Business owners who want to spread the word about their existence need to popularize their venture in many different ways. The more well-planned ways you include in your marketing plan, the more leads you’re going to generate.
In this article, you’ll read more about some handy and efficient marketing strategies for small business owners.
1) Research Your Audience
Before you start distributing advertising materials through different marketing channels, research your audience and their needs. For example, you won’t address Millennials and X-gens in the same way. Likewise, you’ll apply different strategies to get the attention of people of different gender and social class. For all these reasons, it’s extremely important that you define your customer persona and adapt your marketing strategies to this model.
In the beginning, you can use Google to find out more about other businesses in your niche and their target audience. Also, check out the guide for setting the target audience on Entrepreneur.com.
While you can definitely do one part of this research on your own, you’ll need to contact marketing pros for some more complex analyses.
2) Make Use of Facebook Ads
With more than 2.2 billion users worldwide, Facebook is the most popular marketing channel on a global scale. If you manage to popularize your business on this network, you’ll create a stable pool of loyal customers.
The most effective way to put your business on the Facebook map is to use Facebook Ads. You can adjust them to target your audience on the basis of the age, location, language, and their interests. Also, Facebook Ads target desktop computers and gadgets users. This is extremely important for the SMB-owners who are aiming at a younger audience. The target audience research results that we explained in the first section will be more than useful for this purpose.
Facebook Ads are also a practical marketing device due to the adjustability of their technical parameters. In other words, you can combine your copy with videos, images, and slideshows, as well as canvases and image carousels. What also makes this tool so user-friendly are the metrics that will constantly inform you about the results of your ads.
All these options make Facebook Ads a reasonable simple solution for small business owners to address their online audience.
Check out our tips on working from home in Ireland as well.
3) Get Your Links to Other Websites
The more links that lead to your website appear on other websites, the more people will have a chance to see your website. What’s more, it will improve your rankings in search engine results, as well.
One way to do this is to write resourceful and useful articles that will be published on other websites. The key thing here is that each of these articles contains a link to your homepage, landing pages, or articles on your blog. When a reader clicks on that link, it will send them to your website.
While backlinking is an old online marketing strategy, it’s extremely important to use it in a clever way that won’t penalize you on SERPs. Therefore, forget about filling those articles with more links to your website. Neither Google nor website editors like that. After all, the content is what is important here and it should justify the link, not the other way around.
4) Engage in offline activities
Online marketing is important today, that’s for sure, but business owners shouldn’t underestimate the power of different offline activities. Spreading the word about your business offline can also generate a fair number of leads and connections, especially at business events.
In line with that, make a list of all the business features you want to promote that way and get ready for trade shows and guild conferences.
The promo set for these events should contain different branded items that will catch the eye of the visitors. So, pack various branded items that will speak for your business, like branded stalls, flags, and banners with your logo, as well as promotional giveaways.
It’s also wise to prepare short printed registration forms and keep them at your stalls. When you meet potential customers and partners in person, it’s important to get their emails. You can even organize a prize contest or a raffle that will include everybody who has filled out those forms. Let them know at what time that day you’ll announce the winner so that they gather once more around your stall.
5) Encourage referrals
If your customers are satisfied with your services, they’ll be happy to recommend you to other people. But if you encourage them to speak in your favour, they’ll be even happier.
This encouragement can be done in many different ways. The easiest strategy here is to offer your customers some special discounts, vouchers or freebies for every new customer they bring to your business.
You could also go an extra mile and prepare some additional benefits for the customers who reach a certain number of referrals. Referrals are a win-win situation for every party in this relationship. The existing customers will get special deals for the products/services they’re already using. The new customers won’t waste their time to search for reliable providers. Finally, you’ll generate more leads and revenue.
Conclusion
Small businesses can become big names in their industry if they meet two key demands. Firstly, they need to win their customers’ trust. Secondly, they need to promote their business across different online and offline channels. The strategies presented in this article should make you more popular without spending a fortune on advertising.
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