Best Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

If you’ve just started up your business you definitely need marketing. This article will give you 21 marketing tips for small businesses that you should absolutely be employing.

1.Publish Great Content
You need to think of your content as an advertisement. You won’t publish a dull looking design on a billboard advertisement. So don’t do the same for your content. I’m not saying that the content has to have fancy designs or anything, rather it needs to be valuable content that your audience will love to read and share.

2.Create Tutorials
Tutorials that teach your audience how to do something is excellent. If its in video form then that is even better. It’s never been more easy to create videos. Pull out your smartphone and upload it to YouTube. Cheap and effective.

3.Use PPC vouchers (adwords etc)
Companies like Google and Bing are always giving out vouchers for you to try out their advertising platform. This will allow you to test your PPC (Pay Per Click) Campaign without using much of your own money. Take the plunge and try it out!

4.Get On Social Media
Post fun and interesting stuff that your market will love so much that they will tell others about it. If your content is shared enough times it can create a great buzz around your brand.

5.Use Infographics
Using infographics can be a fun way to educate your audience. It’s like a digital poster that is more attractive to look at rather than some dull text. Hire a designer to create one for you and slap your company logo on it. Every time its shared by someone your brand will also be shared.

6.Develop a Customer Referral Program 
This is a great way for you to get leads from your current customers. Tell them to tell their friends about your products and give them both a small reward. For example, 10% off for you and your friend.

7.Online Contests
This is another great way to create a buzz around your brand and more importantly drive sales. The prize doesn’t need to be expensive but just something that people would want. Also don’t go too cheap!

8.Email Marketing
This is actually a must no matter what business your in. Your email list is actually one of your biggest assets. With it you can update your customers with updates and new offers.

9.Always A/B test
No matter what form of advertising you are employing, you need to a/b test or split test. For example if you have a landing page, you should create an alternative one so that you can see which one performs better. One will always do better than the other. Once you see which one is doing better delete the other one and replace it with a new one.

10.Send newsletters
This is related to email marketing because you will be using email to send out your newsletter. Your newsletter is a short update you send out to your list at least once a week. In it you should have the latest news in your industry.

11.Classified ads
This is something you have most probably done but it still needs to be said. Just make sure you post ads on places like Gumtree about your services. Add loads of pictures and describe it well!

12.Get blogging and Comment on others’ blogs
Blogging is a great way to provide great content to your audience whilst getting organic search traffic from the search engines. Google ranks websites high in their search engine if the content is natural and engaging. You must have the right keywords in there if you want to be ranked highly. However, don’t pick keywords that are too competitive. Google’s keyword tool is an invaluable too to find out what kind of search volume a keyword is getting. You should also comment on related blogs because this will get you noticed. Post meaningful comments but don’t self promote!

13.Upsell Straight Away
The best time to sell to someone is the just after they have bought something from you. These customers are ready to buy; they already have their credit card in their hand so grab the opportunity while you can. If you still don’t get the gist I will give you a classic example. McDonalds- “do you want fries with that”. Straight after you’ve ordered something they will try and sell more to you. So don’t underestimate the Power of upselling!

14.Join forums
Joining in on forum discussions is a great way to pose your authority in your industry. When people see you as an authority they are more likely to do business with you.

15.Create A Survey
If you already have a customer database you can survey them to find out what they want or aren’t happy with. With this new found information you can tweek your products and services to suit your customers.

16.Employ scarcity offers
Having deadlines on offers is a great way to get people to buy your product or service. Psychologically, having a deadline makes people want to snap up your deals before its gone!

17.Create a Fear of not Having your Product
This ties in with the scarcity method. If people think that your product or service will no longer be available it will create a sense of urgency when deciding to purchase.

18.Say Thank You
When you’re leaving a supermarket or retail store what do you see as you are exiting. “Thank You for shopping with us”. Just saying thank you to your customers is a great way to make them feel appreciated. Like their business means something to you. More importantly this will make them want to shop with in the future.

19.Exceed in Value
When your providing a service or selling a product always try and over deliver. Your customers will love you for it. And when your customers love you they wont think twice about doing business with you in the future even if you are slightly more expensive that your competitors.

20.Be an Industry Expert
If you position yourself/business as an expert people will see you as an authority. When they see you as an authority you won’t have to do much to make them buy your products and services.

21.Your Best Customers Are Your Existing Ones
Considering you have delivered good service, these customers already know and trust you, so selling to them won’t be too hard. Therefore, a good chunk of your marketing efforts should be focused on these customers.

22.Always State Up-to-date With Your Competitors
No one starts a business without analysing the competition. So you shouldn’t stop analysing them once you are up and running. Business is an ever changing entity so understanding what your competition are doing is of extreme importance.

That’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed our 21 marketing tips for small businesses. If you employ these tips you are doing what a large percentage of businesses aren’t doing. As simple as they seem, people are just not implementing them into their marketing plan. Make sure you do!

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