The Ultimate Guide To Small Business Marketing
Marketing a small business can be tricky for its founder(s). Although they have a strong USP and are ready to provide a great service, without the implementation of marketing ideas, business stagnates fast. Luckily for the small business owner, there are many articles out there to help them out.
But wait a minute. The first thing a fledgling business owner will realise when browsing these articles, is that they suggest many things, while failing to zero in on the most important tips. If all ideas are followed to a tee, a business owner finds themselves spreading their resources thinly. In this article, we will give you some of the top small business marketing tips that the founder of a small business can use to make the most impactful presence, while making efficient use of time, resources and money.
Conveniently enough, a small business can market themselves with three indispensable tools; a website, good branding, and one effective social media account, and setting up a website should be a business’s priority, because after all, this will become the headquarters for the business. The business owners own that site. Social media platforms are great for engagement, but a fledgling business must always remember that their presence on a particular social media platform is nothing more than an account. Ergo, the founder of said business does not make the rules. However, on their own website, what they say goes.
Also, a website with a user-friendly interface, and effective branding (more on that shortly) is affirming for its customers and clients. Its legitimacy is trusted. When a person is browsing the web for a company to work with, the one they choose will be the easiest to use, therefore, a small business’s website should be simple. Figuring out the user interface, domain name and all of the other technicalities involved in setting up a website is a large task, but is the most important presence for your business. Now, let’s discuss another.
The most notorious area where not only guides, but colleagues, will advise on cornering every available market, is on social media. So much stress is put on the importance of creating accounts on every available platform, only to tell small business owners to upload the bare minimum of a logo and some contact information to each said platform. This leaves a lot to be desired.
A social media platform with nothing for a business’s clients, customers or audience to sink their teeth into, except for the business’s contact information, is a negligible force. A feeble social media presence can be as useful as no presence at all. Any degree of marketing is more successful when a product is on offer, is it now? With this in mind, why would a social media account that is practically empty be any use in terms of marketing value? A small business owner is better advised to look at the social media options and decide which ones are right for their business.
Could TikTok and Facebook suit their purposes, or is Twitter and Instagram a more appropriate combination? It all depends on the function of the business and the needs of its clients. If a particular social media platform doesn’t inspire ideas for your digital marketing strategy, let it go. Pick one that you can identify with and fill it with creative videos, artwork and pieces that exhibit your digital marketing stratagem, whichever the appropriate path is. A small amount of pages, with a large presence, is much more appealing to potential customers and clients, because it has the value of engagement.
The number one asset for small business marketing is branding, and the first step for this is using a logo effectively. Having a simple, identifiable header on your website is vital, and a business owner should couple this with a user-friendly interface.
Psychologically, people are 50% more likely to remember what they see, and this likelihood is heightened even further when what they see is compact, identifiable and smooth on the eye, and furthermore, they are more likely to return to a memorable site. This is not necessarily a complicated process. Does your logo have to be complex, high tech and packed with psychological trickery? Absolutely not. The most iconic branding is also the simplest. The logo of the UK phone company Orange, for instance, is the word ‘orange’ resting at the bottom of a box filled in with the colour orange.
Yes, the creativity there is astounding, and it need not be more complex than this. A simple, memorable logo is the key to good branding, and if a small business’s presence is memorable, their platforms are much more likely to generate interest.
There we have it. The three most important areas of focus. If a business focuses heavily on these they will be in a strong position to make ground for themselves. But let’s take this one step further and look at one final asset that will be in place once these three platforms are solidified.
To learn how to do marketing for a small business can be daunting, even as a business owner goes forth with a strong work ethic, and so it is equally important that as they develop customers, make connections with clients, that they take note of their analytics. What is useful in terms of digital marketing advice for small businesses, is that over the past decade, marketing has crossed an epoch, with various digital insights available to a small business owner, and one of these is Google Analytics, which can help a great deal with how a small business owner steers their marketing.
For example, a business owner can discover that their audience is predominantly male through this tool, providing them with valuable insight and they should advertise their product, and arrange their house style appropriately to information such as this, and they should always use it for their own benefit, to optimize the engagement of their client/customer base and forge an effective independent business.
