Telling the public about the product or service that your small business is offering is essential to its success. After all, customers can’t buy from you if they are unaware that you exist. In fact, it is so important that there is a whole field dedicated to it, and this, in a nutshell, is marketing. Of course, you may think that marketing, especially the online variety is something that is super complicated and best left to the big guys. However, if you want to be competitive in today’s marketplace and run your business like a real boss, you will need to know all you can about this subject, something that my post below can help you with.
Do include visual as well as written content.
Firstly, to rock your business marketing like a boss it is vital that you recognise how crucial visual content, as well as the written stuff, is. Yes, when we think of marketing the idea of website content, blog posts and news articles often spring to mind. However, when they say a picture is worth a 1000 words, they are not wrong! In fact, using visually engaging images that are in line with your brand can make your content way more effective in two ways.
Pictures as well as words matter in marketing.
The first is that is can be used to successfully break up, and illustrate points in your written content that you want to emphasise. Secondly, images contribute to how effective your SEO is, therefore they can be just as important as getting the right keyword anchors.
Don’t forget about interactivity.
Also, when it comes to content, it can be helpful for small businesses to stay ahead of the curve. In particular, the trend in this area is going towards providing material that is interactive in nature. What this means is that rather than you presenting information in a static block to potential customers in order to get their attention, instead it is presented in a fun, entertaining, or engaging way that necessitates the person reading it to become engaged in the process.
Some fantastic example of this include brands that have created games and quizzes to get across the essential information that they wish to convey. This type of interactivity is uniquely well suited to any educational brands and products, but can also be expertly tailored to more commercial companies as well.
Do get your SEO right.
SEO is all about getting your content, brand, and products to be seen online, something that is a vital part of any marketing strategy. Unfortunately, this is often the limit of what small business owners know about SEO, as it can seem like a complicated and confusing technical subject to get their head around.
Luckily, there are two options that you can use to solve this issue. The first is to refer directly to an SEO specialist that can offer different types of SEO plans that are suited to your business’ needs and budget. The advantage of this is that you as a small business boss can delegate the technical side of things to someone that has the necessary expertise and knowledge, and then focus on the rest of the tasks in your business that are calling for your attention.
The second option is, of course, to have a go at SEO yourself. Now, to do this effectively, you will need to get up to date with the latest Google standards for SEO and how these affect the content you should be creating. You will also need to think carefully about the keyword anchors you will use, and the placement of different types of content on various platforms. Although, with some hard work, and perseverance you may be able to achieve a reasonable result.
Don’t rule out paid advertising too.
Also, don’t forget that SEO tend to refer to the organic ranking that your website gets when customers search for related terms. However, there is another way to get attention for your business as well, and it’s via paid advertising.
Paid advertising and in particular PPC or pay per click are the search returns shown in bold or in boxes above the organic ones on a search engine page. Usually, the search engine company charges you per click through to your site, hence the name PPC. Of course, these can be hugely effective for short and long-term promotions because they position your business at the very top of the page, and as nearly 93% of all online shopping, activity starts with an internet search it is worth being as noticeable as possible.
Do run more than one strategy simultaneously.
They are many marketing strategies that you can use, but it is crucial to remember that you don’t have to pick just one. In fact, you can minimise the risk of one failing by spreading your bets and running two or three in tandem.
Strategies that you may wish to consider for this includes optimising content for mobile devices, as well as PC, as the vast majority of people use their phone and tablets first.
Then there’s the personalisation of marketing to consider, which is a way of setting up content and adverts to be more specialised to the viewer. Something that can not only reduce the effort involved in marketing but also make it more effective.
Lastly, don’t forget about localisation either, as this is especially important for small businesses. After all, it is most likely that the majority of your sale will come from the area around you, so it makes sense to optimise your marketing to use appeal to this target demographic.
Don’t forget to stay on top of the trends.
Next, to be a boss at small business marketing, it is vital that you stay ahead of the curve wherever possible. What this means is that you will need to be aware of the current trends in online and offline marketing and find ways to include them in your strategy.
For example, a popular trend at the moment is to create infographics that link to your business’s area of expertise. Infographics are usually quantitative data broken down into simple visual forms to make it super easy to understand and digest. In particular, these have a very high share rate and can be super useful in directing business back to your website.
Another trend that small business bosses need to be aware of in marketing is digital in-store signage. This one is unusual in that is not directly online. However, it does make use of new tech to disseminate your message to customers in a compelling way.
Digital signage can be used in-store to make customers aware of limited time promotions, as well as outdoors to mark out your premises from the others. Also because it can easily be programmed, you can change the message as needed which makes it a much more convenient form of signage that traditional posters, banners, and painted signs.
Then there is the trend towards entertaining video in small business marketing, something that many companies do quite successfully by producing informative clips or programmes to embed on their site and also show on Youtube.
Although, it is worth bearing in mind here that there’s a balance to be struck between professionalism and a relaxed and informal vibe that doesn’t include the hard sell. Something that the musical instrument shop in the video below manages to do very well.
Do make sure your website is spot on.
Many of the marketing strategies that are mentioned above are design to funnel potential customer to your website. In fact, it can be helpful to think of your site as the X on the treasure map, or the gold at the end of the rainbow.
What that means is your website must live up to this. Otherwise, you have put in all that effort to lead people there, and then they will quickly lose interest and click away. Clicking away or visitors attrition as it also known is something you need to avoid at all costs, luckily there are some tactics you can use to do this.
Primarily these tactics come under the two heading of UI and UX. UI is all about getting the visual side of things right, so your site is as appealing to your target audience as possible.
UX, on the other hand, is a more in-depth process that is concerned with the what it is like for potential customers to use your site. What this means is that UX is a design process that makes your site as user-friendly as possible, something that can massively reduce visitor attrition and ensure that potential customers are filtered to the right areas in which they can buy or exchange their contact information for content that is of value to them.
Something that then means, even if your site visitors don’t part with any money on their visit, you will still have their details so you can contact them at a later date. This information then allows them to be turned into warms leads that you, like a boss, can leverage into sales.
