Marketing a small business may seem to be a daunting, expensive task. But it doesn’t have to be so. These expert marketing tips specifically for small business owners offer proven strategies you can apply immediately to start reaching out to your customers.
Blog with Expertise
In today’s business world, virtually all forward-thinking companies have adopted blogging. If you have been in business for the last few years, you likely have a blog. This marketing strategy is certainly a major way to use search engine optimization (SEO) and other practices to see your business grow. SEO is important, but a lot of business owners don’t understand that it can harm them if, for example, the links built aren’t clean links.
To see growth and success with SEO, you need not remember the importance of frequency alone, but also quality. Many business blogs fail because they choose frequency over quality. In marketing, content is king.
Mobile Takeover
Mobile technology already has a significant impact on marketing strategies. As of 2017, 95 percent of Americans have mobile devices and almost all of them receive and send text messages. How can you win a chunk of this huge market? Create a well-developed mobile marketing strategy. You can use a wide variety of SMS marketing services to get started.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has several on-target benefits. As a small business owner, you need a marketing tactic that will help you to be as targeted with your marketing efforts and limited resources as possible. PPC can help you to realize this especially when your products and services are location specific. Pay-per-click advertising is a practical way to dip your toe into the online marketing world without putting a lot of your resources at risk. You can target your effort and your dollars to specific customers and control how much you will spend. You only pay for users who click your ads—and as you get more clicks, your ads become more visible online. What’s more, PPC also allows some form of conversion tracking, which ensures that you’ll know how new visitors are scoping out your business.
Get Involved in Your Community
Getting involved at the local level is another budget-conscious business marketing idea. You can do this through volunteering, offering fundraiser nights, hosting networking events, or any other practical ways.
By engaging in these activities, you will achieve a lot within a short time and use limited resources. In the process, you will increase your own brand awareness and provide a valuable networking opportunity that might otherwise never have existed. For the long-term, you increase the odds of other local websites mentioning your company and activities. And this could provide Google with valuable signals to improve the appearance of your business in coveted Google local search results. In the long run, you could gain more long-term customers.
Provide Freemium Services or Advice
Your audience will appreciate it if you give them some valuable services for free. If you don’t have a product or service to give away, you can still offer a few tips. The idea is to ensure your prospects feel some value from your brand. For example, Nu Skin, a reputable international company selling skincare and nutritional products, uses this strategy. If you look at Nu Skin reviews, you will find most customers who feel value from the brand are highly likely to become long-term customers.
The value can be projected in the kind of advice you give. It’s great to offer tips relating to the type of business or service you offer. This helps to boost your image as a professional in that particular field. Think as many different ways you can make your customers lives easier and give them the appropriate support.
About the author
Jamison Hutton is a tech enthusiast and business intelligence consultant. He’s a freelance journalist who loves writing about people’s small business dreams. Jamison resides in Houston, Texas with his wife and son.
Featured image via Unsplash.