Marketing is an essential part of your business’s survival, whether you have a small, local shop or multi-billion-dollar corporation. Unfortunately, marketing is often put on the back burner for many small businesses or ignored completely.
If you haven’t created a small business marketing plan or aren’t getting the results you hoped for, now is the time to make some changes. Keep reading for some tips to help you create or improve your existing marketing plan.
Table of Contents
Invest in Technology
Look into business management platforms and marketing platforms to find an option that offers what you need. This may include social media management, content marketing, ad management, reputation management, payments, customer relationship management software, and more, depending on your business.
Learn From Your Competition
As a small business owner, it’s wise to examine what your local competition is doing. Find out what methods they use to attract customers and what does not work for them.
If you plan to open a location-based business, such as a restaurant, investing in competitor research is necessary. This may include visiting another venue in person to judge the aesthetics, service, quality, and other factors you can use to set your company apart. It’s also a good idea to introduce yourself to the other local businesses. For e-commerce businesses, most of this research will be done online.
Stay Proactive
Consider what your customers are looking for and what questions they ask to create content. You want to offer informative, valuable blogs that your customers want to read. Once you know the type of content you should create, you can start varying content types and include blogs, social media posts, infographics, videos, and emails to help increase brand awareness and visibility.
Build a Strong Online Presence
An essential part of modern marketing is developing an online presence to attract new customers. You must remember a third of mobile searches are location-based, with 78% of local-mobile searches resulting in an offline purchase. You want to make sure people can find you online if they are searching for a business nearby.
Request Testimonials
People want to feel confident they are spending money on quality, and they also want assurance your product is better than the competition. You can attract more buyers by asking for reviews from prior customers. You can place your reviews on your website, testimonials page, or even third-party review sites so that potential customers see them.
Track Your Results
You need to ensure that you know how your campaign is performing to make changes as needed. Even more importantly, you need to use the data to make changes for the following year at the end of the year. When you do this annually, you should see improvements with your marketing and ROI.
Improving Your Small Business Marketing Plan
Improving your small business marketing plan may seem daunting, especially if you are starting from scratch. However, following the tips above can provide a solid foundation to help you achieve the desired results.
