Small-Business Marketing Techniques: Expert Tips from ElitebGrowth

1. Social media marketing for small businesses

What do you mean by that?

When we say social media,’ we’re referring to websites and applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where users are encouraged to post updates and other information. Social networking provides your small business a comfortable and conversational approach to interact with your customers, future customers, and the industry. For small businesses, it’s a typical kind of internet marketing. Increasing your company’s visibility through social media may lead to an increase in revenues if done correctly. Spending time with your clients will pay dividends in the long run, so try to set aside a little time each day if you can.

What am I supposed to do?

Decide on the best social media system. Determine which social media platforms your clients and rivals use the most. If you’re selling things, Instagram is an excellent place to start, but if you’re offering a professional service, LinkedIn is the place to start. Recently, Facebook has released various tools to assist small companies in selling their products on the social media giant’s platform.
Establish a goal and make a social media strategy for achieving it. Is your goal more brand recognition, improved customer service, or increased sales? Choose the best social media platform based on the most crucial aim.
Keep tabs on the results of your marketing efforts. You can track your social media activity against your marketing objectives with the help of the free analytics available on any social media site.
Make advantage of applications that allow you to schedule social media posts. Save time by planning and scheduling articles in advance using tools like Tweetdeck, Buffer, and Hootsuite. As a bonus, several of these platforms include social listening capabilities, allowing you to keep track of what customers are saying about your brand, see what they’re saying about other brands in your sector, and reply appropriately
Convey the character of your company’s brand. You and your consumer should have a two-way interaction on social media. Visually innovative, authentic storytelling may help you tell your company’s or brand’s narrative. Pose questions to your consumers, provide them with answers in your content and capitalize on their goodwill toward your company. You might even use competitions and discount codes to reward your most dedicated clients or followers.

2. Newsletters and email marketing

What do you mean by that?

You may stay in touch with your consumers by using email marketing and newsletters. Sending out ads and updates about your services or products is made easier with the help of these programs.

This form of small-business marketing is often used to accomplish the following tasks:

Boost sales
help your customers understand something
Build engagement with your brand

Is there an advantage for my company?

Personalization

Send consumers relevant, personalized communications at the perfect moment. Depending on the amount of data you have access to, you could theoretically personalize the experience for each consumer.

Cost-effective

Give those that are interested in your brand stuff to read. Free or low-cost platforms are accessible, and after a few email templates have been set up, you may send as many emails as desired. You’ll also save money by not having to use the postal service or pay for expensive billboards in high-traffic areas in the hopes that someone will notice your message.

Instant results

Track the success of your email campaigns (as opposed to previous types of marketing where you can only guess). With most programs, you can see immediately how many people have opened or clicked on your email. Customers who bought a product as a result of receiving your email will be counted.

Adaptable

If you have a website, you can modify the tone, messaging, and design of your emails to match your website, and this is a fantastic place to start if you don’t.

What am I supposed to do?

To get started, you’ll need the following items:

CRM platforms (which aren’t as challenging to understand as they seem) or email service providers to send an email, you must first create an email, then upload your contacts. There are a few email marketing services for small businesses that are well worth investigating.
A pre-formatted email message. To send emails, you’ll need at least one, although most ESPs will take care of it for you. Mailchimp, for example, offers a wide range of options so you may customize the look of your emails. Templates like these from Campaign Monitor are responsive, meaning they look good on both desktop and mobile.
Great concepts for new articles. To keep your audience interested, your message must be both recent and relevant. Please don’t send your consumers too many emails; keep it basic. Send a compelling subject line that entices the recipient to open your email, and then follow up with an actionable message, such as an invitation to ‘purchase now’ or ‘learn more. You may also wish to provide a promotional code that customers can save money on your goods and services.
Data. Sending marketing emails won’t work until you have a list of recipients. Maintain compliance with GDPR’s laws and regulations for protecting consumer data, which went into effect in 2018. You must obtain your clients’ explicit consent before sending them emails.

3. A company’s website that utilizes search engine optimization

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is making adjustments to your website to rank highly in search results (like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo). Consider doing this if most of your sales come through your website or if you’d prefer that to be the case.

Although SEO might be perplexing at first, there are several tools available to assist you in understanding it and making the most of the benefits it can provide your company.

What are the advantages of my company?

People use search engines to find answers to a wide range of questions in their daily lives. Using search engines, you may quickly locate reviews of movies you’re considering seeing. When shopping for items or services, your potential consumers are doing the same thing you are.

