Marketing is a major responsibility for small businesses. This guide will provide a basic overview of small business marketing.
What can you do if your business is small or new and doesn’t have enough resources to create a marketing plan?
You can accomplish a lot with the resources you already have. This guide will show you how to create a small business marketing strategy without spending too much.
Jayson DeMers CEO of Email Analytics stated, “A business marketing strategy is an assortment of tactics that increase awareness about your business while increasing sales and revenues through new customer acquisition.”
How to improve your marketing strategy for small businesses
To develop your small business marketing strategy, think about your audience.
DeMers stated, “Marketing is essential if you want your target audience to find you.” Your competitors will win all the business if they are marketing, but you are not.
Your audience is there. But they may not know anything about you if your business isn’t out there.
1. Your brand should be unique
A business with a different brand will have a different marketing strategy. When you think about a brand, the first thing you think of is its name. But that’s not all what a brand is. How do you determine your brand?
Jaenke stated, “Developing a brand for your company is the first step in any marketing strategy.” You must first understand why you are in business. You don’t have a branding strategy if people are unable to identify with you or why you do what you do. Create a brand story that explains how and why you got into business. The brand story is just as important as the tone, logo, and typography. It is the glue that binds everything.”
2. Brand awareness is key.
The next step after you have defined your brand is to make sure that people are aware of it. Each person who knows about your brand is a potential client.
Jaenke stated that content is one of the best methods to increase brand awareness. Video, written, and auditory content can highlight the business’ expertise in an industry and provide value to customers without them feeling like they are being sold.
3. Do market research.
Do some market research if you are having difficulty figuring out your audience.
Jaenke stated that market research is essential to determine whether your product or service is viable, how saturated the market, gaps you can fill and the right price point. You can do this by using social listening, especially Twitter and Facebook. Find out the problems faced by others by joining groups. Take a look at forums such as Reddit and Quora to record any questions being asked. Take all these and combine them to find commonalities. These are their common pain points.
4. Create a buyer persona.
A buyer persona is another helpful tool to gain an audience and identify the different audiences you are targeting. Although it may seem absurd to create fake customers with fake hobbies and lives, the more you detail, the better.
Jaenke stated that market research should guide the process. However, this basically means identifying a fictional individual who represents a market segment. You want to be as complete as possible.
