If you are a small business owner and have not been satisfied with your marketing efforts so far, then it's time to start thinking about taking your marketing to the next level. This article will share some of the most effective strategies that will help grow your business.

Small Business Owner

We're looking at you. As a small business owner, you're being pulled in so many directions every day. It's hard to keep up with trends, best practices, and other aspects of marketing for your small business.

We're here to help.

This post is the first in a series for small business owners ready and willing to take their marketing efforts from zero to sixty! The goal of this project is simple: we want you, as an entrepreneur, to grow your company's reach without sacrificing time or energy. Even if you don't use our services, using our advice can help you find the right marketing plan with any marketing budget, even a shoestring budget! Strap in and get ready for some small business marketing ideas!

What is Your Product Or Service?

This may seem silly, but you need to consider what your target audience is looking for specifically. They are seeking information, often on your online business profile, website, or social media pages. If you don't know what your business is positioned to sell to your target audience, then you can not create a solid marketing plan. What are you selling? What makes you different? If you're not sure, that's okay. The best thing to do is write down your target audience and what they want from you. This will help when it comes time to craft your marketing messages for a particular group.

Your Website Is Your Businesses Front Door To The Internet

It's essential to start with a high-quality website that represents your brand. High quality does not always mean robust and full of content. We often tell clients to stick to the most important pages first and come back to add content later. Be sure that your business name, products, and valuable content are all easily accessible on your website.

It's important to imagine how your target market is going to engage with your website. What product or service is your buyer persona (target customer) looking for, and what type of customers are you trying to attract? Keep your website strategy straightforward and put your preferences to the side to focus on your customers. Putting your own bias to the side can be challenging, so sometimes, you need to find an expert website designer that can help guide you through this.

We recommend considering these four things to consider for your businesses website:

• What is your target market?
  • What makes your target market unique?
  • What product or service does your target market desire?
• What is the purpose of your website? Is it to sell a product, attract new customers or provide information about what you do? The answer will help shape every decision on your site.
  • Stay focused on this goal. We know that small business owners like you are always running in many directions, but it's essential to keep your focus.
• Whom are we trying to reach with this website, and how might they behave differently depending on their demographics?
• What tools can you provide potential customers that can build trust with your brand in a unique way?

Search Engine Optimization Call To Actions

Regardless of what type of customer you're trying to attract, there are a few key components that will help your website rank high in the search engine rankings.

Your content needs to be keyword-rich and offer value for users. You should also include straightforward navigation and call-to-action options on every page, with links back to critical.

What Is A Call To Action

If you are a marketer, your goal is to get people to take some sort of action. A call-to-action (CTA) button, for example, can prompt someone who has just read an article or watched a video on your site and share it with their friends online. The point is that your customers see this call to action and understand that it's the logical next step for them to engage with your business. You might already be using calls to action without realizing it. Have you ever posted on Facebook and said “Call us now” or “Visit our website!”? That's a call to action, and it's the message you want to communicate to your customers about your small business. You're already a small business marketing expert, and you didn't even realize it!

Content Marketing For Small Business 

Your website needs content, and content marketing is the idea that adding engaging content to your website that meets your target market's goals will add value and build trust. You can do this by researching your target markets individually and understanding what they are looking for online.

Content marketing is used to engage site visitors and provides potential customers with valuable information. It's also a way for companies to position themselves as an expert in their industry, build trust among new clients, and make buyers aware of what they offer.

The main challenge that small business owners face when it comes to content marketing is not producing enough content for their target market. There are two options we see small businesses choose most often.

First, we see business owners choose to do what is easiest for them. This may be creating videos on their blog and then transcribing the text to use as a blog. Some entrepreneurs decide it's best to sit down and transfer their knowledge to their website to write blogs.

Other small businesses determine that the best way to produce high-quality content is by hiring an expert business marketing agency like Distinct to handle this content marketing for them. They then have the time to focus on other aspects of their business.

Which option is best for you? It depends on your goals and resources. Whether writing blogs or videos, we recommend that small businesses start writing a monthly blog post at least 40% of the time and video content 20%.

