once learned, you just need to identify the terms to analyze and then read the reports. The benefit is that analytics tells you what people are searching for. You then tailor your online content to answer their questions and meet the needs. Tailor more and more to the highest needs, and your presence online gets more and more traffic. Ideally, that in turn means more activity and revenue.8. Targeted PPC & Social Media Advertising Campaigns
PPC, or pay per click, is an online advertising campaign approach that uses small ads or pop-up ads to convince someone to go to your website or social media. It is highly effective and triggered by what people search for and what sites they go to. PPC ads are incredibly successful at creating new traffic, but your business needs to be ready for the flow of new contacts that are generated as well. If you want your business to get known though, this is a great way to get on the radar.9. Engage with Local Community
Your local community is made up of consumers, industry peers, partner industries, government, and customers. All of these parties involve some kind of interaction with your small business. So, your marketing outreach should be maintaining contact and ongoing communication with all of them. How? Much of it involves seeing the connections between the parties that benefit you. Your local chamber of commerce is a great way to interact with local government and other businesses in your area. By connecting with other businesses, you can set up referral relationships, sending each other customers by reference and mutual business generation. By staying connected with your customers, they can give your reference to other consumers. By staying involved in local consumer information points, you can build brand and company awareness that people connect with solving a need in the future. But none of this happens if you stay unknown. So, get out there and get connected with every level possible.10. Get Active on Social Media
Think of social media as digital real estate. It’s mostly free to claim, but if you don’t do so, someone else will take it from you. At a minimum, your business should have a presence in each account channel with minimal contact info on how to reach your business. However, ideally, you’re using these channels to push your business and value to consumers and your community. It’s a very low-cost way to run a PR campaign on an ongoing basis, and very effective as well given how much reach these platforms have. The trick is to be willing to engage and respond. Social media works best when it is interactive and your business is working with commenters regularly. Worst of all, however, is ignoring it entirely and having no presence at all.At WDK we understand that as a small business owner you may not have the time, money, or access to resources that we do. That is why we offer complete marketing solutions that allow you to focus on running your day-to-day business and leave everything else to our trained professionals. Contact Us today to schedule a free 1-hour virtual discovery meeting.
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