The pandemic has forced businesses to adapt to new ways of marketing. These changing times have especially impacted small business marketing and the way small businesses and startups promote themselves. 

Starting a small business is a challenge that requires time and effort. You need to work towards perfecting a lot of things, such as your products and services, your sales channels, and a lot more.

However, all these efforts will go to waste if you can’t target your audience correctly. Marketing is the most crucial part of establishing and growing a small business. It allows you to gain brand recognition, create awareness, and drive sales.

With marketing getting complex day by day, creating a marketing plan that fits perfectly with your business can be daunting. This guide covers the best marketing ideas you can include in your small business marketing plan and some steps to market your business, allow it to grow and build its reputation. 

Five Marketing Strategies For Your Small Business Marketing

These simple yet effective marketing strategies will take your small business marketing to new heights.  

1. Build A Strong And Impactful Website

Today, having an online presence is more important than ever. 81% of shoppers today research their product online before making a purchase, and on average, a consumer will check three stores before deciding on one. Therefore, having a strong online presence and an impactful website can help your small business marketing immensely. 

A business website will allow your customers to learn more about your business and check out all the products and services your small business has to offer. Building a website is the first step and making it SEO optimized is the next most important step. You want your website to pop up on Search Engine Result Pages when your customers look it up, right?

After building a great website and optimizing it, your next priority should be getting as much traffic as possible. 

Here are some pointers that will help you achieve website traffic.

• Invest In A Good Domain Name.

Your company name has a huge impact on growth and impression, and it may make or break a business. Therefore, invest in an attention-grabbing, smart, and short name such as www.world.icu or www.gamers.icu. .icu is a generic, smart and short domain extension that will allow your business to register unique and creative names that will make heads turn towards it. 

• Do Keyword Research

Keyword research can provide you with a lot of information about what your target audience is searching online. The knowledge you gain from these specific keywords can guide both your content strategy and your overall marketing plan.

• Create A Good Website Design

Your website’s overall look and feel creates the first impression in the minds of your visitors. A good website design will help you make a positive first impression. It will also allow you to get more leads, traffic, and increasing conversion rates. Moreover, it creates a better user experience and makes it simpler for your visitors to navigate through the website. 

A lot more goes into making a website SEO-friendly, but the aforementioned three steps will help you get started. 

2. Define Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Your business’s USP is what will set it apart from the competitors and give your customers a strong reason to purchase your products or services. Think of it as something only you own. It is therefore important to clearly define your USP to convey that to your target audience. It’s like highlighting your special skills and knowledge. Not only that, it also establishes you as a thought leader in that niche.

Your USP can be anything; it can be an exceptional service or a unique offering. You can answer these few questions to find out your business’s USP that’ll help you with its marketing.

• What sets your products apart from the competitors?
• What special skills do you have?
• What do you have that’ll make your customers shift towards your brand?
• What benefits are you offering your customers?
• How would you describe your products and services to your customers?

3. Understand Your Target Audience

One of the major mistakes businesses make is thinking that everyone is their buyer. Many large companies believe in the saying, “the riches are in the niches.” A niche is where you’ll get the most freedom as a small business owner. Selecting your niche will help you grow your business and appeal to the customers within the niche. It will also allow you to understand your customer’s triggering points, pains, issues, and priorities. 

Knowing things such as what makes your customers purchase your products? What they seek the most within your products and services will help you write a message that relates to them and gives them the solution to their problems. Create a buyer persona by thinking and understanding your existing customers. 

4. Narrate Your Brand Story

A business needs to create a distinctive brand identity in front of its target audience. One of the best and effective ways to do that is to tell your brand’s story.

People react to emotions. Therefore, if you add a feeling to your brand, chances are more and more people will be curious to know about your business and engage with it. That’s why telling an authentic story about how your business came to be will create a lasting and memorable impression. So if you want people to stay with your brand and remember it from the moment they hear about it, tell a compelling brand story. 

For instance, the story behind Luca+Dani is really heartwarming. It has been true for Fred Magnanimi, the founder of Luca + Danni, since he was a boy watching his father manufacture handcrafted jewelry. Magnanimi narrates the beautiful story of carrying out his brother’s desire to continue their father’s jewelry manufacturing business after his brother lost his battle with cancer. The website has an “Our Story” section filled with childhood images. The brand narrative is beautifully authentic because of the love and commitment shown here.

Have a separate “About Us” section on your website that tells your brand’s story. Including pictures and videos will be icing on the cake and make your story more remarkable. Another great way to highlight your story is to start a blog section. 

