Small and medium-sized business owners looking for a way to track ROI and brand awareness need digital marketing.
Not only is digital marketing a must for promoting your products or services, but optimizing your online assets is also critical to the overall success of your business.
For local businesses, it is equally important to have essential and up-to-date information available for potential customers.
If you're a small business owner with little experience in online marketing, this may all sound like a foreign language to you. Fear not, we'll look at what all these words mean and why you should care about them.
In this post, we'll help you build and optimize your marketing strategy using inbound marketing, setting you up to attract new customers and ultimately grow your business .
Marketing strategy for small and medium-sized businesses
Marketing is meant to increase brand awareness and create a portfolio of qualified leads that convert into sales. To do that well, you must have a marketing strategy and that's why these 15 ideas are in your marketing strategy.
As a small or medium-sized business, getting the word out can be a challenge due to lower visibility and lack of resources (such as budget or time).
However, there are key marketing strategies that can help you scale your small or medium-sized business's marketing efforts.
Whether you're struggling with a limited budget, time constraints caused by having a smaller team, or even a lack of direction, a marketing plan and strategy that's appropriate pharmaceutical email list for your business can provide guidance as you scale—and scaling should be your guideline.
Marketing strategies for small and medium-sized businesses
Know your audience.
Emphasize your value proposition.
Stay focused on singular goals and objectives.
Take advantage of short-term plays.
Double down on what works.
Understand the power of existing customers.
Use free promotional tools.
Create a website to own your online presence.
Consider blogging to attract potential customers to your website.
Promote yourself on social media.
Invest in advertising.
Make sure to capture information from web prospects.
Use email marketing to nurture leads.
Manage relationships with a CRM.
Rely on word of mouth as a promotional channel.
This marketing strategy is and are essential to generate awareness and income for your organization:
Know your audience.
A key mistake is thinking that “anyone” is your buyer. Larger companies may appeal to a broad market, but they say “riches are in niches” for a reason. A niche is where you will have the most influence as a small business. And to develop a niche and attract buyers within the niche, you need to understand their pains, problems, trigger events, and priorities.
What drives them to make a purchasing decision? What does it look like if they are successful? Knowing these things will help you create messages that resonate and make a compelling case for your solution.
When developing your marketing strategy, start by thinking about your current customers and who you would like to work with.
Next, create a buyer persona to begin the process of getting inside the head of your ideal customer.
Emphasize your value proposition – essential to your marketing strategy.
If there is no difference between you and your competition, there is no reason for a buyer to be compelled to work with you. Your value proposition is what will set you apart from others in your space and make your prospects decide that you are the vendor they should go to. What do you do better than anyone else in the industry? Conveying this makes a compelling argument.
Stay focused on singular goals and objectives and focus on your marketing strategy.
If you're exploring the world of marketing, you may have noticed that there are thousands of directions you can go. It's tempting to do it all at once and create a complicated machine in the hopes of covering all your bases, and it's easy to take on too much.
Instead, identify where the biggest impact will be. Where is the biggest blind spot in your marketing that is prohibiting your growth? Set a performance goal around that key area and focus your resources on the activities and tactics that will achieve that performance goal. You can expand your efforts or pivot to other initiatives when you have made more progress toward that singular goal with your marketing strategy.
Take advantage of short-term plays in your marketing strategy.
Start with scrappy. As you scale, it’s critical to see ROI sooner. This will give you the momentum and cash flow to invest in bigger projects, long-term projects, and more sustainable growth models.
Tactics that take time to build (like SEO) don't fit well with your core initiatives because you won't see a return soon enough for your liking. If you have enough resources to start there, great, but don't put all your eggs in that basket.
If you have evidence that people are coming to Google with purchasing intent for your particular solution, paid ads may provide you with that short-term ROI.
Double down on what works in your marketing strategy.
Once you have your initiatives up and running and have experimented with a few things, pay attention to the data. This can inform you of what is working. As you scale, it's a good idea to double down on proven methods for generating revenue.
Understanding the power of existing customers is part of your marketing strategy.
A 1990 study by Bain & Company and HBR found that it costs, on average, five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to close an existing one. This means you shouldn’t stop marketing to them once they’ve made a purchase.
Identify your opportunities for repeat purchases, upsells, and cross-sells. Because your existing customers have already made a purchase, they already know, like, and trust you. If you've provided a good experience, you've given them a reason to do business with you again should the need arise.
Even if the need doesn't arise (in cases where it's a one-time purchase with no upselling opportunities), you still need to delight your customers. Word of mouth is a powerful (and free) promotional tool.
Use free promotional tools in your marketing strategy.
Speaking of free promotional tools, it’s important to note that since you’ve committed to a limited goal and scope, there’s no need to inflate your overhead with gadgets. Use free promotional tools whenever possible and only commit to paid tools if you know they will drastically improve existing operations or performance. Here are Zoho CRM Plus and Zoho One with 9+ free apps to get you started.
Create a website to own your online presence.
Having a professional-looking website is one of the most important assets you will create for your small business. This is where you will showcase who you are, what you offer, where you are located, and how a potential customer can get in touch with you.
It's a channel you'll always have (unlike other platforms that may change policies or go in and out of fashion), and it has the ability to drive organic traffic in addition to being a place to send traffic for advertising and other marketing initiatives for your marketing strategy.
Your website isn’t just a brochure either. It has the ability to turn you into a 24/7 salesperson by understanding how to convert traffic and turn them into leads (more on that later).
For one of the best website tools, check out SMF360 CMS.
Consider blogging to attract potential customers to your website critical to your marketing strategy.
Blogging is a great way to generate organic traffic, especially for those prospects who haven't made a purchasing decision yet. Plus, it can establish credibility in your space and position you as a thought leader.
To start a blog, you can use a free or inexpensive website tool to create a free site and use one of their templates. Even if you only post once a week, you'll improve your website's visibility online and help educate your potential customers on why they should trust your business. If you plan to write your posts yourself, check out this beginner's guide to writing.
Once you start writing, you can add a call to action in your posts to get visitors to subscribe to your blog and receive emails. This is a great way to start collecting leads and offer potential customers a way to get information if they aren't ready to buy anything from you yet.
