SIX MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS

Imran Rashid Khan

Small business owners are increasingly showing concerns about effectively marketing their businesses. Small business owners should take knowledgeable actions, which may seem small now, but will prove to be a major factor in the stability and growth of their businesses.

Here are six (6) simple tips for building a better marketing strategy for your small business, one that will put your customers first and your business second to none.

1. Develop a Marketing Budget.

Customer attraction and retention are the two most pressing concerns for small business owners. While few of them spend minimal amounts on marketing their business, majority of small business owners don’t spend any money on marketing.

Small business owners should put aside a flexible budget to tackle new marketing opportunities and ideas so as to better position their business. Consumers are increasingly researching products or services to make purchases, so return-on-investment (ROI) should be the key factor by which to measure your marketing efforts. Business which spend very less or nothing on their marketing will only hurt their bottom line. Small businesses should make smart investments in marketing so they are better positioned to attract customers now and in the future.

2. Build a Website.

A website is the essential component for any business to have an online virtual presence. It is through your business website that your current and potential customers will find you and connect with you. Whether you are building you business website now, or looking to improve the one you already have keep the following things in mind:

•  Your business contact information (address, phone number, email, etc) should be promptly displayed on each page of your website, not just in your Contact or About Us page. Make sure that your business contact information is consistent and updated on all online business listing sites.
• Enlist the help of a professional website designer to build a visually appealing and easy to navigate website. Your website should be SEO optimized.
• Keep your website content current and updated so that it is relevant to those visiting your site and help in higher ranking of your site in search engine results. Update your site with promotions, offerings and introducing new products and services. Use analytical tools to find out from where your visitors are coming from, and how they are finding you. This will help you in improving the customer experience of your visitors, ensuring return visitors.

3. Make Your Website Mobile-Optimized.

Increasingly consumers are using Smartphones and tablets to search for local businesses and to shop for products and services, so ensure that your website is mobile-optimized or responsive. Ignoring this opportunity will diminish the chances for securing business from these visitors.

4. SUBSCRIBE TO LOCAL LISTINGS.

Get your business listed in the local listing, and make sure it is in the appropriate category. Make your listing accurate and complete. Ensuring that your business listing is complete and accurate plays an important role in determining whether your customers reviewing your listing can move forward with contacting you and making a purchase. Include business address, phone number, website address, email address, social media channel addresses, photos, offerings, etc. This will help your customers to get as much information as they need about your business before making a decision.

5. MANAGE TESTIMONIALS AND REVIEWS.

Before the online revolution, consumers placed their trust on word-to-mouth testimonials, same way online reviews and testimonials play an important role in driving consumers purchasing behavior. Small business owners should ensure that their customers can reach them directly through varied means. Regular monitoring should be in place of the reviews. All reviews especially the negatives one should be replied promptly in a professional way with focus to remedy the issue. After every transaction or services provided, an email should be sent to your customer asking them to leave feedback on your website or your business social media channel.

6. BUILD A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE.

With the advent of online social media platforms, consumers are spending more and more time on social media not only interacting with their family and friends, but also with popular brands. Small business owners are increasingly engaging their loyal and potential customers through social media channels. Before jumping onto the bandwagon, small business owners should take in to account the following things:

• Begin by selecting which social media platform will be more appropriate for your business. Facebook and Twitter provide strong platforms to reach your customers with offerings, promotions, and the like. These platforms also have the ability to engage in one-to-one conversations with their customers answering to feedbacks, queries, and complaints. For businesses dealing in clothing, furniture, art, and other kinds of designing Pintrest can provide a platform for sharing visually their offerings. And sites like YouTube can help businesses to post ‘how-to-do’ videos.
• Once your business social media channel(s) have been created, share the information. Keep updating it with relevant information. Include compelling photos, videos, and other visual content so that your followers keep coming back and stay connected. Your business social media channel(s) are an extension of your online presence, respond to any inquiries, questions, and other comments promptly.

FINAL WORDS

Small business owners should measure results from their marketing initiatives. They should find out how well their marketing strategies have worked, and what else they can or should be doing. Develop a reporting mechanism that will enable you to see the impact of the marketing activities on your business. Soon you will start seeing the benefits of your business marketing activities at work – the ability of your business to retain and attract customers.

Outsource the work

Nowadays competition has grown so much among businesses that it has become difficult to hire permanent experts staff for different jobs separately, especially if you are a small businesses or a start-up.

Getting a start-up on its feet can require a lot of hard work and patience, juggling many tasks at one time can be an enormous burden on the entrepreneur. To resolve this issue a start-up or a small business can always outsource the specialized tasks to outsiders called Freelancers.

Freelancers are people who are self-employed and work independently and sell their specialized services without any long term commitment. Freelancers are paid on project basis either per hour, per call, per word, or in lum sum basis. A freelancer takes direction from its clients on what the end product should be or how the task should be performed.

Freelancing is not an option, but has become a necessity for start-ups and small businesses to stay competitive. There is cost saving and enormous benefits for tapping into the talent pool of freelancers. By outsourcing your tasks to a freelancer, a business saves time and money. For example, to launch a start-up specialized skills are required which may be beyond the capabilities of either the staff or the entrepreneur him/her self like launching a website, writing a business plan, setting up the social network on internet like facebook, linkedin, etc,. Hiring a freelancer with specialized skills for specific tasks will save a lot of time and money. “Outsourcing is going to be the distinction for small business to stay competitive.” according to Lorri Rowlandson, president of Rowlandson Inc., an outsourcing advisory firm.

An entrepreneur may be jack-of-all-trades who can take any role, but if the task is very specialized, it may get done faster if outsourced to a freelancer who knows the job, and this will give a chance for the entrepreneur to better spend time on day-to-day tasks. There is a lot of stress on entrepreneurs to get so many things done and time is wasted if you are teaching yourself how to do things, where as time is critical for small businesses.

Expert freelancers can be hired from online marketplaces setup to bring freelancers and the clients at one place. Employers can hire freelancers to do work in areas such as software development, content writing, data entry, designing logo and stationary, sales and marketing, and accounting & legal services. Projects can be successfully outsourced through freelancer.com, Elance.com, oDesk.com and vWorker.com, to name a few.  When using these marketplaces an employer can limit the risk of security when confidential company information is being exchanged. Freelancers can be hired by going through their portfolios and user reviews.

While outsourcing lines of communication should be open, the entrepreneur should be straightforward and be specific when assigning tasks, avoiding using phrases which are informal or acronyms. Make sure to leverage all kinds of communication tools like email or Skype. Payments can be made through PayPal or Western Union.

All in all outsourcing can be an effective way to do business and succeed, where the only limit to what can be outsourced is your own imagination.