5. Invest In Analytics From The Beginning

As a small business owner, you must be highly cautious and limit your mistakes as much as possible. That is why data analytics should be a part of your small business marketing plan.

The best part is that you don’t have to loot a bank to buy any expensive software; many free options are available.

Social media analytics, for example, is entirely free because most platforms already have an in-built analytics tool that can provide you with all of the information you require about your social media marketing. You can utilize Google Analytics to obtain any necessary information for your website.

Monitoring tools for social media are a valuable investment since they can help you keep track of key topics and respond to them. It is vital for small businesses, as it is essential to react quickly to client inquiries and complaints.

No matter what kind of small business marketing you are doing, make sure to track and monitor your progress consistently. A Google Analytics account is highly recommended. 

Five Marketing Ideas To Include In Your Small Business Marketing Plan

When it comes to marketing your business in 2021, you have many alternatives, and many of them don’t need a lot of time or money. Use these ideas as a starting point for developing your small business marketing plan for the coming year.

1. Create A Referral Program For Your Customers

Word-of-mouth marketing for small businesses is a strong approach to market your brand. 92% of consumers trust recommendations given by their peers and family over all forms of advertising. 

Introducing a customer referral program is one strategy to increase your word-of-mouth marketing. Consider rewarding existing customers for inviting new customers with a free sample product, freebie service, discounts, or some other low-cost offer. It can be quite beneficial for your business if your consumers tell their friends and family about it. In addition, a customer referral award might help you express gratitude to current customers.

2. Implement Video Marketing

In the era of social distancing, an effective way to stay connected with your customers is through video marketing. 

Fortunately, creating videos today has become easier than ever. You no longer need heavy and expensive equipment, professional editing skills, or create a scenario. Smartphones today offer high-quality cameras that can also help you to create high-quality videos. 

The number of people consuming videos is increasing today. Five billion YouTube videos are watched every single day, and the average viewing time is 40 minutes per day!

With more users spending time on video applications such as TikTok and Instagram Reels, it’s time to get used to creating more videos.

3. Send Newsletters To Your Customers

Email marketing is an excellent approach to attract new visitors and maintain ties with existing consumers. Even the most straightforward email marketing campaigns can have a massive impact.

According to Entrepreneur Magazine, 72 percent of adults in the United States prefer companies to connect with them through email, and 91 percent want to receive promotional emails from companies with which they do business.

Add a section of the newsletter on your website so people can sign up. It’s an excellent strategy to build client loyalty or to convert subscribers into paying customers gradually. You can start your email marketing campaign using free tools such as MailChimp. 

4. Try Your Hands On Influencer Marketing

The soaring popularity of micro-celebrities and influencers has spawned a relatively new and rapidly growing marketing strategy. ‘Influencers,’ who are popular on both Instagram and YouTube, are persons with a significant following (usually above 10,000 followings).

Influencer marketing can allow you to expand your brand’s awareness while also providing sales promotion. The average cost of using an influencer to promote a brand is $271 per post, according to a report by SproutSocial. The average cost per post for influencers with more than 100,000 followers was $763.

Influencer marketing can prove to be successful for your brand because social influencers have gained a high level of trust from their audience. Their recommendations act as social proof to a brand’s potential customers. 

5. Hosting Webinars

You can’t simply shout, “Our product is the greatest!” You should purchase it!” and don’t expect to be able to sell it again. Customers are cautious. They have a wealth of resources at their disposal to assist them in comparing and selecting the best option for them. It’s pointless to waste all of your energy on shouting louder than your competitors. It’ll only create noise without having any impact. 

The name of the game is transparency. Prospects respond to solution providers who actively demonstrate their reliability, such as partners and thought leaders.

You may attract your target audience and capture their contact information for future follow-up by hosting an introductory webinar or online session.

To begin, find out where your target demographic spends their time online. Then, to promote your events and persuade people to sign up, you can run some simple ads. Some people may not be able to attend the live event, but they can still see the recorded video later.

Customers are significantly more likely to become customers if they gain valuable insights from your business. Providing information can allow you to meet new people and build your network. 

Make sure you have a good premise or query in mind when creating a small business marketing strategy. It will help you stay focused on the end objective and lessen your impulse to chase after the next big thing as it appears. Also, think about what you’ll do next if you obtain excellent or terrible outcomes. Here’s a guide that’ll take you through the essentials of a small business marketing plan.