Marketing Tips for Small Businesses that Guarantee Success

You may have a great product, but no one will know your business even exists if you don’t market yourself.

Having the right marketing techniques for your small business can help with that. It can put your brand on the map and even get people to try your products.

There are more than 32 million businesses in the United States. No matter what your industry is, you must implement strategies that showcase your products and show why they’re the best.

Image via Small Business Administration

But with so many digital marketing options out there, how can you choose the best ones for your startup or small business?

This post examines marketing tips for a small business you can use in order to sell more of your products or services.

But before we discuss these marketing tips, let's examine some necessary prerequisites to have in place before implementing.

Prerequisites for Implementing Marketing Tips

Before we delve into the marketing tips that your small business can leverage, here are some prerequisites you need to ensure are in place:

1. Outline Goals and Objectives

Make a list of short- and long-term goals, and then come up with plans to help you achieve them.

For example, do you want to grow thought leadership, build brand awareness, or get new customers?

Whatever your goals, make them quantifiable, realistic, and achievable.

2. Conduct Market Research

Even the best marketing ideas for small businesses can fail if there's no buyer for your products or services. Not knowing your target audience can also lead to failure.

So before delving into the marketing tips your small business can use, first get clear on:

• Your unique value proposition
• Your potential customer base: their demographics, behavior, interests, etc.
• How your potential clients will buy your offerings
• How they will find out about what you offer
• Where will you get capital, and what the financial projections are
• Your competitors, and why they perform well

Then, once you complete your market research, implement strategies and marketing tips that will make your business thrive.

But which are the marketing tips for a small business you can implement?

Find out below:

7 Marketing Tips for Your Small Business to Thrive

What practical marketing tips can your small business leverage?

Which ones can make it easy to get your products to the right audience?

Read on to discover:

1. Optimize Your Website

It's essential to start a website if you want to attract organic traffic and build an online presence.

If you already have one, ensure it works effectively to help your business attract leads, nurture, and convert them.

It's one of those marketing tips for a small business that, if ignored, can lead to a poor customer experience.

But which marketing tips should you apply when optimizing your website?

Good domain name: Have a website address that's short, easy to spell, and memorable. You can try out business name generator tools to generate ideas.

Clear descriptions: Your hero image, introductory text blurb, About Us page, and banners should clearly describe what your brand offers.

Mobile-friendliness: Ensure your design looks great both on mobile and desktop.

Exceptional page experience: The recent Google Page Experience Update requires websites to have short load times and stable layouts that do not cause poor user experiences. It should also be secure, use HTTPS, and not contain intrusive interstitials.

Image via Google

Easy navigation: One crucial marketing tip for a small business is to have a site with easy navigation. So make you have an intuitive interface with a search bar that makes it convenient for people to find what they want fast.

Optimized content: Improve SEO results by adding keywords to your title tags, throughout your website, and on your content, without overstuffing.

Easy to access contact information: Ensure visitors can clearly see your contact information from any page they visit.

2. Take Advantage of Marketing Tools by Google

Leveraging the many Google marketing tools is another marketing tip for a small business that can help you reach audiences at affordable costs.

It’s also among the marketing tips that can mos

t help you get on the first pages of Google.

What are these tools?

Google Analytics: Use it to monitor website traffic. Track popular content, how many visitors return, how long they spend on your site, and so much more.

Google Keyword Planner: Leverage it to discover keywords that help you attract visitors to your site.

Google Trends: Use it to discover the popularity of keywords over time and predict demand changes.

Google Search Console: Use it to ensure search engine bots can find your website.

Google Alerts: Use it to track your brand's online reputation and competitors. Set up an alert with your brand name or other keyword and get notified whenever you get mentioned online.

Google My Business: Registering with this tool enables you to easily connect with potential and current customers on Maps and Google Search.

Google My Business is also a crucial part of your local SEO strategy.

Why?

Having an account enables you to post details about your business, services you offer, your contact information, photos, and so much more.

Google Marketing Kit: Use it to share updates with customers. With it, you can create social media posts, custom posters, and much more for free.

Google Optimize: Use it to split test different versions of your copy, layout, and graphics to determine what people respond to better.

Google Adwords: Use it to get your products in front of potential customers as they perform searches on Google Maps and Google Search.

Google Shopping Ads: Use them to promote your inventory online, find quality leads, and boost traffic to your online store.

3. Leverage Social Media

According to research, active social media users today are now at 4.2 billion and growing.

And best of all?

Those who use social media platforms don't only leverage them to find and connect with friends.

