10 marketing strategies for local businesses
- June 20, 2022
- 0 Comments
- 8 minutes
10 Marketing strategies on how to get more clients online
Do you want to implement a marketing strategy for local businesses?
Start-ups and small businesses always have more difficulties than well-established companies when it comes to marketing.
First of all, starting up is a challenge for everyone. Whether you are a large or small business, many challenges will come your way. If you are a small business owner, however, these challenges will be magnified.
Shortage of budget, time or manpower are some examples of these constant obstacles. Whether a company is built as B2B or B2C, challenges are present from the very beginning. And for mid-sized companies? Life isn’t any easier. Sure, you may have a little more resources, but not that much.
Whatever struggles they go through, small and medium-sized businesses are gaining prominence. New businesses are being established on a regular basis. So how do marketers deal with the ups and downs and make their business emerge as one that lasts and succeeds?
The antidote is a marketing plan for small and medium-sized businesses. This is a term that refers to the method by which small and medium sized businesses market their products or services. Obviously, they try to do this using a conservative budget and are constantly looking for cost-effective ways to build a customer base and increase sales.
Here are 10 proven marketing strategies for small and medium businesses that will help you promote your brand and save money.
Set your goal and budget
To market your business the right way, you need to set a goal. What is your vision and goal for your business? The key marketing strategy for small and medium-sized businesses is to set the right goal and a reasonable budget.
What do you really want to happen? Are you looking to expand your company’s existing customers, or do you want to strengthen your position in the local market? Do you want people to get to know your brand?
These are all valid goals, of course. But when setting the goal you want to accomplish, you also need to think about your budget. Your budget needs to be in sync with your goals. At the same time, it needs to be realistic and practical.
The fact is that your goals will not be just one or two. You are likely to have several. To avoid confusion and make it easier to track your growth, you should prioritize your goals. Which goal matches your most pressing need? Identify that and focus on it first. Then you can define your long-term goals that you consider the most important for your business.
Maximise the use of Google services
You should take advantage of Google’s offerings. With Google being the largest search engine available, it can definitely offer a lot to small and medium sized businesses. Having an online presence is a must for marketing any small business, which is almost always a local business. In fact, when you compare a business that is online to one that isn’t, the one that is online grows 40% faster.
This makes a Google My Business account indispensable for a small to medium-sized business. For a local business targeting local customers, this is a powerful tool. By having a Google My Business account, you can take control of information about your business. This includes address, phone number, website and opening hours.
Google My Business is also the best place for you to combine all your Google platforms, which include your Google reviews, Google Maps profile and more. By having a Google My Business account, your business becomes more trusted and more visible to consumers.
Choose the most relevant social networks
You may have read somewhere that having an account on all social media channels is the way to go. If you have the budget for it and know that your target audience exists on all social media platforms, go for it!
However, if you are a local business and are short staffed, you may not be able to keep up with all your channels all the time. Choosing one to three networks to focus on seems like the wisest choice.
Start by looking at your overall social media presence. Which channel has the highest number of engagements? That should be your clue as to which channel you need to choose.
Once you’ve made your choice, you can turn your sights to the possible tools you can use to get help. For example, you may want someone else to take care of scheduling your social media posts for you, or maybe you want to monitor the keywords you use. There are tools that can help in both cases.
You can also get the help of a digital marketing agency like Lumat Media to help you with social media management and social media advertising, such as ads on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and more.
Do some content marketing
Content marketing is useful for getting long-term results. So, if you have a long-term vision for your business, this is the perfect marketing strategy for small and medium businesses.
You need to understand that it is a process in which you must create content that is: Valuable, Relevant and Consistent. After creating great content, you need to distribute it to your target audience with the intention of generating sales. Note that content marketing is not limited to written content or blog posts. It can include many different types of content, such as videos, podcasts and more.
Just remember that you will need plenty of time and patience when choosing to pursue this strategy. It will also be better if you have some extra resources allocated just to avoid producing irrelevant content.
Allocating money to hire a designer, for example, can help you avoid wasting time and budget. This will also help you improve the customer experience on your site. You don’t want to end up with low-quality content, as this will only drive customers away rather than attract them.
Speaking of content production, one of the best types of content you should invest in is videos. From small to established businesses, videos can take your content marketing to the next level. In fact, HubSpot shared that 50% of users demand more videos from the brand they follow. Moreover, the best thing about these videos is the fact that you can share and promote them across multiple social media platforms.
