As a small business how do you make sure you stand out from the crowd? There are so many different marketing tactics to consider. How do you know which will work for you?
Here are a few tried and tested marketing tactics that work.
Know your audience
An absolute no brainer! Know who your target market is! Developing a strategy that focuses on your perfect customer means you’ll be able to reach more people who are interested in your product/services.
Top tips for targeting your audience effectively:
- Understand your target market and what drives them
- Create buyer personas & segment your audience accordingly
- Know your niche
- Keep an eye on what your competition is doing
Understand Social
Social media is one of the most popular marketing tactics. Not only can you create paid for ads that target your chosen demographic, you can also ‘post’ on your business’ company page and create free buzz! Just bear in mind, there’s no point being on TikTok if your target audience are on LinkedIn and vice versa.
If you want to advertise but only have a limited budget make use of tools like Facebook Ads. These allow you to really concentrate your efforts (and spend) on specific audiences rather than a more scattergun approach.
Invest in your website
Don’t let your social media page be your only online presence. Create a website that is engaging and user friendly. If you have the time to blog regularly that’s even better (see below). Not only will it keep your visitors coming back it also helps your site’s SEO ranking.
Make sure your website is optimised for google and other search engines. Adding well picked keywords and links to all your website content will help get your site noticed. Improved SEO means you rank higher on Search Engines which in turn should result in more traffic to your website! More traffic to your site should result in more people making contact with you and in a perfect world this results in more conversions!
Blog regularly
Blogging is a great way to attract new customers and build trust with your existing customers. Use your blog to connect with your customers by providing them with helpful and interesting content. A well written and regularly updated blog will help to:
- Increase visibility
- Improve brand awareness
- Increases leads
- Drive engagement & interaction
If you can make your blog approachable and interactive even better. Enabling comments on your post will allow for conversations and you can answer any questions site visitors may have.
Grow your email list
As a marketing tactic, emails are a highly effective way to get your message out to interested parties. And what’s better, is it’s relatively inexpensive.
Encourage people to sign up to your newsletters by:
- Providing special offers and coupons, whitepapers, tips or anything else that helps build a lasting relationship.
- Add a sign-up form on all of your web pages & webforms
- Use your social media to post about new products / services and include links to sign up forms
Team up & Networking
Team up with non-competing businesses and work out a reciprocal referral scheme. If you are happy to refer clients to them, they will be happy to refer to you.
Attend networking events. Effective networking is key, attend groups that are more than just breakfast and work on developing meaningful business relationships.
Outsource it
Of course, if you don’t have the time or resource in-house, outsource your marketing! Outsourcing some or all of your marketing can allow you to focus your time on other areas of your business.
Bringing in an expert to review your current marketing situation and to develop and implement a marketing strategy is often a lot easier than tackling the whole thing yourself!
If you’re thinking about outsourcing your marketing efforts, get in touch