They also use them to find out about new products and brands. Many of them use these platforms for purchase inspiration, brand updates, recommendations, and much more.

Image via GWI

Not sure how to succeed with social media?

Well, here are a few excellent social media marketing tips for your small business to leverage:

Share Content That Speaks to Your Audience

When creating content for social media, you need to have in mind the buyer persona, their needs, and how best you can help them solve their problems.

But how do you figure out what to post?

Leverage social media analytics tools to discover content that resonates with your audience. With these tools, you can determine the right content, what marketing tactics your competitors use, and whether your current efforts yield results.

Create a Publishing Calendar

Leverage social media management tools that tell you the best time to publish while also helping you schedule and publish posts.

This way, you can post when your potential audience is likely online and manage their interactions from one location.

Monitor Opportunities and Competitors

Use social listening tools or Google trends to discover what people say about your brand and discover new opportunities.

This tactic is among marketing tips that enable your small business to join conversations, find new opportunities, and handle grievances before they become a crisis.

And as for competitor analysis?

This is one of the marketing tips that will help you know if your brand measures up to others in the industry while also introducing you to new marketing ideas.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags can help audiences interested in what you offer find your content. However, for this marketing tip to work, you need to find hashtags relevant to your brand or create brand-specific hashtags.

What else can you do?

Leverage hashtags that get you user-generated content. You can then reshare this content for social proof while also increasing the chances of more purchases.

How does that happen, exactly?

Well, 79% of buyers say user-generated content highly influences their purchase decisions. You won’t want to leave that money sitting on the table!

Image via Stackla

Use Quality Visuals

Want marketing tips that help you get new clients via social accounts?

Post high-quality video content and images.

Why is this?

According to research, marketers say videos are the number one way to attract attention and get new leads.

Image via Animoto

Leverage marketing tips that help you create quality videos for each step of your customer journey. These include always providing value, making sure the first few seconds hold the target audience's attention, and having a call to action at the end.

Encourage Employees to Promote Your Brand and Use Paid Ads

Employee advocacy programs can help you increase reach and grow audience trust in your brand.

On the other hand, paid ads can help you boost views and drive traffic to your website.

Note: For your small business to succeed with these social media marketing tips, avoid activities that repel customers. These include posting too much, publishing too many ads, creating irrelevant content, and poor customer service.

Always strive to meet audience needs or risk people unfollowing your brand and writing poor reviews.

Image via Sprout Social

4. Run Email Campaigns

Leveraging the right email marketing tips for a small business can help you build a strong brand and grow relationships with customers.

Most importantly?

Email improves ROI.

According to research, the current ROI for small and medium-sized companies is at 35:1 and 29:1, respectively.

Image via Litmus

But what email marketing tips can you use for your small business to achieve this ROI or even surpass it?

Quality over Quantity: Avoid bombarding your recipients with emails and instead focus on sending them value-added content they want to read.

Simplify the sign-up process: Instead of having people redirected to other pages to sign up for your newsletter or emails, use forms that simplify the registration process.

Optimize emails for mobile: Ensure your email designs respond to mobile. Additionally, make sure any videos and links attached open easily.

Segment lists: Manage your contact list for easy targeting and ensure messages you send build relationships and grow loyalty.

Run automated campaigns: Leverage email marketing tools that automate processes like welcoming subscribers, sending abandoned cart emails, etc.

Make emails accessible: Ensure that even the visually impaired can comfortably read your emails. Email marketing tips you can employ include using short sentences, bullet points, headers, helpful descriptions, readable fonts, layouts, etc.

Deliver as promised: To avoid getting high unsubscribe rates, ensure you deliver what you promised upon subscription or sign up.

Maintain brand design: Ensure recipients can instantly recognize your brand from the emails you send. Include a logo with each email and have design guidelines in place for layouts, fonts, color pallets, styles, etc.

Test subject lines: Leverage subject line testers before hitting send on your emails. A tool like the Email Subject Analyzer by Attrock can help you write subject lines that drive more opens, clicks, and conversions.

Follow up: Set up follow-up sequences that help you continue conversations with new and existing customers.

Get feedback: Run polls and surveys to find out what customers think of your products, brand, or marketing strategies.

5. Optimize Content Strategies

Leveraging tried and tested content marketing tips for a small business can help your brand become a thought leader, build customer trust, and increase your reach. It can also improve search rankings, shorten sales cycles, and help you reduce marketing costs.

But what are the best content marketing tips for a small business you can apply?