Use email marketing
Email marketing (EMM) is another great marketing strategy for small and medium businesses that helps you establish a connection with your target audience. And not just to establish, as EMM automation is best used to build loyalty.
The perfect opportunity to do this is when your customers submit their email addresses.
The fact that they provide their email addresses opens the door for you to send notifications. Usually, event and sales notifications. In addition to notifications, you can also choose to send newsletters to your email list. This can be a weekly or fortnightly newsletter.
A company that spends time and effort to connect with its customers has a better chance of building loyalty and engagement.
Just a few reminders:
- Make sure your EMM efforts are compatible with mobile devices. More and more people are checking their emails on their mobile phones, so this is a good move.
- Use email optimization. This means that when sending an email marketing campaign, you need to keep testing subject lines, creative templates, time of day, day of week and more.
Consider having a blog
You can think of blogging as a creative way of creating content. Many people do it for pure fun, but it’s also useful for exposing and marketing your own brand. Start a company blog where you can show how good your product or service is. Explain how it works and show that you are knowledgeable about your industry.
A blog is also a great place to advertise. You can tell your audience if your company has reached a milestone or is about to. It’s also the best place to announce upcoming and completed projects, along with your vision for the future.
Fill your blog with useful information that also catches your audience’s attention and interest. Apart from providing only quality content, you also need to be consistent. It will help your audience if they know when they can expect a new blog post from you.
If you publish a new blog post at least once a week, it’s a great way to keep your audience informed and connected with what you’re doing.
Share what you know
Sharing is about showing you care. If you are a small to medium-sized business and want to connect with people, you can share what you know. Think about it. In what field of knowledge or area of expertise are you better than almost anyone else or at least over most people?
Since you are a business, you are likely to be an expert in the industry you belong to. You can share bits of your formidable know-how and help people with valuable information. This will also boost your word-of-mouth marketing.
How do you choose what to share? What specifically are you looking for? Perhaps you can start with what people in your industry are talking about. As for the format, you have many options. You can choose to share what you know via webinars, YouTube tutorials, conferences, plus other ways you think are relevant. Research details such as technical requirements and how you will promote what you want to share.
Think SEO - What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation and can be a great asset to your marketing strategy for small and medium sized businesses. SEO helps your website rank in Google for certain keywords. Keywords are the words and phrases that people search for on Google.
Although SEO is a long-term strategy, it is good for small and medium-sized businesses that need to start establishing themselves in their industry. When someone searches something on Google that is relevant to your product or service, you want your website to show up!
It’s also great for small to medium sized businesses with a limited advertising budget, because you can optimise your website from big spending competitors to still beat them in the organic rankings. Also, consumers often trust only the first few organic search engine results on Google. So imagine that trust is automatically associated with your brand and your business!
Appreciate the feedback
Getting feedback is also an effective marketing strategy for small and medium-sized businesses. Doing so accomplishes several things at once.
First, you get to connect with your audience. After a customer buys a product or receives a service, you can ask for their comments or testimonials. You can then use these testimonials in your case studies to better establish your expertise in your industry.
Secondly, you won’t be left behind by other companies who are doing the same. And note that they are also doing this to improve their products and services.
One of the best ways to get feedback is through surveys. You can get the customer to answer the survey before making a purchase. This can be done through the customer’s tablet or phone. As an incentive to customers who respond to a survey, offer discounts on your products or Services.
Stand out!
Finally, standing out is also an excellent choice for a small to medium-sized business marketing strategy. While it may be advantageous to copy similar strategies from successful companies, you still want your brand and your selling proposition to stand out.
In that case, being different from the rest is a good thing. It can certainly help spread the word about your product or service. Think of new and original ways to market or advertise your brand.
On your website, you can also show how unique and different you are from the rest. Put it on your About Us page or any of your main pages so people can access it easily. This also works as a great way to seamlessly connect with your target market and help them build trust in your brand and business.
Conclusion
Small and medium-sized enterprises face difficulties. Obviously, they face more challenges than companies with abundant resources. But with the right marketing strategy for small and medium businesses, you have the chance to at least be on the same level as larger companies.
You just have to make the right choice about the marketing strategy to use. It is not always an easy path, but by following our tips, this path will be assertive faster.
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