5 Powerful Marketing Strategies for New Small Businesses
There are many marketing practices that small businesses can use to get their information in front of their customers, but this can be confusing and overwhelming, especially when you are first starting out.
We wanted to go over some of the best ROI marketing practices for small businesses to give you an idea of what is available and how to get the best bang for your buck. Making sure you are pursuing the first best thing for your company will make sure you spend your marketing budget wisely. Here are five powerful marketing strategies for new small businesses to implement.
Google My Business Profile
Google My Business is the best first step for any small business to take. This can be a very low cost to have someone like Small Hits manage for you, or you can do it all yourself.
Your Google My Business profile is one of the most beneficial marketing tools you can use. It gives you the ability to put your business on the map, quite literally.
It also gives you the ability to provide pertinent information about your business, such as hours of operation, what products or services you offer, a link to your website, and even posts that showcase your business, products or services, sales and promotions, and so much more.
Your Google My Business page also allows you to deal with some reputation management. This is great since social proof is one of the deciding factors in most people’s research about a business today. When was the last time you made a purchase without even looking at the reviews online?
A Website with Great UX/UI and SEO
One of the most profitable business assets is your website, especially when done correctly. This is the best tool to provide information to your customers when they are looking for you about what you do and what you have to offer.
A website should be made with two main aspects in mind, UX/UI or user experience and user interface. And no, they are not the same thing.
User experience is what the user actually sees when they land on your website. How does it load? What is the speed? What is the user’s experience from the first touch to the last? Does the site ask for information or just provide information without further interaction? How easy is the information found and can the user navigate the site with ease?
The user interface is another main component of your website. This is not only the code but also what colors are used? What fonts are used? How large or small are the graphics? The list goes on and varies greatly from one site to another.
Once you have the basic idea of the site design, it is time to take a look at the site’s layout and search engine optimization factors, such as meta information, wording, image alt text, etc.
Make sure you are following the best practices when implementing your site’s keyword and how you show not only your customers but also the search engines, what you are trying to say.
Google cannot see an image and know what it represents. Instead, you need to follow Google images best practices to give the crawlers the information they need to assess what is visible.
Social Media
Social media is also another great way to attract customers to your small business. Every customer uses different outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Knowing where your customers reside online makes sure that you are not wasting energy trying to get in front of them where they are not.
If you are a B2C company, Facebook is a great place to start. You can post your items to the marketplace, you can advertise directly to your consumer base, and you can talk in real-time to your potential customers.
Twitter can also be a great place for B2B or B2C. This can be a more real-time environment with a lot more activity, but definitely not something to leave off the table. Do have a thick skin when dealing with Twitter.
If you’re looking for CEOs and upper-level management, the best place to do any kind of networking would be LinkedIn. This is primarily a B2B site and doesn’t offer much in the way of B2C, but if you are looking for hiring personnel or reaching out to other businesses, this is definitely the place to be.
Don’t forget about Instagram and TikTok as these are both becoming very valuable to marketers today. The TikTok community is heavily based on sharing information and forming connections. Instagram is very B2C and shares a more personal side of marketing.
Google Ads
Google Ads help you achieve that high ranking when you are still working on your SEO and getting your website to rank. This is the best option when it comes to new websites while you are trying to gain traction and do a buildout.
Doing good keyword research is the first step to ensure you are going after your target market and not wasting your money being too general. There are many steps to getting a Google Ads account setup and making sure you have it optimized. One of the first steps you will need to take is to generate a list of keywords that are related to your business and will provide you with a return on investment.
SEMRush is one of the best places to start looking for your keywords. You want to focus on long-tail keywords with lower difficulty and easier ability to rank. Once you start developing content around ranking keywords, your organic placement online will become better and the need for Google Ads will reduce.
These long-tail keywords are also lower in cost for most cases. The less the competition for the keyword, the lower the bid cost is. Look for keywords that offer a good ROI, but also don’t cost a lot of money to bid on.
Next is to look at demographics. Some businesses only market to specific demographics and using your ad spend on people outside these demographics is a waste of money. If you are a woman’s clothing company, for example, marketing toward men (or those who view themselves as men) will not provide as good of a return. The same goes for a barber who specializes in men’s haircuts.
You can also narrow where your search shows up. If you are a local business that does not sell online, or your service is location-based, make sure to only show your ads to the local area. If you are online and sell state or national wide, start with your local area and then branch out from there if you find that costs go up too high.
Finally, having a compelling copy that attracts people to your ad and in turn, your site will ensure that your money is not wasted. Keep your ads brief, use attractive words, and make sure that the page the user lands on when they click your ad leads them to the correct page. You don’t want an ad to just go to your home page, you want it to go to the page that is most related to their search.
Social Ads
Finally, we want to discuss social media and their advertising networks. Just like social media is used for sending a message to a lot of people where they are is a great way to get your business marketing needs to be fulfilled, sometimes it is difficult to get to the right people when they are not in your network directly. This is where social media advertising comes into play.
Social ads are more able to be narrowed down so that your demographics are more tailored to your business. Just like with Google Ads, some research needs to be done first before you put up your first ad.
There are benefits to social advertising such as the ability to show a photo with the ad, more compelling copy and space to write what you want to show your potential customers, and more detailed information on who your preferred customers are.
Social ads are also typically lower in cost per acquisition than standard Google Ads and PPC campaigns. This makes the ROI much sweeter than old-style advertising. It also means that you can advertise across platforms and focus on where your customers are currently looking. If your customers are on Facebook, then advertising elsewhere wouldn’t be beneficial. Make sure you know where people are before you set up your campaigns.
Conclusion
There is no silver bullet to online marketing, but you always want to focus on what will provide the best return on investment, especially when you are first starting out and budgets are tight. Starting with research, implementing low-cost and free setups where possible will get your business moving online.
Moving on to more expensive systems such as Facebook and Google Ads will make sure that you are prepared for the changes that you will see. Over time, and with content development and other marketing best practices, you can begin to see your site evolve into something new that will take less work to get you noticed.
