You might think that your small business needs a big marketing budget, but this isn’t always the case. Marketing is incredibly important to your success and there are plenty of different avenues you can use to attract new customers. Some of these are costly and involved, requiring expensive application subscriptions or time-consuming software management. You probably aren’t interested in those, and it’s no wonder! Instead, try to focus your energy on some of the easier tactics that can yield just as many results.
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Good Press
Never underestimate the value of good press. Getting your name into the local newspaper, online magazine or any other publication that reaches your readers is a free approach to small business marketing. Consider writing up press releases when your business reaches a milestone or starts offering something unique. Take any opportunity to be interviewed by publications and try to always offer helpful insights. This helps you to raise awareness and paint a picture of who your brand is and what it stands for.
Social Media
You could even generate your own good press by leveraging your business’s social media channels. Social media is the ideal space to engage with your audience and establish your brand identity. You can post about sales, new products, or changes in the company. The space could even be used to get customer feedback, survey new ideas or generate new leads.
The goal of your social media marketing should be to engage your followers and pull in more people. Luckily, these two objectives can work in tandem. A popular method of gaining more followers is to do a social media giveaway. Followers have to tag friends in the comments and every friend tagged is an entry to win. Those friends might go follow your page just so they can have more chances to get free SWAG.
Content Marketing
Another easy way to boost your profile is to utilize content marketing on your business website. (And if you don’t have a website, definitely get one.) This can be as simple as starting a company blog and consistently posting for your clients. The key here is to remember that everything you post should bring value to your customers. Instead of focusing on an award you won or how you’re leading the industry, focus your blog topics on the questions your customers are asking.
You can even use your blogs to convert leads into sales. To do this, you simply include a call to action at the end of your blog asking the reader to do something specific like schedule a meeting or sign up for a free trial. You can link to another page on your website so it’s easy for them to get set up and start doing business with you.
SEO
If you want to go one step further with your content marketing, you could use search engine optimization. This is the practice of tailoring your content so it is more likely to appear in the top hits on a Google (or other search engine’s) results page. There’s a lot that can go into SEO, but the easiest way to approach it is by using keywords.
Finding a keyword that’s relevant to your industry can help you choose topics that you know users are searching for. As you create content around these conversations, you can drive more organic traffic to your website—people who weren’t searching for you specifically. These people can then enter your sales funnels or stumble across your CTAs and might become loyal customers.
Email Marketing
Don’t forget the power of email! If you’ve built up a healthy email list, then you can use those addresses to consistently market yourself through coordinated campaigns. There are some programs that can help you tailor offers and email text, but to start, you can work with what you have and start sending promotional emails yourself. Whatever works best for you and your budget!