Starting your own small business is no easy feat — there are a lot of moving parts when trying to drive growth and awareness to your brand. Luckily, a good small business marketing strategy can help you achieve this, but where do you start?
When getting started with your marketing strategy, there are 13 steps you can follow to help you achieve growth. This includes:
- Identifying your audience: Understand who your customers are through persona profiles and learn what marketing channels, goals, and messaging will be the most effective.
- Defining why you’re different: Create a unique selling proposition and value proposition to help you define why you’re different from the competition.
- Creating an online presence: Make sure your brand is prevalent online; this includes a business website and/or blog, Yelp pages, social media profiles, and more.
- Building a marketing plan: Next, you’ll need a marketing plan to help you organize and plan your efforts. Do this by identifying your competitors, analyzing your current situation, setting your goals and KPIs, creating your budget, and picking your marketing channels.
- Making a website: Your business will need to have a website, especially if you’re in eCommerce. Make sure this website is user-friendly and mobile-friendly.
- Optimizing for SEO: After making your website, make sure it’s optimized for SEO.
- Set up social media accounts: In a digital-first world, it’s important to create social media for your business to gain a following and awareness. This can be Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more.
- Claiming listings online: Give customers more opportunities to find you by claiming your business listings on sites like Google and Yelp.
- Looking into email marketing: Email marketing can help you easily market your business and create an audience.
- Considering advertising efforts: Look into adding advertising to your marketing efforts, such as pay-per-click, cost-per-impression, and cost-per-lead advertising.
- Building a rewards and customer loyalty program: Implementing a rewards or loyalty program can help your business retain customers and show them your appreciation.
- Getting involved with your community: Getting to know those in the community can help you build and foster relationships with new customers.
- Asking for help: Not being afraid to ask for help is important when marketing your small business. Help can come from friends and family, as well as other agencies, software, and resources.
Please include attribution to Solo Global with this graphic.
