Marketing for Small Businesses: What can you do differently in 2020 to boost your growth?

Marketing. When we hear this word, we visualize a bunch of well-dressed individuals in a Think Tank creating ideas for their next advertisement campaign. Frankly, we got this visual from Hollywood. As you are just starting up, marketing your business on a large scale sounds unnecessary and pricey. But what Hollywood shows us is only a small island in a huge sea of Marketing.

In this digital era, your online presence and visibility matter the most. If you advertise your business online the correct way, you can grab those customers before your competitor does. Marketing is crucial for your business, as it makes sure that you are reaching the right audience. Someone said, “If you can correctly advertise your product, you’ll feel like your business is running on autopilot.” In this blog, we’ll talk about how you can market your business online in an effective and cost-efficient way.

Write useful content

Let’s assume that you are selling shoes online named “Alpha Shoes.” It is durable, it looks great, it is lightweight, and it is available in different colors. But is your audience searching for ‘Alpha Shoes’ on Google? Probably not. Overhead expenses primarily consist of staffing costs and additional expenses required for building the environment where the staff can operate. The additional expenses may include Infrastructure, Computing and communication systems, Travelling expenses, Food and beverage, additional benefits mandated by the government, etc.

Now, what if you wrote an article named “Awesome shoes to gift yourself this Christmas.” In this article, you’ll use keywords like Awesome shoes, durable shoes, Christmas deals in Shoes, White shoes, etc. When a person searches for these keywords, your article will pop up on the front page of Google. The searcher now knows about ‘Alpha Shoes.’ If they like your product, there is a high chance that they will buy it. The reason behind this is, when a person searches for a specific product, it means that there is a need.

The sales conversion rate from an article is higher than the conversion rate from advertising. Advertisements in sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, works great. But, when a user sees these advertisements, they’ll not be explicitly looking for shoes. For all we know, they just came to Facebook to laugh at memes. Factually, bringing your business on the front page of Google increases your sales.

Be an active Social Media User:

Statistics showing how much time an average user spends on each social media website:
If you are active on your company’s social media profile, you are visible to the millions of users every day. Post engaging content daily, reply to the comments, be a social media influencer.

Some things that you can do to make your social media more engaging:

Post on your twitter daily.
Create instructional YouTube videos.
Upload great and relevant pictures on Instagram.
Create a Subreddit for your company and post content that is useful and humoristic. Remember Tesla’s Cybertruck? 200k units booked in 2 days, without any paid advertisement and only memes.
Post on your company’s LinkedIn page daily, and write at least one article per week.
Build a Facebook page and manage it.

Advertise online

Platforms like: Google AdWords, Facebook Business, YouTube Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Reddit Ads, etc allows you to reach a specific audience.

In Google Adwords, you’ll have to perform simple keyword research on what’s trending, and you can run an advertisement on that keyword. When a user searches for those keywords, your advertisement will be on the top of the Google search results’ front page.

YouTube ads are also search based. So, the same technique applies to it.

Reddit Ads and Facebook business work on user behavior. You can customize the target audience according to your product.

LinkedIn Ads are targeted according to the user’s information, like Title, Company, Location, etc.

Be informed about the hashtags

Hashtags are just keywords with extra steps. Don’t forget to use them in your every post. You can also promote social causes at your company’s social media handle. For example, #teamtrees is trending on the internet at this moment. Teamtrees will plant a tree for every $1 donated and they plan to reach $20M by the end of 2019. Promoting these kinds of social causes will not only bring you more followers and visitors, but you’ll help a good cause. So this is a win-win situation.

Do Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best ways to engage your existing customers and gain new ones. Give an option to subscribe to your newsletters on your website. And when a user subscribes, you can reward them with things like a free eBook or a discount on your product, etc.

It can be anything like:

An ebook on ‘how to take care of your shoes, so they last for a longer time.’
15% off on their next purchase.
Free Delivery on their next purchase

You just need to have something to give them.

Email your subscribers every week or fortnight. Even if the receivers don’t act immediately after reading your email, your brand will earn a place in their subconscious mind. So, next time they are thinking about purchasing shoes, ‘Alpha Shoes’ will be readily available in their mind.

Create a Customer Referral Program

Referral rewards work great. Reward your customers whenever they invite someone and the invitee purchase your product. It can be things like a $5 voucher, a 40% off coupon, etc. There is no better form of advertising than good word of mouth. If you are the “My Brand” to your existing customers, they will act as promoters to your company and bring new customers.

To conclude, Sooner or later, your business will grow to a point where it is actually big. Then, you can hire those perfectly dressed individuals who will sit in a Think Tank and create ideas for your next advertisement campaign. Till then, try these methods, it works.