Digital marketing continues to grow in leaps and bounds. Having a plan is essential for every small business today. But the digital world changes so quickly. How can your local businesses keep up?
For many small businesses, their marketing efforts need to reach a local audience. Small businesses also often deal with a limited marketing budget. As a result, it can be a challenge to earn visibility in a local community.
That’s why we’re covering the top 6 must-have small business marketing strategies. These tactics are all simple for small business owners to implement and result-driven.
#1: Leverage an Organic Social Media Presence
At this point, we all know that advertising on social media is valuable for local businesses to get your name out there and introduce potential clients to your products or services. But, nowadays establishing an organic social media platform is a must. An organic social media presence builds trust and intimacy with potential and existing customers in a way that paid advertising can’t.
Here’s how to establish an organic social media presence:
● Share content on your social media platform(s) at least 2-3 times a week
● Focus on value-based social media posts for your target audience.
● Show up on video through Instagram Live, Reels, TikTok, or Twitter to build trust with your local audience.
- Post entertaining pictures, status updates, and customer success stories.
#2: Save Time with Automated Messaging
Time. As small business owners, we could all use more of it! If you aren’t leveraging canned responses and automated messaging, you’re burning hours of your day away. Responding to messages on social media accounts or email inquiries is a repetitive necessity for every business. Make the most of your time by preparing awesome canned or automated responses that apply to specific inquiries from potential customers.
Here’s how to implement automated communication:
● Make a list of the repetitive inquiries you get on a daily basis
● Craft an awesome response to each of these customer inquiries
● Check out Meta’s automated response feature to implement these responses for your Facebook and Instagram. Also, add these responses to your email’s canned responses.
#3: Leverage Your Online Following for Market Research
As a local business, you will need to find ways to build lasting relationships with your local community who interact with you online and leverage them for market research. Your email marketing campaigns and social media content can be the perfect source for this research.
Here’s how to use your subscribers and followers for market research:
● Track the links in your content to follow what customers are most interested in
● Communicate with your subscribers and followers as insiders for your company. Ask for feedback, using questions like these:
○ What seasonal drink are you most excited about this winter? Vote here!
○ Which topic should we cover next: current marketing trends or tips and tricks to staying organised as a small business owner?
○ Help us choose our next featured scent! Choose from the following: Calming Lavender or Sweet Tangerine
#4: Build a Referral Program
Did you know that people are 90% more likely to buy from a company if their friend recommends it? Word of mouth marketing is essential for a small business. Lots of people say they will look for a referral or recommendation from friends first before making a purchase. One of the best ways for a small business owner to encourage this is to build a referral program.
Here’s how to build your small business referral marketing program:
● Keep it simple, with an attractive and clear call to action (CTA)
● Give customers an incentive to share with a friend
● Make referral links easy to share on social media
● Check out these examples of successful referral programs
#5: Focus on User Experiences
Our digital world is crowded with advertisements. What customers are craving more than a shiny ad is an exceptional user experience. And small businesses are in the perfect place to stand out as unique. Improve your user experience by walking through the customer journey with your brand from introduction to making a purchase. A stellar user experience will increase your word of mouth referrals, as customers become fans of your business.
Here’s how to stand out as a business by creating unique user experiences:
● Outline every step in the relationship with new customers from no knowledge to recommending your business to others, including:
○ Becoming aware of your brand
○ Considering your services and products, comparing your business to other businesses
○ Making a purchase
○ Post-purchase relationship and customer loyalty
○ Becoming a brand fan and advocate
● Ask “How can we improve a user’s experience through each one of these steps?”
● Keep all communications and interactions unique, personal and clear
#6: Stay on Target with Exceptional Content on Fewer Channels
Here’s one more tactic to help you save time and energy. As a small business, it can be challenging to identify what social media platform to use. The number of social media platforms online today (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, to name just a few!) can make digital marketing feel like a wild goose chase. Choose 1-3 social media channels at the most to focus on and engage with customers regularly.
When deciding which marketing channels to use, consider your target market and the logistics involved in getting your products and services to them.
Here’s how to choose the right social media platform for your business:
● Start with your business today. Ask:
○ What channels are we currently on?
○ Which social media channels have we found success with?
○ What type of content (video, picture, text) works the best for our brand?
● Then review a list of social media and online platforms. Ask:
○ What type of content (video, picture, text) does this platform focus on?
○ How much time does it take to make content for this channel?
○ What channels are our competitors successful on?
Why Not Stick with 2021 Marketing Tactics?
Running a small business requires a lot of moving parts. It can be extremely tempting to create a strategy once and stick with that marketing strategy for years. If this is you, beware: you are quickly becoming out of date in an ever-evolving digital world. What worked yesterday may not work today or tomorrow.
Make your life easier: establish a routine check-up on your marketing strategies. It is easy and simple to make small improvements to your marketing plan as the world evolves. It is challenging and confusing to backtrack through months or years of online developments to completely revamp your marketing strategy.
A small business marketing strategy can help you increase brand awareness and develop a pipeline of qualified leads that will turn into paying customers.
Introduce these simple tactics at your next marketing strategy meeting. Take your marketing strategies one step at a time, and come out on top.
Marketing Services For Small Businesses
At Flarecom we are dedicated to helping small and medium-sized businesses grow online. We understand smaller businesses and know that you need to see a return on investment, not just empty promises.
We specialise in digital marketing solutions to help grow and scale your small and mid-sized business without the online marketing complexity. We take a full 360-degree approach to solving your business challenges with marketing solutions tailored to you.
We have helped hundreds of clients from a wide range of sectors across Australia, and offer a no-obligation initial telephone consultation and would welcome the chance to discuss your business so why not get in touch via phone, email or live chat.
