What do they value in their lives? What are their hobbies and interests? Do they have children? Do they have pets? Start developing your USP by answering the following questions: What do you love most about your products and services? What special skills or knowledge do you have? What makes your customers come to you instead of your competitors? How do your customers benefit by purchasing your products or services? Which aspects do you generally highlight when you describe your business to strangers?
Step 4 Develop your business brand Every business, regardless of size, is likely to need a brand. Step 5 Choose your marketing avenues While there are many available, consider your target audience when you are determining which to use.
Options include: a business website social media blogging brochures and flyers networking events print advertising word of mouth cold calling letter drops. Step 6 Set your goals and budget Marketing goals will help you to define what you want to achieve through your marketing activities. Your marketing budget will need to include elements such as: website development and maintenance search engine optimisation strategy design of branding printing of promotional material business cards, brochures, signage, etc advertising donations and sponsorships employing staff to undertake marketing activities.
Free download Marketing plan template As a general rule of thumb you should spend between three and five percent of your actual or expected annual turnover on marketing. Download the template. Download the how to guide.
Step 7 Nurture your loyal customers Your customers are the key to your success so it is important to look after them and encourage loyalty. Step 8 Monitor and review It is important to regularly monitor and review your marketing activities to determine whether they are achieving the desired outcome, such as increased sales. That's where marketing and branding can help.
Download the guide. Marketing plan template Spreading the word about your business and attracting customers is important for any successful business. This marketing plan template will help you determine how to get your business noticed by the people who need or want your product.
Building trust with consumers, just like any relationship, takes time and effort. You need to prove that your small business is credible, ethical, moral, genuine, and socially responsible. You have to be intentional when forming your marketing messages and communicating with people.
Consider implementing social responsibility practices, like ensuring your products are ethically sourced. Or adopt a noble social cause, such as giving a percentage of your revenue to charity. People will love you for it and choose to buy from you over competitors. Building your reputation through effective marketing will naturally lead to growth and increased revenue for your business. Digital marketing involves promoting your business, educating people, and selling products and services online to a target audience.
You can do this effectively using various channels, including social media, your business website, search engines, email marketing, video, a podcast, or your blog. Content marketing is a strategy that focuses on creating content and distributing it in a way that reaches a specific audience.
The goal, ultimately, is to get people to convert into customers by making a purchase. But to get there, you often need to build trust over time by offering various types of content, like blog articles, video, email, social media posts, webinars, ebooks, or podcast episodes. Content marketing is a long-term strategy.
Each social media platform appeals to different demographics. We usually recommend choosing a couple to focus on to avoid spreading yourself too thin. Just be sure to pick the appropriate platforms for your target audience and niche. To determine whether your marketing strategies are effective, you first need to set goals. Then you need to measure your results over a specific period.
There are two ways to measure your marketing results. One way is through qualitative marketing, and the other is through quantitative marketing. Quantitative marketing is measurable. Think about the number of Facebook likes you have, how many people opened your last email, or how much traffic your website gets monthly. Those are all quantitative measurements. Tracking these types of numbers can show you whether your business is growing over time. Qualitative marketing involves measuring intangible results.
Examples include building credibility and authority online, increasing brand awareness, and creating relationships with potential customers. TikTok was only launched in , but it has already surpassed Twitter , LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Pinterest in active users. Its ease of use in creating compelling videos with special effects makes it a great video marketing platform—and not just for Zillenials.
You can jump right on the platform to provide how-to, tutorial, or behind-the-scenes videos, but you may want to promote your new Tik Tok channel across other networks, as with the example below:. One of the best ways to get a hand up is to offer a hand up to others. Join communities and groups relevant to your business or industry on LinkedIn, Reddit, and Facebook, and offer people good advice and suggestions when they have problems or questions.
Make sure your own profile information points back to your business, of course. This is a great way to build a genuine reputation and form solid connections with people relevant to your work. What goes around generally comes around. Your business can be a part of communities both geographically-based and niche-focused, and influencers are celebrities within your niche. Influencer marketing is a careful strategy, however.
Before reaching out to an influencer, take the time to familiarize with their accounts across all networks; comment on, like, and share their content; and be sure to approach them with a specific ask and something of equal value in exchange. For example, you might offer them a month of free classes in exchange for a review on their blog and mentions on social media. Or you might offer to write a high-quality guest post on their blog that benefits their audience while also supplying a backlink to your site.
Here's an example of an influencer in the automotive niche David Patterson promoting a local auto shop:. And here's an example of an influencer in the home and parenting niche Leticia Barr promoting FabFitFun:. Social media advertising is among the most forward-thinking, highly-utilized, and profitable forms of digital advertising today. More than 3. When done right, paid social promotes your business to a highly targeted audience with these advantages:.
For local businesses , the community is a critical component of their success. Retailers and restaurants understand this implicitly, of course, and even those businesses focused more on the wider world still have a considerable attachment to the place or places in which they operate. That said, let's talk about a few ways to promote your business in your community. For some reason, the idea of pitching your business happenings to the local press feels intimidating, but the truth is, local blogs, newspapers, online publications are always on the hunt for fresh content.
You can also ask to write about an event you are hosting in your community, or invite a local writer to attend for free in exchange for a recap. If you have a little more budget, you may even consider a public relations partner, firm, or app to get your stories published in multiple media sources. If your budget is a little bit lower, you can publish your own press releases through companies like www. These press releases may get picked up by some media outlets and they can also help your search engine optimization by providing links back to your website.
You can learn how to write a great press release here. Partnering with non-competitive businesses that serve the same clientele can be a great way to promote your business in your local network.
Attending local networking events is a great way to increase your presence in your community. This works better for some types of businesses than others. If you provide services directly to other small businesses or consumers, then local networking is going to be far more rewarding than if you sell products online , for example.
Whether online or offline, inexpensive marketing techniques like these can get your business humming with the energy from new customers and clients. And if you do partake in networking I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life, but you should , do not miss out on my nine networking email templates , like the one below:.
Even in a world that is increasingly digital, attending, hosting, or sponsoring events in your community is a great way to promote your business while strengthening your connection with local customers. Leverage the time you put into creating and teaching the class by having a friend take video of you teaching, then put that video on your website and on YouTube.
Despite the dominance of digital media today, sending postcards, flyers, letters, or other types of mail can still be a very effective way to promote your business to nearby customers. The benefit is that if you get it right, promoting your business through the mail can help you get new customers with a very repeatable process. You could also send your loyal customers little gift packages during the holidays to keep them coming back and most likely promoting your business to their friends and family.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, and even television are some other traditional places for paying to promote your business. If you are considering promoting your business through print ads or any of these offline strategies, the key is to make sure you are tracking everything so that you can know the effectiveness. These three promotional strategies are last but definitely least—they're just a bit miscellaneous with regard to the way I grouped the strategies in this post. If you are targeting a national audience and you want to sell your products to retailers, going to a big trade show might make sense.
If you are unsure of how beneficial the trade show will be for you, and you have some time to figure it out, you might consider just attending as a visitor before investing the money in your own booth.
Email marketing has been around for ages, but the strategy has by no means become less effective over time. Email is a popular channel for consumers and businesses alike:. For more tips on using email marketing, check out my post on How to Write Undelete-able Promotional Emails. Good leadership and proper treatment of your employees will naturally turn them into advocates for your business.
Hold brainstorm sessions, encourage employee blog post contributions, host fireside chats, get them involved in local events, run family and friend promotions—value them and they will value the business they work for.
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