5 Top Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

Small businesses face unique marketing challenges compared to large corporations with big budgets. You have to find ways to speak to your potential customers at low cost, which often means that large brand awareness campaigns are off the table. But that doesn’t mean you can’t run successful small marketing campaigns; it only means you need to know your ideal client better and be more specific with your targeting.

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What You Need for a Successful Marketing Campaign

Before you start any marketing campaign, make sure you:

1. Are clear on your ideal client (for this campaign as well as generally)
2. Have a set budget
3. Have clear (and realistic) goals for the campaign

Without this knowledge, you’ll find it difficult to have successful campaigns since you won’t be specific enough and you won’t know whether or not it achieved what you wanted.

There’s no magic bullet form of marketing - every goal requires experimentation and testing. You also need to revisit your strategies often since technology and trends change, and what worked for you 3 years ago may no longer be effective.

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5 Top Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

1. Paid Social Media Advertising

While organic reach on many social media platforms has become difficult, you can still pay to play, and a good ad can be a serious money-maker. Social media platforms allow you to get super specific about who you’re targeting so your ad is only shown to the people who may be interested in your offer.

Paid advertising is simple to get started with, but can take time to master, so have patience and keep your budget low until you get a good ROI, then scale up. Facebook is a good place to start since most people are users, but go where your clients are.

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2. Use Lead Magnets to Build Your Email List

Email marketing is incredibly powerful, but you can’t harness that if you don’t have a list of people who are genuinely interested in what your business offers. One of the most effective strategies is to offer people something for free for signing up, and then deliver a high-value welcome sequence to keep them subscribed (and train them to open your emails).

Lead magnets (often called “freebies”) you can offer include:

• Ebooks
• Guides
• Checklists
• Templates
• Swipe files
• Webinar
• Consultation
• Audit
• Sample
• Mini-course
• Discounts and coupons

Top tip: make your freebie something that sets them up for the natural next step of hiring you.

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3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO is the process of optimising your website so it will appear higher in search engine results. The higher your website, the more likely searchers will click on it. There are a lot of facets that go into SEO, but at its core is making your website as beneficial for your ideal audience as possible by providing well-structured valuable content that keeps them on your website for as long as possible.

It’s never too late to start an SEO strategy, and there’s plenty of advice online to help you get started with SEO. The problem with SEO for many businesses is that it’s time-consuming, so if you’re already short on time, why not let us handle it? We offer SEO packages to suit businesses of all sizes and at all stages.  

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4. Content Marketing

Content marketing is simply the process of creating valuable, informative, and/or entertaining content that attracts and engages your target audience. Content marketing includes:

• Organic social media posts and videos
• YouTube videos
• Podcasts
• Blog posts
• Infographics

The key to good content marketing is to provide your audience with a ton of value, such as entertaining them, helping them solve problems, and answering questions. By showing your expertise in your industry, your audience will turn to you when they are ready to buy.

Learn: How to Write an Effective Content Plan.

SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand, and like SEO, content marketing is time-intensive. If you need to outsource your content marketing or simply need guidance about how you can get started, we’re here to help.

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5. Hosting and/or Attending Industry Events

Online or offline, industry events are a great opportunity to get your brand in front of potential customers and network with other businesses in your industry (or the industries of your customers). Industry events can span from intimate workshops to large conventions. While you can get a lot of value going along as an attendee, becoming a speaker and holding a talk or a workshop will position you as the expert and make sure that attendees learn who you are, what you do, and what you have to offer them.

If you struggle to find events to attend, consider hosting your own. Hosting an online event is a cost-effective way to get the same results without huge overheads.

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These 5 marketing strategies are effective for small businesses of all sizes and will enable you to increase your visibility and attract new customers. While you should experiment and test what works, don’t throw spaghetti at the wall - spend some time learning about your ideal customer and set specific goals, timelines, and budgets for your campaigns. When you use these strategies and set achievable goals and KPIs, you will surely succeed.