4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing

4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing

Whenever I'm talking to a new business owner they always say something along the lines of "I've always wanted to start my own business, I just didn't know how everything worked and it scared me off for a while" and that's completely understandable.  The only problem is that when they start up their business they focus so much on how everything is going to operate from how they will get orders ready or how they will ship something out, that they forget about how they're going to get customers in.

For this simple reason, you see almost 50% of small businesses fail within the first 3 years.  They don't focus on traffic and lead generation as soon as they should, and they end up falling behind on bills and playing catch up the whole time they're in business.

Many people with business dreams don't even get to this point.  They usually are scared to start up because they don't want to fail, which is inevitable.  You will fail, on some level, and it's unavoidable.  You need to embrace it and see it as a learning experience

In this discussion I'm going to go over 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing.  This discussion should help out those newer business owners, and maybe some old businesses, when it comes to marketing


1. Unique Value Proposition or UVP
First off you will need to figure out what type of void your business will fill in your industry and why people should be using you instead of someone else.  Now you could be doing something another company is doing, but what makes you different and more valuable?

You will most likely have competitors when you start your business, so figure out who the top dogs are and write down what they're all about and see what differentiates you from them.  Know everything you can about your industry, get informed, and stay on top of the news revolving around your niche so you're never caught off guard.  You will be able to see trends developing and this means you can create a service or product to compliment that trend and pull in more clients because of it.

You will need to figure out who your target market is and what exactly they want from you.  This is one of the more important things because you will be able to figure out who you want to advertise to and what to push in terms of products of services.  Never assume that people want something, always do some research before you waste your time advertising something they don't like.

You need to be clear about what your services or products are so there isn't any confusion from you customers.  You will need to define why you're unique and why they should be working with you and not your competitors.

Remember, you're not selling to everyone in the world.  You're just targeting a specific group or groups in order to have the best outcome.  You will define who you're targeting, why they would want your products or services and how you can get it in front of them.  After you figure this out, you will now have to start marketing.


2. Increase Your Presence
Now that you did all of step 1, you know understand what your industry is about and what the people want.  In this step, you're going to be increasing your presence online in order for people to find you, talk about you and even contact you directly.

First:  Make sure your website is in tip top shape and nothing is broken.  You don't want to start marketing and realize that when someone gets to your website, it isn't loading.  Work on all the technical stuff so that your website loads properly, it loads quickly, and everything is working.  You will also need to make it easily navigatible so that people can quickly find what they're looking for.

Usually you'll want to add some sort of newsletter sign up form on your homepage or in your footer so that you can collect emails.  Not every niche will benefit from this, but the majority will.  This will allow you to collect their emails and send out newsletters to them that talk about your business, services, updates, etc. 

You will want to add a blog to your website, this can easily be done using WordPress and adding it to a sub-folder.  If you don't want to spring for a premium theme, you can always use one of the free ones that will show up in your WordPress dashboard.  Your blog will need to be active which means you will need to post at least once a week to it.  I usually recommend a minimum of twice a week, but I guess it really depends on your niche and how active your competitors are.  You can even schedule posts, which means you can write up 8 posts in one day and then schedule them to be published throughout the month.

You will need to go off of your website and begin to build a presence.  This doesn't mean that you should just go to every website you can think of and spam your URL.  You can go to websites like Yelp and Angies List in order to get your listing up and running.  You can also go to BBB.org to get your business listed as well as add it to Google My Business for local listings.  This all will help validate your business in the eyes of the consumer and they may make a purchasing decision before they even get to your website

Be sure to keep it consistent when talking with people online.  This means if you're on your website, blog, chat, email, review platform, social media pages, etc. you will need to have the same voice all over the place in order to be seen in a good light.  Every time you're talking to someone you need to see it as building your brand.


3. Start The Conversation
Social media is a low cost way to start branding your business and help bring in clients because you can get super targeted.

Choose where your clients will likely be: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.

Each platform has a different demographic, so be sure to figure out which one would be best for you to target, before you begin.  When you do begin, be consistent with your posts and the platforms will treat you better over time in terms of traffic, followers and indirect sales   You will likely need to write up a schedule and stick to it.  Write for 30 minutes whenever you start working, answer any questions that come in through your morning posts and then write for another 30 minutes at the end of the day.  This way you will consistently have content going through your social media profiles and you'll be interacting with all your visitors at the same time.

You won't want to just publish posts about what you're selling.  You will want to include updates about what you're doing with your business such as new partnerships, where you're getting seen in the news and even give a sneak peek behind the scenes of your business.  People will come in and comment on your posts, hopefully, and this is positive engagement if you do it right


4. Think About Paid Content
Paid traffic is nothing new, but have you ever through about boosting a social media post on a platform such as Facebook?  This will help you get in front of loads of potential clients and they will likely read what you wrote.  If they read it all, they will likely follow you

The beauty of this is that you can get super targeted and get your ad in front of specific people that will have a higher chance of converting into a sale or sign up.

If you do decide to go this route, you will need to manage how much money you're pushing into it and tweaking your campaign for the best performance possible.  You'll likely screw up your first campaign if you don't know what you're doing, and this is why you should start slow.  Don't go all in, in the beginning because you'll likely lose a lot of money that you didn't have to throw away.



It doesn't matter how large your business is, anyone can utilize the 4 things I mentioned above in order to help dominate their industries marketing.  You can be your own chief marketing officer even if you don't have any experience, or a degree, in marketing.  You just need to know your industry and take it slow until you know what works and what doesn't.  After you figure that out, you're good to go all in or simply increase your time invested in this




In Conclusion:
Every business needs to be doing online marketing whether it's them doing it or outsourcing the work to a freelancer or company to do it.  If you're not marketing your own business, you're just falling behind your competitors.  So get out there and start working on your marketing already



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Thanks!

Razzy