SEO is ‘free’ marketing since it has no related direct expenditures. Developing an SEO strategy will take time and work on your part.

What am I supposed to do?

A search query can return thousands of pages of results, yet most searchers won’t go past the first few pages of the results. Furthermore, the highest-ranking on page one (also known as position one) will source the most traffic and hits. Position one is where you want to be.

You can choose one of two strategies:

The content, the website’s structure and design, the coding, and the site’s performance all fall under the term “on-page.”
All of the activities that take place outside of your website are considered off-page activities (when another website links to yours)

On-page basics

Ø Keywords – Keywords are the essential words or phrases you want to put on your website, as the name implies. Using the appropriate keywords can assist increase the number of people that visit your site. Find out the keywords you want to focus on using internet tools like keywordtool.io. For keyword research, ask your consumers what they’re looking for or do a search on your own to discover what others are looking for.

Ø Write helpful content – write articles centered on the keywords you’ve chosen. Create textual material first, and then add photos to enhance it. If you have additional money to spend, consider include video or other forms of rich media. Search engines dislike plagiarism. Therefore content must be original. You cannot simply copy and paste material from another source. We’ll get into this in more detail in the section below on content marketing.

Ø Improve the quality of your content:

Incorporate the keyword in short, descriptive URLs
Use 70 characters for the title and 150 characters for the description to come up with a captivating title and description.
Use of headers The H1 tag denotes the post’s title (and should include your keyword)
Link to related web pages on the company’s and other sites
Use ‘alt’ tags to describe your photos for search engine optimization. It would help if you used this tag to describe a picture using a CMS like WordPress since search engines can’t see what’s in it. Install the Yoast SEO plugin to help you optimize your content.

Off-page basics

Create a Google My Business profile to make sure your company is seen. To appear in Google search and Google Maps, you’ll need to create a free company listing with this tool.

Create backlinks – when another website connects to yours; Google considers yours to be more reliable. Backlinks might be obtained by:

Supplying other websites with expert quotations and requesting that they use your website as a source
Looking for places where rivals are listed and asking if you may be featured as well, locating resource sections on websites – just as a partner may have a supplier list, a website may have a resources page, and having a social media presence are all ways to get your name out there. It has no direct impact on SEO, but it is an excellent method to build credibility.

Small-business SEO solutions that work

The performance of your website may be seen in Google Search Console. When seeking to improve your website’s search engine optimization, knowing what keywords people use to discover it may be pretty helpful.

Keyword research, backlink analysis, keyword tracking, and competition analysis are all included in most programs.

4. Using a blog and other forms of content marketing

What is it?

To be successful with content marketing, you must provide valuable material that solves a user’s problem or answer their query. A variety of content formats are possible for this type of material.

This guide’s many other topics are all intertwined with content marketing. It’s beneficial to think of email, SEO, and social media as mediums via which you distribute your information to your target audience (and listeners and viewers).

What are the advantages of my company?

Using blog posts, videos, and podcasts to communicate your company’s distinctive ‘voice’ and expertise (and doing it better than your competitors) can help you attract consumers.

Thinking about content marketing in terms of how it will help you is the wrong approach. Consider the advantages your consumers will receive from your product or service (and potential customers). What problems are you trying to solve with your content?

How do I do it?

Content marketing may be as simple and inexpensive as blogging daily.

Make a plan for frequent posts and stick to it. Be careful to have someone else read your essay before submitting it. Typos, omissions and sloppy research may all harm your credibility.

To get you started, consider these suggestions:

Try to think of the number of times you’ve used Google to look for “how to” questions. What advice do you have for your audience? Dog walkers, for example, might create an essay on how to groom their dogs at home properly. Start by doing some keyword research and writing an article that is easy to read. Reduce the length of your phrases and use only minimal punctuation.

Although some may consider listicles a type of ‘clickbait,’ listicles may be an effective means of conveying information to readers. For example, the dog walking company in the preceding paragraph might create a list of the seven most excellent dog walking routes in the United Kingdom.

Try video and podcasts if your business is a good fit. If a bicycle repair business wanted to provide a video on mending a puncture, they could do so. It takes time and money to develop this sort of content, but it has the potential to bring your company to life for your target audience.

How will people discover your stuff if you don’t promote it? There’s a good chance your topic will rank well in searches or be included in an email newsletter and promoted on social media. Having a strategy in place before you start should make it easier to target your audience.

Look at what’s functioning and whether or not it’s bringing in new customers. Use Google Analytics or social media tools to find out what works and what doesn’t so you can build on your triumphs and get rid of the flops.