1. Start With a Website
In the 21st century, if you want to survive as a business, local, regional, or international, you will need a website. Your website is the only way of showing distant customers who you are and what you are all about. If your marketing campaign is going well, then you will need to have a website so the potential customers can get more information about you. Work on your website so that it can properly portray your brand’s personality, and what sets you apart from the competition. Leave as many different gateways into your website as possible (without it being spam, as you will reach the opposite effect that way). There are free website versions that you can use, but if you want your business to prosper, you will need to use a professionally tailored one that you pay for. If you lack the capabilities of making a website yourself, hire an established professional to do it for you.
2. Get Noticed With SEO
Physical marketing is good and all, but when you are among the top searches for a certain keyword, you know you are doing something right. Consider a well-optimized website the house of your business and SEO the front door. In order to achieve a successful SEO, you need to fill out the technical criteria while aiming to gain attraction for your website by following three rules: be relevant, original, and maintain website functionality.
The technical criteria are fulfilled by ensuring Google can quickly get access to all the pages you wish to rank.
Be relevant by providing a product/service that has a demand, have your keywords be optimized by adding your industry, the location of the business (remember, Google has incredible location-based results), and posting and maintaining a blog on your website.
Be original by making your own original content. High-quality content is respected and it will pique the interest of the reader, and raise your reputation.
Maintaining your website is the last piece of the puzzle. When you’ve reeled the user in, you need to make sure that their browsing experience is as good as it gets by maintaining great loading speed. If your website cannot handle multiple logins at once and starts lagging out, it will not bode well for you.
After you are done optimizing titles and keywords, it’s time to find an external site that will publish your works and get you noticed.
3. Create Listings on the Top Directories
Smaller directories often pull data from larger ones, this means that if you create listings on major sites, it will flow into smaller directories resulting in extra noticeability. Generally, major directories are free, but with payments, they unlock extra features. So set your eyes on these directories: Google, Bing, Yelp, Facebook, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Instagram, Yellow pages, and specialized directories like TripAdvisor and Craigslist.
4. Utilize Advertising Channels
With everything being digitalized, it will be most profitable to utilize digital advertising channels, as they are generally cheaper than traditional ones like TV, radio, and newspaper ads. Also, it’s easier to track the effectiveness of digital advertising channels, and you can reach your target demographic easier. For example, if your main target audience is constituted of males between the ages of 25 and 34 (it is the largest demographic of Facebook users), then you can opt for Facebook ads. You can also pull off some little tricks here and there, like having stickers on your car as you drive around the city (preferably as close to the city center as possible), and sending limited-time holiday discounts to your mailing list.
5. Marketing on Social Media
Social media is one of the most key marketing tools that a small business can use. It allows you to reach your target audience way easier than by almost any other means, especially if the target audience is a relatively younger demographic. After all, the number of people that use social media is roughly 3.7 Billion in 2021, and Statista estimated that that number will only grow. Securing partnerships with social media influencers can be the bridge that ties your audience and your products together. This is also your chance to give off a good friendly vibe. You want the customer to feel a sense of attachment to you. Make them feel important and recognized, and not just mindless consumers. Again, this heavily depends on your target demographic, as some social media have different demographics so it’s best to do your research first. Do remember to keep track of analytics in order to see what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong.
6. Digital Marketing
To go a bit deeper on digital marketing categories there are two main ways of getting the point across to the consumer: Pay-per-click and advertising by display.
A variety of Pay-per-click has already been mentioned in the 4th paragraph, but to go deeper on the entire process. The whole thing works so that you pay every time a user clicks on your ad, giving you a rough estimate on how many people get curious about your product/service while optimizing marketing expenses.
Advertising by display is a form of marketing in which you focus on the brand you are promoting and how to get its existence across to the consumer. This is a better focus if you just want to get recognized.
7. Email Marketing
Email marketing often gets overlooked and shadowed by social media marketing, but it remains a reliable way of showing short-term urgency. It is best utilized if you use it rarely but when you do, you make sure to stress its importance. Things like end-of-year discounts, holiday discounts, special offers are all great ways of utilizing email marketing. Tailor the message to be as human as possible, so that people might even forward it to their friends. After all, face-to-face (or in this case personal email-to-personal email) marketing is a nice way of getting more exposure, and best of all, it’s free!
8. Stick Out in Your Local Community
We mainly focused on the digital aspect of promoting, now it’s time to focus on the physical part. For a small business, it is critical to be noticed and respected by your community. A great way of getting both of these things is by sponsoring a local event. Hosting or sponsoring business/educational events will get you more noticed while hosting or sponsoring charity/educational events will get you more respected. Think about it, what better way to advertise your business than with an acrylic display stand at an event to wow the guests as they come to attend. Not to mention that if all goes well, it will be talked about online as well (it’s a win-win situation).
About the Author
Harrison Buckley is a business consultant. He has a deep passion for technology and on days when he is not busy at the office, he writes to share his knowledge with the world.