Small business marketing can be daunting for beginners. That’s why we have compiled our tried and tested tools to market your small business with efficiency, success and confidence.
Before we tackle the world of small business marketing, firstly you need to ask yourself some essential questions about your business:
- What is your unique selling point?
- Who’s your target market/audience?
- Who are your competitors?
- What is your budget?
- How do you market your product or service effectively?
After answering these you may get a clearer picture of what marketing strategies will most effectively fall in line with your core business values.
Keeping the generation of sales and the increase of brand awareness at the forefront of your awareness is key to building a successful marketing strategy.
To take the stress out of the next steps, we have broken down the fundamentals of small business marketing into sections and given our recommended tools! Take a look…
Search Engine Optimisation
So, you’ve invested wisely and built a great website for your business. Now to fully reap the benefits of this investment you need to drive consumer traffic to your site. The main way to do this is through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
SEO is a complex business, but, using a fantastic tool such as SEMrush can make it simple and accessible. An all-in-one digital marketing platform which allows you to research SEO, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), keywords, competitor analysis, social media, public relations and content marketing. Everything you need in a nicely packaged box!
Great analysis means better planning and implementation of your strategy, which can lead to a better ranking over time. This aspect of marketing is essential in generating traffic to your site and ultimately helping you to better achieve your business objectives. Read about why your business should use Google Analytics to get started on tracking your efforts.
Social Media for Small Business Marketing
Social Media sometimes gets a bad rep but in the business world, it’s a fantastic tool for creating brand awareness and building trust with consumers. You might use it personally, but have you checked how Social Media savvy you are? It could be the missing aspect of your small business marketing strategy.
Now you have determined your savviness, you need to devise a social media strategy based on your target audience and brand values. For your business to be a success, your customers need to be aware of you. Creating brand awareness is one of the most key outcomes when using small business marketing.
A great brand awareness campaign can be used to develop a desire for your service or product amongst your target audience. Building this desire is a step in the right direction for increasing sales and growing an organic following online.
The tool we recommend for managing your social media accounts if you are using multiple platforms is Hootsuite. This social media management tool allows you to collate all of your various profiles – be it Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn – in one place. This eases the worry of missing any comments, interactions or mentions from your followers.
Affordable Paid Advertising
Paid Advertising is a key component of taking your small business marketing to the next level. By conducting in-depth research into your target audience’s online habits, you can effectively use affordable paid advertising to boost your content.
Although advertising on multiple platforms will always be more beneficial, for small business marketing this can often blow the budget. So, to get started we recommend concentrating on paid advertising on platforms where you’ll reach most of your target audience. This can allow you to refine your audience targeting and segment audiences according to your preferred demographics. Over and above, it’s a great place to start your advertising efforts.
PPC is another cost-effective tool for small business marketing. We recommend using Google Ads. Google’s huge popularity means it sees tremendous amounts of user traffic. For your website, this means more impressions and clicks to your ads which can lead to sales.
Digital PR
We all know what traditional PR is, but what does it mean in the Digital realm? Well, it’s very similar. The only difference is that you are trying to enhance your online presence through building relationships with other reputable content writers, bloggers and websites. In doing so, you gain press hits and high-quality backlinks – all attributing to greater reach, awareness and search engine ranking.
Depending on your core business values, audience and overall marketing strategy, your Digital PR approach will vary. It may include outreach to fellow bloggers or maybe even to appropriate influencers, but it must start with research.
The tool we recommend for conducting successful Digital PR is Pitchbox. A great outreach automation platform, it allows you to build relationships with targeted marketing and PR opportunities, bloggers and influencers all in one place. It even includes customisable and personalized email templates for efficiency and ease!
Email Marketing
What is email marketing? It’s pretty much what it says on the tin – the use of good old email to promote your product or service. Diving deeper, email marketing helps to develop relationships with potential customers.
Avoiding coming across as spam is key in this arena. When done well, email marketing allows a business to keep customers updated, informed and aware. A great easy and cost-effective way to broaden brand awareness, build consumer trust and ultimately promote sales.
Email marketing can also take advantage of personalization to connect with individual consumers. Offering birthday discounts is just one example of how a company can make a consumer feel appreciated and remembered.
The tried and tested tool we recommend using for email marketing is MailChimp. Allowing you to build unique campaigns this service is key to enhancing your email marketing strategy.
So, there you have it! Our list of tools to get your small business marketing off the ground.
Here at PrimePixels, we offer services that will help you with your small business marketing ideation, strategy, implementation and management. We have a team of digital marketing experts who are eager to get stuck in. Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information.
