Top Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

As a small business owner, you know that marketing is key to your success, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of marketing tactics and options that are out there. Sometimes all it takes is a spark of inspiration, and we have prepared a list of small business marketing ideas to help you get started. 

1. Keep your marketing simple and focused. Trying to do too much at once can be overwhelming and ineffective. Instead, choose one or two marketing channels (such as email marketing or social media) and focus your efforts on those one at a time.
2. Direct mail is an overlooked way to market a business, but to be successful, it’s all about numbers. A well-designed mailer to a qualified list will probably bring a one percent response. Keep 10% of your direct mail budget for testing so you don’t get stuck trying things that may be brining mediocre results.
3. Know the power of repetition and be consistent with your marketing. Once you have a plan in place, stick to it and keep fine tuning! Consistent marketing will help you build trust and credibility with your audience over time.
4. In today’s world, video is a quickly growing tool that a business can use to reach its target audience. There are a number of reasons for this. Video is an incredibly engaging medium that can capture attention and hold it for long periods of time, and this content is shareable and can quickly make its way through social media. It’s important to note that YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine, with Tiktok quickly catching up, but most of your competitors are probably not using video content.
5. Don’t neglect or ignore your current customers while pursuing new ones. The most important order you ever get from a customer is the second order. It’s easy to fall into the trap of chasing new customers, but by neglecting your existing customers, who you should have a way to contact them again, are much easier to reach.  Studies show that it costs five times as much to sell a new customer as an existing customer.
6. Measure your results. Keep track of your marketing efforts and analyze the results regularly. This will help you determine what is working and what isn’t, so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
7. Marketing activities should be designed to increase profits, not just sales. While sales is often a number that gets talked about, it’s often a vanity number. What matters is how profitable those sales are.
8. Don’t think that product superiority, technology, innovation, years in business, or company size will sell itself. Selling what your customers need instead of what they want can lead to failure. People don’t buy products, they buy the benefits and solutions they believe the
9. The average business never hears from 96% of its dissatisfied customers, so it’s important to be proactive with customer retention and make sure your customers are satisfied. Fifty percent of those customers who complain would do business with the company again if their complaints were handled satisfactorily. It is estimated that customers are twice as likely to talk about their bad experiences as their good ones.
10. Marketing is everyone’s business, regardless of title or position in the organization.
11. Get to know your prime customers – the 20% of product users who account for 80% of the total consumption of that product class. While it can be hard to “fire” a customer, most businesses have a handful of difficult customers who take up a majority of their staff’s time and result in little to no profit. 
12. In addition to your website and social media, you can look at expanding your marketing strategy and venture into pay-per-click advertising (PPC) by using online marketing platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc, depending on the best source for your target audience. Online paid ads not only bring in new customers, but can also be used to retarget people who visited your site and keep your name in front of them. 
13. Blogs or content marketing is another great way to market your business, though it can be hard to consistently create high-quality content. By providing valuable information that is relevant to your target audience and industry, you can attract new customers and build trust with your existing ones. Additionally, blog posts can help to boost your search engine rankings, making it easier for potential customers to find your website and provide an opportunity to share your company’s story and connect with your customers on a personal level.
14. Speaking about your website, a stong online presence needs Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the practice of improving the ranking of a website on search engines like Google. Studies show that keywords that appear on the first page of search results receive the majority of web visitors and that traffic decreases quickly as you move down the page. This means that if your website is not well-optimized, it could be missing out on a lot of potential customers. 
15. Social media marketing is an effective way to connect with potential and current customers, and it’s a great way to build engagement and brand awareness at the same time. Customers can connect with businesses on social media platforms and get updates on new products, services, and sales. 
16. Email newsletters are an easy and low cost way to stay in touch with your target audience. You can share valuable information and updates to your email list without being too intrusive. Plus, if you regularly send out informative and interesting newsletters, your audience will begin to appreciate and look forward to hearing from you. 
17. Email newsletters also offer a high return on investment (ROI). In fact, Litmus has found that email marketing has a great ROI as every dollar spent on email marketing returns $36. 

As a small business owner, it’s important to market your company in the right ways. You want to make sure you’re reaching your target audience and that your marketing strategies are effective. There are many different avenues you can explore when it comes to marketing, and it’s important to find what works best for you and your business. Keep these tips in mind as you create or update your marketing plan – they could help you reach more customers and grow your business.