Small Business Marketing: The Ultimate Guide to Find Your Audience and Grow

About 66% of customers expect companies to understand their unique expectations and needs. Marketing automation software for small business can help you to track their customer journey, track interactions and insights based on gathered data. 

 

Marketing Channels 

Following are the business marketing tools that can be used to explore new opportunities and gain leads: 

In the form of readable content, you have articles, blog posts, ebooks, landing pages and white papers. 

Visuals and visual content include infographics, photos, videos, webinars and podcasts.

 

Online and Offline Marketing Activities 

Online marketing activities that can be streamlined using marketing software tools are: 

SEO, Google My Business, remarketing and retargeting, email marketing, social media and influencer marketing, and Search engine marketing or SEM. 

Offline marketing activities are retail spaces, direct mail, and in-person events. 

To build relationships with other businesses, there are business associations, the rotary club and the Chamber of Commerce.

 

How to market your small business?

Before you start with any marketing efforts, you need to outline the following criteria to ensure that your efforts are not all over the place. 

 

 

Audience, Goals and Value Proposition 

Finding out who the ideal customers are can greatly help your marketing. When you know who prefers your products/ services and what traits they share with other customers, you can advertise to that segment of the audience. Be specific if you want to create a tailored marketing strategy. Who are these people, where are they from, where do they live, what are their pain points, how will your products/ services help them better, what are their expectations from you, etc are viable questions you can begin with.

Goals are very crucial because you need something to measure your success against. If you do not have goals, your organisation will branch out in different directions without any means to detect mistakes and learn about how successful the efforts have been. 

Value proposition gives your buyer's a reason to purchase your products/ services. What do you offer that your competitors don't? For example Companies A and B manufacture Parka Jackets. Parka Jackets by company A comes in 6 colours, padded and non-padded and guaranteed early delivery. However, company B manufactures Parka Jackets that are reversible, available in eight colours and padded. Customers who wish to acquire a jacket at a short notice will select company A. But customers who are looking for more colour might incline towards company B. 

 

Framework For Brand Messaging 

Marketing software has its limitations. While it can make your operations more streamlined, it cannot write your brand messaging framework. And you certainly require this as it determines how people will remember your brand when they visit your webpage or make a purchase from you. It should resonate with the audience. The brand messaging framework includes the following:

 

• Brand promise: Setting what the customers expect from your organisation. It should be direct and to the point. 
• Positioning message: What are you offering, what is your target audience, and where do you fit in the marketplace?
• Brand mission: What are your core beliefs, what do you hope to accomplish with your brand and how do you plan to achieve these goals? 
• Brand tone and voice: The best way to communicate with the audience is determined by brand tone and voice. It should work for both the business and the industry you are working in. This can give your brand a personality.

 

Website and SEO

Get yourself a website domain and take your business online. Much of the audience surfs the internet for data and resources. Many of them can stumble onto your business due to PPC. 

Once you have figured out the domain name and hosting, you can start designing the website. There are website builders such as Optimiser Touchpoint to create stunning websites or outsource this work to a web designer. Make sure that these templates fit all devices and include all the brand elements to keep the message consistent. 

If you have a website, you need an SEO strategy. You will need to select relevant keywords and get backlinks from quality websites. You can rank your content on search engine result pages (SERPs). Share your content across multiple platforms to get more people to click on your website. Quality content can generate more audience and establish trust with the leads. 

 

Also Read: The Need For Progressive Web Applications

 

Logo 

A graphic, symbol or stylised text of the business is called a Logo. it can be created by you or by a professional. Either way, it should be used on all platforms, including invoices, e-books, in-organisation communication etc. 

 

Optimiser's Marketing Suite for Small Businesses

If you have a limited marketing budget, you can adopt Optimiser's Marketing software for small business to boost your marketing efforts and unify the sales and marketing departments. Alignment of sales and marketing is extremely vital and big organisations struggle with this process. The suite is equipped with robust automation, AI-enabled analytics with comprehensive reports that come with charts and graphs, email marketing templates as well as A/B testing, and customised customer segmentation. With actionable insights, you can take your business online and grow. Track every campaign and test them with split testing to ensure success. Understand the preferences of your audience with customer segmentation. 

 

Summary 

It is important to note that every software has its limits. They can assist you in growing and managing data as well as tracking customer interactions but you will have to create a foundation for your marketing efforts. CRM software like Optimiser can provide you with detailed statistics to make key decisions and form long relationships with customers.