How Do Your Target Customers Find Your Website?

A big mistake your business can make when creating a website is not paying attention to how visitors will find the site in the first place. Your primary concern should be getting traffic from search engines and social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, among other sources.

Fortunately for you, there's lots of help out there with optimizing your site for the search engines, social media sites, and other potential traffic sources by using tools like Google Analytics to help you track your progress.

This doesn't mean that SEO is all you need to focus on when it comes to marketing online. It's vital that your site has a clear purpose and offers value to users for them to build trust with your business.

SEO and Keyword Research

In order to rank highly on the first page of Google results, you need to be sure that your website is optimized for search. This means using keywords and phrases in title tags, meta descriptions, etc. However, it also requires a deeper understanding of how people are searching for content. You want to use popular questions or searches as well as long-tail keywords (phrases that involve your keyword) to make sure your website will find users looking for the specific keywords you're targeting.

Seo can also include local SEO using Google Maps. You can use Google My Business feature to claim your business' location and add it to the map. If you have a physical store, be sure that you are getting in touch with people on social media who live near you, so they know about your brick-and-mortar shop! Using Google My Business to focus on local SEO can be a “quick win” since there is always less competition locally than exists is online!

You can also use Google My Business, much like social media, in that you can post updates to your account. Regularly updating your Google My Business account will help your small business stand out locally!

You can even upload a list of your products to be displayed when your target buyer persona (target market) is googling for a product that you offer!

At Distinct, we often handle this aspect for our clients. We use tools that automatically update your Google My Business profile, post to it regularly, and distribute accurate information to listing websites all around the internet! All of these tools increase your SEO rating in various ways. In many ways updating your google my business account is as important as your social media marketing strategies like posting a message to Facebook, sharing blog posts, and other marketing ideas you may be using in your current small business marketing. 

Social Media Marketing

What is your social media strategy?

Social media marketing is an increasingly popular form of digital marketing that can be used to achieve a number of business goals, including building brand awareness, generating leads, and driving sales.

The most common social networks for small businesses are Facebook (FB), LinkedIn (LNKD), and Twitter (TWTR).

Research shows that the average person spends countless hours on social media, and if you're not reaching them with your brand message, then you're missing out. There are many marketing tools that can assist in scheduling your social media posts and help you measure the effectiveness of your social media campaign.

We find that most of our clients are going to have success on Facebook more than other platforms, but this can vary depending on your target market. We work mostly with B2C businesses, which are small businesses that focus on selling to consumers. Facebook is the largest social network worldwide for consumers, so it's logical that no matter where you're located there, will be more users on Facebook than on other platforms.

You can use social media tools to perform market research and better understand if your audience is on a social media platform.

At Distinct, we have our own social media tool that we love! We use it for our clients and can even license it to clients if we're not managing their social media. It allows us to manage their Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin, Google My Business, Instagram, and Twitter accounts all in one place! IT's much easier to focus on new marketing ideas when you can handle all of your social media in a single dashboard. We base all of our workflows around what it's like to be a small business and what can be effective for small business marketing strategies. 

Email Marketing As A Small Business Marketing Strategy

Email marketing is a great way to communicate with your audience. It's something we often see overlooked in marketing tips. You can ask them if they have any questions, what their thoughts are on an article you just published, or promote upcoming events. If someone opens and reads an email from you, it's more likely that they will remember who you are when it comes time for your business to resurface in their decision-making process. It's also a way to ensure you're reaching your target audience since they opted to provide your small business with their email address.

At Distinct, we choose to use Zoho campaigns as we love its free version for most of our clients, and it can is customizable as a part of our services to clients.

The most popular email marketing software is Mailchimp. There are plenty of other options out there, but this company is rated among the best for ease of use and cost-effectiveness. You can send your emails in several ways – through social media, an actual mailing list that you maintain yourself, or automated messages.

