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As a new business owner, you suddenly feel like no amount of work is enough and you should’ve had everything done yesterday. Check out these marketing tips for small businesses to focus your attention to the right things!
You Don’t Need to Be a Marketing Professional
Running your own business is no easy task. You have to:
- manage your time
- budget
- possible employees
- treat your customers well
- offer a high-quality product or service
When you’re just starting out, you’ll also need to juggle multiple roles. You’re the CEO, COO, CFO and assistant to all those roles.
Doing Digital Marketing Can Feel Overwhelming
Expecting customers to fly in isn’t the most effective business or marketing strategy.
You need to reel new customers in using your intelligence and creativity. You’ll need to take on the role of chief marketing officer as well.
As a small business owner, you can’t afford to take big risks or make huge investments into paid marketing campaigns or content creation.
Having a fixed marketing strategy might not be the best idea at an early stage. It’s probably better to go with the flow and see what works and what doesn’t.
However, there are still some rules to follow regardless of your overall marketing strategy. Here are 3 marketing tips for small businesses to follow to avoid wasting your marketing efforts.
1. Know Your Audience
First of all, you need to know your target audience.
Not figuring this out early on is the biggest mistake you can make. Not defining your ideal customer profile(s) means you’ll target the wrong people with the wrong type of message. This leads to time, money and effort lost.
Knowing your audience makes it easier for you to figure out what kind of content or messages your customers want. This doesn’t mean just knowing how old your customers are or where they live.
Demographics to Keep an Eye Out for
Try to walk a mile in your customers’ shoes:
- How and where they live
- Typical behavior in their day-to-day lives,
- What they are interested in
- What kinds of things they value, and
- Anything else you deem relevant
The more you know about your customers, the easier it is to relate to them and convince them to purchase your product or service.
Identifying Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
How exactly do you go about figuring out what your average customer is like?
First and foremost, you need to conduct some market research. This may seem scary, especially if you don’t know much about advertising. There’s no need to fret, as there’s an enormous amount of tools that will help you do your homework.
Some of these are even free! And if you have money to spare, there are companies that can do the work for you.
Use Social Media
Social media is a godsend for anyone who wants to get the word out about their product. By monitoring social media, you can estimate the success of your marketing strategy.
In addition to this, you’ll have access to all the information you need in order to track current trends in your industry, allowing you to essentially tap into your customers’ minds.
Furthermore, you can use online surveys or polls on your social media pages to get additional data on your customers.
If you want a more detailed, qualitative approach, you can simply interview your buyers in person. Of course, this is a very time-consuming process. Therefore, your sample size will be significantly smaller than with an online poll.
However, the information you get could be infinitely more valuable.
2. Let Others Do the Work for You: Use Social Proof
Creating entertaining and informative posts on your social media pages will definitely boost your post engagement.
However, there is only so much you can do on your own. A lot of the times, it’s best to let your customers do the advertising for you. It can be something as simple as creating a hashtag and launching a user generated content campaign.
Or who do you think is better suited to tell about your product: Your customer who is extremely happy with your product or service, or you?
You might know all the tips and tricks on the best use, but the real proof is in the pudding. In other words, how and why actual users use the product or service.
3. It’s a Numbers Game
Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see an increase in revenue from the get-go.
A large part of marketing is not convincing someone to buy a product, but simply making them aware of a brand. Over time, as they bump into your brand again and again, they start to trust you as a business.
Eventually, they might purchase a product or service.
But even if we’re talking about your current customers, the majority of your advertisements will not directly lead to purchases.
Only a small percentage of people who see your advertisement will be interested, and of the interested ones, only a small percentage will actually buy your product. If you haven’t already, you should educate yourself on the basics of conversion rates.
It’s important to just keep working.
Keep sending those e-mails (e-mails have one of the highest conversion rates – according to the Data & Marketing Association, businesses on average make $44 for every dollar spent on e-mail marketing).
Keep printing those business cards and handing them out.
Keep engaging with your customers. Of course, you should always keep in mind that, despite marketing being a numbers game, the quality of your advertising and promotional campaigns is an important factor.
When sending e-mails, think of some eye-catching subject lines. When you are making business cards, make them appealing to the eye with interesting designs and color schemes.
Whichever way you choose to proceed, always remember that it takes a lot of effort and a lot of time to convince someone to purchase your product.
Closing Words
These are only some of the most important marketing tips for small business owners.
You can check out other posts on our blog for more ideas on how to promote your business. It might also be a good idea to implement a testimonial generator for gathering authentic testimonials!