Have a content marketing strategy you’ve documented. According to research, there's a correlation between top performers and the fact that they document their strategy.

Establish your expertise and educate audiences by starting a blog. Starting a blog is a great way to boost search engine optimization and increase brand exposure.

Correspond your content to a sales funnel. Identifying your customer's funnel stage can help you deliver content that moves them along to conversions.

Vary content types: Build a diverse content library with infographics, video content, white papers, ebooks, etc. This way, you can reach various audiences in the best way they like to consume content.

Benefit from reviews and testimonials: 89% of consumers report that they check reviews when buying online.

It's therefore crucial to ask for reviews, then share them on your blog posts, emails, website, and social media accounts.

Include calls to action (CTA): Encourage people to take action using CTAs that match the content they consume.

Incorporate SEO: Identify target keywords, then write content that satisfies your audience's intent. Follow SEO best practices and get more people to link to the content you create.

Promote content: Share your content on different platforms, including social media, email, syndication sites, forums, Q&A sites, etc.

Use tools: Leverage content marketing tools that help you consistently curate, create, distribute, audit, and track content performance.

6. Strategically Partner with Others

Leveraging partnership is among the marketing tips your small business can use to expose your brand to a new pool of audience members and increase reach.

But how?

The following are partnership marketing tips your small business can implement:

Cross-promote products with other brands: Collaborate with local businesses that sell complementary products and bundle up offers you can sell to your target market.

Work with affiliates: Pay commissions to affiliates and people whenever they bring in new paying customers.

Partner with influencers: According to research, influencer content outperforms brand-related content when shared on other channels.

Image via Linqia

For this reason, work with influencers who can improve your content strategy, help you build trust, and increase conversions.

7. Track Performance

We cannot forget to mention tracking as one of the marketing tips a small business owner seeking to grow their brand should use.

Why?

Without tracking performance, you wouldn't know which of your strategies generates the best results.

For this reason, track each of the marketing strategies your small business uses to promote your brand. Then, use the insights you get from the reports to improve and get better results.

FAQs

Q1. How do I market my small business?

A. Practical marketing tips your small business can use to grow your brand include:

• Optimizing your website
• Taking advantage of marketing tools offered by Google
• Leveraging social media
• Running email campaigns
• Optimizing content strategies
• Strategically partnering with others
• Tracking performance

Q2. Which marketing is best for small businesses?

A. Marketing tips your small business can use include:

• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Partner marketing
• Public relations
• Search engine optimization
• Advertising

Q3. How do I attract customers?

A. Small business marketing tips you can use to attract new customers include:

• Narrow down on your ideal buyer characteristics, then post content on channels they frequent
• Ask customers to refer to your brand
• Run user-generated content campaigns
• Become a thought leader in your space
• Create targeted ads
• Partner with influencers, other brands, and affiliates
• Use social media

Q4. How do I get my business noticed?

A. Marketing tips your small business can use to get noticed include:

• Having an online presence
• Running giveaways
• Encouraging reviews
• Registering with industry directories
• Building backlinks
• Guest posting on industry sites

Q5. What makes a business successful?

A. Actions that can make your business successful include:

• Focusing on customer satisfaction
• Having a plan
• Adapting tools that make processes easier
• Hiring talented employees and keeping them motivated
• Working towards achieving goals at all times
• Tracking marketing tips and strategies
• Having quality products

Q6. What are the four major growth strategies for small businesses?

A. Growth strategies for your small business include:

• Penetration
• Development
• Expansion
• Diversification

Q7. How can I make my small business grow faster?

A. Use these marketing tips for a small business to grow faster:

• Streamline operations
• Find new opportunities and ways to expand offerings
• Leverage tools that save time and improve productivity
• Run loyalty programs

Q8. What are the biggest challenges for small businesses?

A. Challenges most small business owners face include:

• Limited resources
• Poor administration processes
• Retaining employees
• Proper advertising and marketing
• Time management

Q9. How much should I spend on marketing a small business?

A. About 7-8% of what you earn as gross revenue.

Marketing Tips For Small Business: Are You Ready to Implement them?

These actionable marketing tips for your small business can get your products in front of more people. They can also help you build brand awareness, generate qualified leads, and increase conversions.

Are you ready to start implementing, or do you need help making these digital marketing tips a reality for your small business?

We offer most of these strategies as a service at an affordable price, and we can help get your small business ahead in the digital marketing space.

Interested?

Well, let us know which of the services we can help with by sharing your details on our contact us page.