We are often contacted by small businesses that may not have a budget but still have the potential to grow through some very simple small business marketing strategies. These different types of marketing strategies will also prepare businesses for hiring a marketing team in the future as they become more successful. Today we will cover those internet marketing strategies & how one can utilize them to benefit their business.
With the first of our best marketing strategies, we’re going to ensure your business is listed online. In order for anyone to find your small business on the internet, it must first be listed on the internet for people to find. Assuming you’ve already got branding figured out you now need to focus on creating profiles across different platforms with important graphics & information including:
Across the internet are various platforms & directories that can be used to find your business at any given time if it has been properly listed on these tools. We’ll start with the basics that everyone should consider having set up for their business right from the start, which are:
Of course, there are far more directories & platforms out there for use, but you don’t want to be filling out hundreds of profiles so we’re touching on the main ones to get you started. Use your best judgment to consider what other groups you need to join (like WeddingWire.com or TheKnot.com for instance). Remember, no one can find you on the internet if you’re not properly listed on the internet.
In addition to listing your business online, it would be a smart addition if you could ask for your existing & past clients to leave reviews for your business across these various platforms & directories. Word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing & online reviews fall within that category. As far as beginning marketing strategies go, constantly gathering new positive reviews for your business is great no matter where the reviews are posted. We advise you to stay away from paying for Yelp services…we’ll discuss that in another write-up.
This next step in our growth marketing strategies some consider to be the hardest portion of the whole plan. We can confirm this to be true. You’re about to dive into a world of thankless production for, possibly, quite some time. Hardly anyone in the game can tell you that they gained a following immediately after starting out in their journey. With today’s community & viral marketing, it definitely is a possibility, but not a likelihood is all we’re saying.
Most people gain success after months & even years of producing content for their visitors to consume. We know that to be true even with our content here at Bunn Brands. Some content is more popular than others and we try to take note of that fact so that we might produce more useful attention-grabbing content in the future. This game of tug-o-war will go on for some time and whether you go viral and gain a following or you slowly build a following there are some important things that you should keep in mind to help growth in the immediate or future.
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but hopefully, the point is understood that there is quite a lot of work involved in our second marketing strategy. If this seems like too much to you then remember… all we’re talking about doing is trying to write 600+ words per month about or related to your business so search engines can crawl the new page and truly understand what your business is about. Google wants to provide quality search results to consumers, so they will rank you dependent upon your relevancy to the search of the user.
In addition to posting on your blog, you may have noticed that we mentioned sharing those blogs on Social Media. There are multiple strategies for social media marketing, but a key factor in your blog ranking is having social shares, so ensure that you are posting those blogs to all platforms that you may use in your social media marketing strategies.
After nailing down a solid content development & response strategy you should have a decent following as well as a successful working business model for your marketing strategies to build upon. At this point you might consider automating some of your current tasks, but even if you don’t then you might find you have some extra capital to spend on advertising.
The world of advertising can be a money sink-hold, especially in the beginning, so keep that in mind, but it can also be a powerful tool, especially in b2b marketing strategies involving LinkedIn. Whatever marketing budget you develop for your business should be thought of as an investment that will be paid back in time, but likely not in the immediate. Count on this money as an expense at first, but know that it should return a profit and you can analyze data to prove it.
Just like with any other sort of marketing a plan should be created before jumping straight into advertising. Social Media & Search Engines are the two most popular forms of advertising online. Which method you go with could depend on your industry or your goals, but we’ll talk about that another time. For now, we will assume that you want to use both forms of advertisement. In that case, you’ll need to worry about a few factors:
Advertisements seem to work best with specific goals that can be measured to provide proof of the ad’s success. If your goal is to book more appointments, for example, you would create a landing page to discuss all the benefits one could obtain from setting a meeting today, plus you might provide a discount or other incentive for people to call today. Your advertisements would revolve around this goal in all aspects so that when a visitor clicks your ad they find exactly what they were looking for & will book an appointment with you immediately.
The fourth & final of the marketing strategies we’re going to cover is that you’re going to need to develop Objective Key Results (OKRs) that you are aiming to obtain. Then you can measure for success using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to validate the success or failure of your advertisements. Some examples for a brand new business just starting out may include:
Objective Key Results
Key Performance Indicators
Now you know what goals & outcomes you hope to achieve & the measurements you will use to determine the success of your advertisements. Notice that our OKRs leave the timetable open-ended? We don’t know how long it will take to hit these initial goals, but as each month passes we can see how close we are getting and use more data to ascertain the reason why we are or are not meeting our goals. This analysis will provide us with the information we need to determine how to pivot and redirect so that our efforts will be more effective in the future or it will affirm that what we have been doing is working and should be continued.
The following strategies may seem complicated to some and simple to others. Either way, we can guarantee that these methods work wonderfully as we personally see the benefit when following our own advice for ourselves or our clients. To recap we believe in a 4 step method of success here at Bunn Brands and those four steps include:
