If you’ve just started out on your business career, you might feel like you’ll never be able to compete with the other companies around you. You’ve just chosen your business name, you’ve got a good idea for your product or service, and you’re about to open up a website. How do you get from this small initial starting stage to making a rolling profit with a large customer base?
We get it – it’s very hard to visualize! And it’s a problem a lot of small business owners share, no matter if it’s their first day or their 100th. But that’s where your marketing campaign and overall strategy steps in. When you know how to tackle the branding, advertising, and the need for an online presence. And yes, that sounds like a lot, but the moment you invest in it it’ll become very intuitive for you.
Plus, this post is here to help. Your marketing power can go from strength to strength when you’ve got just a little idea of where to take it. So let’s go through some methods to think about, and even give a try, to give your small business the boost it really needs.
Set Up on Social Media Straight Away
Social media is your best friend as a new business. It’s an equal platform for everyone to use, even when it comes to running a sitewide advertising campaign. You can pay what you like for as long as you like and get your brand in front of the people who’ll really be interested in it. With just a few select keywords, you can really open up your online presence. Use this to your advantage in the early days.
But aside from this, social media is also a great place to interact with your customer base. You’ve got a chance to make some ‘personal’ connections here, which means you can be yourself, as it were. You can establish your company’s tone, and showcase just how amazing your customer service is as well. That’s an amazing opportunity to have all in one simple place!
Get Your Elevator Pitch Ready
Your elevator pitch is roughly a 30 second introduction you can give to anyone to explain who you are and what you do. Anyone who comes up to you to shake your hand, you can use this pitch to entice them into interacting with your business in more than just a personal form. But you have to make sure your elevator pitch is interesting enough to actually listen to.
To do this, write down various forms of it and see how they sound. Practice them in the mirror, see how you feel as you say them, and make sure you’re both confident and comfortable enough to deliver the message. If you don’t believe in it, no one you say it to will either! Stand up straight, take a deep breath, and always approach with a smile.
Use Multiple Forms of Online Advertising
You don’t just have to stick to social media. You can use various forms of online advertising to make your name go even further, and target many more people who may not see your ads on Instagram or Facebook. The more you cover all the possible bases in the early days of your company, the better the information your analytics will offer at the end of the quarter. We’ll get into that a little more later.
That’s not even to mention just how many people don’t use social media either; you wouldn’t want to miss out on 5% of the 5 billion people who use the internet every single day. This is especially important if you’re targeting the older generation, as there tends to be more social media users under the age of 60 compared to those over.
Make Your Event Booths Eye Catching
Visiting a trade show, a conference or convention, or even just a networking event can be a great boost for your business’ physical presence. Setting up banners, Digital signs, and handing out cards that offer short and snappy messages goes a long way to playing on someone’s mind.
And that’s what you want when you’re trying to compete with the 50+ other businesses that could be attending alongside you. Even if they’re not in your niche, you need to think about how you can take up more visual space than anyone else. Stick to your branding colors, logo, and message, but use creative storytelling to draw the eye.
Don’t forget about your ability to nip in and out of the booth as well. We mentioned the elevator pitch above – use it here to great effect!
Make it Easy for Customers to Talk About You
You’ve got your social media pages where anyone can say anything, and you always welcome feedback on email or the official Google page for your company. You’ve done your best to make it easy for customers to talk about you, right? Well, now you’ve set them up, you need to make sure they follow through.
To do that, you need to incentivize them. Give them something that either reminds them to review, such as a card slipped into product packaging, or make sure they really want to say something good by going above and beyond.
Free samples, exclusive and personalized discounts, as well as a loyalty program that rewards multiple purchases and time spent with your company. Any of these can work to make someone think for a moment beyond their initial interaction with you, and you’ll encourage a lot more word of mouth marketing this way.
Get Your Email List Up and Running
An email list is a great marketing tool for any company. You can template a message, add the customer’s name to the top, and then send it out to those who will be receptive to it. Not only will previous customers be signed up to it, but people who are simply interested right now and may purchase in the future – this is a goldmine of leads that are all open to hearing from you! Capitalise on this with a prominent sign-up link on the homepage.
Keep an Eye on What’s Working
This is where you delve into the analytics. When it comes to deciding your best marketing strategy and putting the most power into your own hands, you need to know what’s working and what isn’t. So, run the various forms of advertising above and see how they work out for you.
What’s bringing in the most visitors? What content is performing the best? What products are standing out above any other? And above this, what gets specifically mentioned in the reviews of anyone doing business with you?
Check on all of these factors about a month in; this gives you time to see the impact of certain tactics, but it’s still early enough in your marketing campaign to do something about the ineffective parts of the strategy. You can do this simply through the Google Console or the Adwords page for your business, as well as the impressions stats hidden in the settings pages of your social media profiles.
A small business’ marketing power is limitless. Even with a small budget you’ve got the chance to really make it big, and ensure your name becomes very well known across social media. Make sure you think about tactics like these during your brainstorming meetings – a good marketing campaign is adaptable and changes with the times, so don’t just stick to one.