Tying It All Together For your Small Business Marketing Strategy

We've given you quite a few marketing ideas already, and it's natural to be overwhelmed. Save this article and come back to it over time. If you're utilizing a shoestring budget for your small business marketing strategy, then start with the items you're comfortable handling your own. Choose the marketing channels that work best for your brand. It can be an easy win to offer coupons online that you don't offer anywhere else. For example, if your business targets a niche of entrepreneurs, then offering exclusive discounts for people in the same industry may help grow your audience base and make them feel like they're part of something important.

Many entrepreneurs decide to use a marketing plan template to focus their marketing around products and content that work best for them. Ultimately, there are so many strategies you can utilize that it's most important to pick one and run with it. You know your audience better than anyone, so find marketing tactics that you know will work.

The key to success is staying committed to your marketing ideas. You now have many ways to market your business at your disposal, and you're likely already aware of an ideal marketing channel for your small business. With all of these marketing strategies at your disposal, you have options for many budgets. Personally, I'm excited to see what marketing tactics work for you!

Small Business Marketing 

Small business marketing comes in many forms, and our focus at Distinct is to create a digital marketing strategy for small businesses. This can often include social media, blog posts, marketing ideas, brand guidelines, social media accounts, content marketing, creating content, marketing plan templates, business profiles, advertising, and more. 

We start by reviewing your current marketing plan, goals, and objectives to find out what you are trying to achieve with your business. We then brainstorm ideas for how we can help improve each area of the company (e.g., customer acquisition, retention) so that they align with these overall objectives. Once this has been mapped out, our team begins to execute a marketing plan for you. Often times that includes online advertising, implementing long-term strategies, blog posts, and other marketing ideas.

Our company can be a cost-effective alternative for small businesses who need to maintain a robust marketing plan without investing in an in-house team of small business marketers.

Marketing Vs. Sales – How Do They Affect Your Businesses Goals?

This is the most important question to ask, no matter what your goal for growing your business. Marketing and sales are two different but equally valuable functions. To understand how they work together to achieve those goals, let's take a look at both sides of the coin: marketing and sales.

Marketing is about building brand awareness and trust with your customers. It's about connecting on an emotional level and building a relationship with them. It can be as simple as giving out freebies to potential customers in order to get their contact information, or it can involve long-term campaigns that are intended to shape public opinion.

Marketing starts by generating awareness for the product or service and building a following around it. Once someone has taken notice of what you offer, they will start to develop an interest in

Sales is all about closing deals with customers based on those connections you build through your marketing strategies. You need to be able to present your product in a way that resonates with the customers' wants and needs.

Many businesses confuse marketing and sales or don't understand that there is a great difference between the two. Marketing is about telling people what you're selling, whereas sales is all about closing deals with customers based on those connections that you build through your marketing strategies.

How does this information affect the way you look at your customers through a marketing and sales lens?

Is Small Business Marketing Getting Easier?

We don't want to deliver the bad news to your business, but we don't think small business marketing is getting easier. There are more options than ever to choose from, and it's important to understand that not all marketing strategies are created equal. Are you ready for a challenge? We think you are!

In 2021 you have to worry about websites, emails, social media, mobile responsiveness, Google My Business, SEO, Local SEO, new platforms, and the list goes on. It's information overload!

So how do you know which marketing activity is best for your business? You have to start somewhere. The first step in determining what strategy will work best for your small business is identifying the type of customer that's likely to be interested in your product or service and then creating a list of their favorite social media networks. We've covered this information in-depth, and you're ready to take it head-on to reach your customers online! Your brand is ready to take over and build trust with the content we've provided you! Are you ready for growth? You have unlimited access to marketing growth if you use the content we've suggested and follow our advice!

What Marketing Tips Are We Missing?

There are many ways to market your small business, and we can't cover them all in one post. If we wrote much more, we would need to include a table of contents! Depending on your product, you need to find the right marketing ideas for you based on the information you have on hand. Focus your products on this audience. These people will begin to identify with your brand, they will engage with your business, and you'll begin to see success with your small business marketing strategies.

Ultimately, Distinct is a Marketing Agency focused on small business marketing. We understand that our target client can't always afford our services, and we want to help them be as successful as possible without breaking the bank. We hope this post has launched you in the right direction, and we've love to work with you in the future!