Marketing tips to get started
Running a small business can be a tough and time-consuming job. There barely seems enough time for the day-to-day stuff, let alone trying to expand. So how do you go about attracting new customers and growing your business?
Strategically planning your marketing can help you get the best return on your marketing spend and your time. Keep it simple and achievable.
A good marketing plan should:
- Set out what your marketing goals are
- Focus on attracting new customers and retaining those you already have
- Plan the tools and channels you’ll use to achieve your goals
- Allocate a budget to pursue your initiatives
Here are six small business marketing tips to give you a competitive edge.
1. Align your marketing with your vision
If you don’t already have one, create a vision for your business. Having a vision statement will give your marketing a clear direction. Set an agenda to achieve. Focus on the success of your business. Infuse it with passion and dream big.
2. Know your customer
Connecting with your optimal customer will maximise your effort and budget of your marketing campaigns. So how do you discover who your customers really are? How do you know what’s important to them? What’s relevant?
You do this by creating customer personas. A customer persona helps you to define your ideal customer in terms of demographics, behaviours and interests. And the good news is they can be fun to create. Done well, customer personas give you great insight into who is and could be interacting with your business. Personas can be used to segment your list and to personalise your marketing messages.
3. Know your competitors
Third of our marketing tips: look at your competitors. Gathering information about your competitors will help you to identify potential opportunities for your own business. Start with companies you know are doing well and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Study their sales funnel. Test their ads and their landing pages to evaluate how you can model your strategy on their success.
4. Clean your data
Your database can be your most effective marketing resource. But it’s only an asset if it’s up-to-date and useable. Successful marketing relies on decisions driven by your data and if your data is inaccurate, your marketing decisions will be too. To ensure your marketing strategy is as targeted as possible, the quality of your data is paramount.
5. Adopt a multichannel approach
You need to develop wide-ranging marketing tactics to give your brand a competitive edge. You’ll need to reach your customers across a mix of channels; from social media to email, from content marketing to search engine optimisation (SEO). Customers no longer make decisions based on seeing one ad on a single platform.
Each marketing message you employ needs to foster each step of your customer’s journey. For example, a customer that needs nurturing will require a different message than someone ready to buy. Customers pass through a purchasing funnel to get as far as conversion: Awareness. Interest. Consideration. Purchase and finally, Loyalty.
6. Connect with content marketing
Last of our marketing tips: start a conversation. Often customers want to do more than just make a purchase from you. They want to connect and engage with your brand. This is where content marketing comes in.
Content marketing includes blog posts, videos and regular social media updates to attract an audience and build a following. Content marketing is about adding value to your customer’s journey. It’s about generating genuine interest in your products and services. It’s not just sell, sell, sell.
Keep your content on target, authentic and relevant to your customer. Aim your content at your customer and not search engines. Write with honesty and integrity to build trust and authority. User experience is the number one ranking factor in Google, so create and share quality content that’s easy for the user to find and they’ll want to engage with.
The important thing: make a start
This sounds like a lot of things to think about and more doesn’t it? The best marketing tips is to make a start. Don’t wait, put aside some time to create a marketing strategy and put it into action. You don’t need to do it all at once. Start with just one of these areas; review your results then refine your actions. When you’re ready, move on to include another – incremental improvement over time will deliver long-term results.
Or talk to us about how we can help. Let’s start something new. Together.
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