There are so many small businesses worldwide, and they all share one important thing: they need to tell people about what they do. Without marketing, customers wouldn't know they exist, and business owners would struggle to keep in touch with their customers.
In the world of digital marketing, it means sending out more messages, making more sales, appearing in more places, and handling more tasks, all without extra time, training, or money.
In this post, I'll guide you in creating and improving your small business marketing plan using inbound marketing. This will help you bring in new clients and expand your business.
What Is Small Business Marketing?
Small business marketing means using all the tools you have to tell people about your brand. The goal is to get more customers and sell more. But it's not easy. Marketing can be costly and take up a lot of time. So, it's important to know what works best for your business.
No matter how small your business is, marketing is essential for success. You can't just rely on word of mouth or an occasional ad anymore. Nowadays, small business marketing involves using many platforms and strategies all at once to reach customers.
Why Is Small Business Marketing Important?
Marketing for small businesses is crucial because it lets you reach customers who might not know about your business yet. When you attract new customers through marketing, it not only boosts sales but also builds your brand's reputation and credibility.
By sharing useful content on various platforms, small businesses can connect with new people, interact with them, provide helpful info, and learn which strategies work best for the future.
1. What products or services do you provide?
Let's begin with a simple question: what do you want to promote?
Even if your business offers multiple products, focusing on marketing one product initially tends to yield better results. If you're torn between several options, prioritize the product that you consider to be your company's flagship or the one that aligns most closely with your overall mission and the value you aim to provide to your customers.
In many industries, various companies offer similar products. These products might have slight differences or be nearly identical, serving the same purpose for customers.
By studying the similar products sold by your competitors, you can develop a solid base for your marketing strategy. This strategy will consider the competitive landscape you're operating in, helping you stand out effectively.
Once you've listed the products your offering competes with, it's essential to pinpoint the differences. What sets your product apart from others on the market?
2. Who is your product intended for?
Once you understand the value of what you're offering, the next step is defining your target audience. Why is this step crucial? Well, if you skip defining your audience, you'll encounter two significant issues:
1. Your marketing messages won't resonate strongly enough with any particular group to persuade them to buy your product.
2. You'll waste time and money advertising to people who have no interest in your product.
The truth is, your product is most beneficial to a specific type of person someone who desires the outcome your product provides.
3. How do you plan to promote your business?
Now that you've determined what you want to promote and who your target audience is, the next step is figuring out how.
- How will you spread the word?
- How will you generate interest?
- How will you stand out from competitors?
- How will you convert leads into sales?
If you're someone who likes taking action, this is likely the part of the plan you've been eager for. It outlines the specific actions you'll take to market your business.
While, occasionally, customers might find your business in unexpected ways or might decide to buy your product due to reasons outside your control, intentionally designing the journey you intend for customers to follow will greatly increase the number of people who successfully make their way to your products and choose to purchase them.
Your customer journey plan should have three legs:
- Visibility: Where will your customers first discover your brand or products?
- Engagement: How will your customers then engage with your brand and learn more about your products?
- Close: What will prompt customers to choose to actively purchase your product and how will you complete the sale?
Here are some examples of each of these steps to guide you as you outline your own customer journey:
4. Where do you plan to promote your business?
Choosing which platforms to use for marketing can be challenging for many small business owners. However, the process is becoming easier, thanks to the groundwork laid out with the three W's you've already completed (What, Who, and How).
For instance, if part of your engagement strategy involves educating potential customers through content on your website, then your website becomes one of your primary platforms.
You might wonder about other platforms like Instagram, YouTube, or others. Even if these weren't explicitly mentioned in your customer journey or marketing strategy, you may still need to consider them.
Perhaps you've already established a following on Instagram and want to maintain engagement with those users, using it as a secondary visibility strategy.
Or maybe you have a passion for podcasting, and one of your personal goals is to host a successful podcast.
It's also possible that you've been consistently active on a particular platform (let's say Twitter),even though it hasn't generated many leads. However, since it doesn't demand much time or emotional energy, you're content with continuing it.
If you enjoy using a platform and it's yielding results for you, then definitely continue leveraging it! Just keep in mind that you can justify any platform (and any number of platforms),but you'll likely achieve better results by keeping your platform selection concise.
5. How will you manage your marketing system?
With the main elements of your marketing strategy outlined, it's time to delve into the specifics. How will you implement this plan on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis?
Now that you've selected the platforms for promoting your business, it's essential to consider the content you'll publish on these platforms.
Your choice of content format will likely align with the platforms you've chosen, as each platform favours specific types of content.
If your marketing strategy includes social media platforms, it's crucial to actively engage with these platforms to maximize their potential. Social media success often hinges on the effort you put in, with results showing an exponential relationship to your level of engagement.
Ensuring your website is optimized for Google is vital to make it easily discoverable by potential customers, especially if you intend to leverage your content for visibility and attracting new customers.
To optimize your website for Google, consider these steps:
- Create content focusing on keywords (search terms) you want to rank for.
- Write comprehensive and helpful articles on those topics.
- Configure meta data(title, description, image captions, etc.) to help search engines understand your content.
- Acquire backlinks from other websites, which can boost your site's credibility.
- Ensure your website loads quickly to enhance user experience and improve search engine rankings.
Regularly tracking and analysing your results is crucial for understanding whether your marketing efforts are effective. This information is vital for making informed decisions about how to market your business going forward.
Continuously monitoring what works on your chosen platforms, as well as observing strategies that prove successful for your competitors, keeps you informed and prepared to adapt if your current approaches cease to yield results.
6. Post High-Quality Content
Consistency matters, but quality is key too. If what you share isn't valuable to your audience, they'll just skip over it. So, prioritize quality over quantity. Your audience can spot rushed content easily. That's why it's crucial to put effort into creating valuable content, even if it means posting less frequently.
Conclusion
Ultimately, what counts isn't which marketing strategies are trendy, but rather finding the ones that suit your business best. You might have an amazing product, but if people don't know about it, your business won't reach its full potential. That's why having a solid marketing plan is crucial for the success of your small business.
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