Marketing is very important to every business’s survival and growth. As a small business owner, you probably have a small business marketing strategy. But, marketing is always changing with time and with increase of competition.
As the business world changes, shouldn’t your small business marketing strategies change, too?
How To Improve Marketing For Your Small Business
Sticking to your current marketing strategy and never adapting nor changing it, will lead to stagnation and negative results. Your competition does never sleep, they will find eventually better ways to market their businesses. The worst part about that, is that your customer will get tired of you. You must follow marketing trends to stay fresh with your customers.
While your basic marketing plan might work right now for your business, there are some suggestions you can do to improve your current Marketing strategy.
1. Learn From Competitors
To improve your marketing strategy and to get more information what is possible, you should spy on your competition. With these Tools you have the ability to check what type of marketing campaign your competition is running. Spying on your competitors can strengthen your position in the marketplace. Find out what they are doing to attract customers. We recommend using this method to observe and implement good campaigns of the competition.
Here is an example: If you see that your competition is running regularly Facebook ads, you should consider get in the game as well. The regular Facebook ads with high engagement rate, indicate that your competitors have success from running the social media ads and that this type of ads is welcomed by your clients. When you implement the same strategy, You could have similar or even better success with your ads.
2. Get Out Of Your Office.
Do your potential customer know you? Do they have a face to a business name? Whom do they think about first, when they face your niche related problem?
These and other questions could help you identify your current position on the market. Customers need to see you! Sometimes, that means you have to go out to where your customers are instead of waiting for them to come to you.
Here is an example again: In our marketing consultancy, we constantly solve problems of our clients. However, to be able to provide value to our client, one of our executives went out with a constructing company and worked with them side by side for a week. After this hard working week, our team gathered enough data. We could increase the efficiency of this company by 30 percent, followed by a revenue increase of 38 percent within next 2 months.
Do you know your client? Do you spend time with him/her?
3. Run Contests And Giveaways
What is one of the best marketing strategies every company must implement?
WOM Marketing or Word-Of-Mouth Marketing.
Running a giveaway or a contest can trigger emotions and can juice the engagement with your company. When you run an interesting Contest, your clients will talk about your company, and within shortest period of time you can receive 15 minutes of fame. Thats the time for doing the marketing work, that could benefit your company.
When running a contest and Giveaways you could attract subscribers to your email list, which could be utilized for future promotion and sales.
This tactic can be implemented by the smallest companies to compete against giants.
4. Get Testimonials
Everybody heart of the biggest eCommerce Giant "Amazon". What makes Amazon so successful? Clients are trusting Amazon. Why? because of the product reviews. Clients are trusting more other people opinions and reviews than the any information provided by companies.
Do you have a testimonials? If so, are they visible to visitors and potential clients?
Before anyone buy something, they often look for reviews that validate their purchase. The more expensive the purchase the more thoroughly they will look for reviews. People want to know that they’re spending money on quality. And, they want to know, your offer is better than from your competition.
With the right system, You can attract more customers by getting reviews from people who have already purchased from you. These reviews should be visible on every social media you use and on your website.
You might have a dedicated testimonials page, or you might let customers review your products.
The right system is the key. Yelp is a great tool. But our customers often complain, that Yelp deletes a lot of positive reviews. Yelp crowls like Google all the websites related to your company. This information is used by the algorithm to determine, if the review is legit or fake. It is designed to protect the users and readers from wrong and fake information.
When you have a system and your clients leave reviews on all social media and on your website, you will not face same problems with deleted reviews.
The topic is very complex, so we try to keep it as simple as possible.
5. Update Social Media
You already know that social media marketing is essential for small businesses. Simply having accounts isn’t enough.
There are proven methods on how to manage Social Media to increase brand awareness, brand loyalty and business growth. Don't expect immediate results. Rome was not build in one day!
Create engaging content and post it during the peak hours to have better reach and more engagement. With consistency, passion and creative work you can grow your client database.
Business owners works often overtime, but it is important to keep your account information updated and accurate. If something about your business changes, your social media profile should change, too. Make sure your website, address, hours, logo, and pictures are all current.
You have to post regularly. Frequent posts keep you in front of customers’ faces. Post about new products, changes, successes and sales, and show your followers what you and your business are doing, and remember to be authentic.