Are you on a tight marketing budget or starting up your first business? Do you have limited time and resources to spend on marketing? As a business owner or entrepreneur, we’re often expected to be an expert at everything from marketing to accounting, web hosting to customer service while still fulfilling the needs of our customers.
Luckily, there is a world of digital tools and strategies that reward small B2B and B2C enterprises focused on serving their customers with an excellent product, experience, or service. To expand on this, I’ve put together seven tried-and-tested marketing strategies, including resources and tips that I’ve used myself, to help small businesses market on a budget.
In this article:
Learn how your customers behave
Communicate like a boss
Customer (service) is king
Content is key
Get friendly with your niche markets
Revisit and revamp
Don’t be afraid to spend - where it matters
Strategies for small businesses
Learn how your customers behave
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” - Benjamin Franklin
We’ve found that looking at analytics is the best way to understand how our customers behave and what they’re looking for. The numbers don’t lie, we just need to know how to read them. Google analytics, keyword searches, click-through rates and ROI (return on investment) provide real information about how your customers behave.
Try these:
- Review your Google analytics to learn how your customers are finding your website and how they behave when they are online.
- Look at your email stats for open and click-through rates. If you’re starting out with email marketing, try Mailchimp or Mailerlite, both offer a comprehensive free package for growing your email database.
- Analyse your social media stats, looking at your audience demographics and content that has been well-received by your online community. Here’s a great tutorial for interpreting your social media analytics.
- Take a look at Google Trends to identify and compare keyword searches to learn what your customers are searching for.
Listen to the data, invest where you’re getting the best returns and you’ll reap the benefits.
Communicate like a boss
Communication is a key strategy for the small business or entrepreneur and we’ve seen this time and again. If we stop communicating, it’s easy to be forgotten by our customers - life is busy and online is even busier. There are so many excellent tools to communicate with customers, respond to enquiries and generate new leads. Our customers are where they’ve always been - online. They’re on social media, they’re checking their inboxes and - this is key - they’re searching for solutions to their problems. Problems that your product could solve! Social media and mailers have generally outstanding ROI (return on investment) especially compared to more traditional tools like flyers, radio and newspaper ads - which cost a relative fortune. Once you know your target market and what they’re searching for, it’s easier to target.
Try these:
- Social media ads reach very specific demographics and you choose the action that they take - to a landing page, to an online form, to a video.
- Email marketing is still a huge trend. With the rise of smartphones, 46% of mailer opens are on mobile devices. According to a study by Campaign Monitor, for every $1 spent, email marketing can lead to an ROI of $44. That’s pretty impressive!
- Twitter as a lead generator is fantastic as we can monitor keywords for conversations or questions that we, as a business, could offer a solution for. Try a tool like Hootsuite to monitor different keywords.
Customer (service) is king
We wrote this article to help small businesses and entrepreneurs access the tools that we’ve found to work best for us. Modern markets are sensitive to a business’ story, origins and philosophy and are keen to make purchases that make them feel good. By doing our share to be consistent and communicative as a business, we’re providing our customers and potential customers with a positive experience. It’s as easy as customer service in a physical business and, we feel, should be just as important. Also, ABS - always be solving (problems for your customers).
Try these:
- Google maps (if applicable) and Google Business Listings. Google your business and see what returns. If you haven’t already, claim your business listing, complete as many fields as possible, and upload some photos or video. Make it easy for your customers to find you and what you offer.
- Look at your reviews. Both Google and Facebook offer the opportunity to review business pages. See what your customers are saying, listen to their feedback - good and bad - and respond with kindness. Here’s a great resource for responding to reviews.
- Be responsive. If you have social media channels, be sure to check them frequently for questions and comments. There could be leads just waiting for your product - right in your inbox. You can also use Hootsuite, or similar, to monitor all channels in one place and, for Facebook and Instagram, the Facebook Meta platform does this for you.
Content is key
In today’s market, we’re inundated with spam and mediocre content. Every business wants your attention. So, what can you do to draw attention to our small business? You create quality content, you solve a problem, you provide exceptional customer service and you make your customer feel great about spending money with you. It all starts with content and the story you choose to tell about your business. Whether your website has three lines of copy, three infographics or three pages of whitepapers, it’s up to you to communicate these in the best way possible.
Try these:
- Use analytics and trends to understand your customers “pain points” (the problem that they need solved) and create content to address those pain points.
- Types of content include: blogs, articles, images, videos, stories, downloads, whitepapers, and infographics - choose what works best for your audiences. This is usually a combination of content types.
- Use your expertise. Knowledge is free on the internet but expertise is something that only comes with experience. You can create excellent content by using your expertise.
- If you’re looking for someone to help with content, try a freelancing platform like Upwork or Fiverr to source writers and designers at really reasonable rates. Or, if you’re feeling creative, try Canva for yourself, it’s free.
Get friendly with your niche markets
A niche market is a small specialised market for a particular product or service. Your niche market could be based on a location, belief system or values, or specific behaviours. Often niche markets are attractive because they require a more focused strategy and are easier to target than mass marketing. To lean into niche marketing, identify your target niches through analytics and reach them through micro-influencers, online chat groups or monitoring Twitter keywords. Here’s a deeper look into the advantages and disadvantages of niche marketing.
Revisit and revamp
Once up and running with digital strategies, we like to make time to review analytics to see what’s working and what could be improved. For a website, Google rewards fresh content that is relevant and answers questions, so there could be room to review website copy, share links on social media, ensure meta tags are filled in for your website and internal and external web links are working. There are tools to help with all of these.
Try these:
- Link whisper plugin for Wordpress helps to recognise and build internal links within your site
- Yoast plugin for Wordpress offers SEO improvement suggestions on each page of your website
- Semrush offers a free SEO page audit
- Keeping a regular eye on Google Trends may shine a line on opportunities that may soon arise for you.
Don’t be afraid to spend - where it matters
Finally, we’re not afraid to invest a bit. There are lots of free tools and apps that can get you a really long way and may serve just fine. But, then you hit a pay gate and you know that you need that information. For example, Google Analytics and Data Studio are free to use and will provide invaluable analytics especially if your website is your primary source of sales. However, SEOSurfer - which analyses individual pages on your website and provides recommendations and analytics on keyword searches, amongst other things, to perfect your website content for SEO and great search results - is a worthwhile paid-for service. On a budget? Choose wisely and you’ll be rewarded.
To summarise with a quote from Seth Godin, entrepreneur and best-selling author: “In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.” The internet and social media have made it possible for every small business to tell a story and to reach new markets. Why should we settle for being one of the crowd when these tools give us every opportunity to stand out?
