Marketing in our online era is a dynamic and ever-evolving landscape. Choosing the right small business marketing strategy can help you introduce your products and services to the public through digital influencers, promotions, advertisements, and the like.
There’s no shortage of options…the problem is finding the ones that will work best for you.
What’s the best approach to a small business marketing strategy?
Your marketing strategy is a complex game plan that must be unique to you and your business. For example, your marketing strategy might be targeted to an intended audience during a specific time frame. If you operate a fashion retail business intended for pregnant women, you’ll need to create a game plan to help you boost product sales during pregnancy.
Once the identified time frame has ended, you may wish to shift marketing efforts to a different product line. The main thing to keep in mind is the need to deliver timely messages at actionable moments.
4 Ways to Identify the Most Appropriate Marketing Strategy
With constant changes in customer requirements, businesses have to keep pace and incorporate timely, relevant, and effective marketing schemes. While it may seem appealing to pick a marketing method based on what’s trendy, it’s important to keep in mind that all businesses are different.
You might have similar services and products as your competitors, but several factors will always be unique to you. If you’re currently working on your game plan, incorporate the following four guidelines to help you determine the right marketing strategies for your business.
1. Get your business goals down cold…in writing.
To help you choose a suitable strategy for your business, you need to articulate a well-defined objective. Your written goal will help you stay on track with your vision. You’ll be more inclined to take suggestions, opportunities, and necessary risks that’ll help you progress further toward it. Written objectives will save you time and empower you to reject seemingly appealing strategies that are likely to fail to make your target audience tick.
Moreover, keeping your written goals close at hand will help you develop the right campaigns. Focused campaigns help you reach your target audience and stay true to the objectives you have for your business.
For example, your goal might be to establish greater customer rapport and turn visitors into prospective clients. If this is the case, you might choose to work with agencies that offer SEO services to enhance the customer experience as they visit your website. By incorporating SEO metrics into your marketing scheme, your audience can be empowered to quickly find what they’re looking for. When they can quickly find what they need, they are more likely to become regular customers.
2. Maximize the marketing efforts you can pull off with existing resources.
If you have funds set aside to try out various marketing strategies, it only makes sense to explore your options through a few trial balloons. However, if — like most small business owners — you are working with a tight budget, you’ll want to maximize the marketing you can accomplish utilizing your existing resources and staff.
For instance, you might have one or two team members who possess compelling copywriting skills. Leverage that opportunity by offering training to help them hone their talents. Once they’re up to speed, these employees might even take on an array of content marketing campaigns including writing product descriptions, headlines, newsletters, white papers, and more.
You’ll also want to maximize your use of free online platforms to promote your products and services. Collaborate with your team leaders. Allow them to identify other staff who might have the ability to effectively manage social media platforms. You can then post informative and entertaining content and images on these digital channels to connect with your audience.
There’s a lot that you can do simply by examining what you already have. The right marketing strategy for your brand doesn’t have to be costly. You can simply maximize your existing talents and use them to win over new customers.
3. Get to know your audience.
With so many small business marketing strategies vying for your attention, it can be quite challenging to choose and incorporate methods that’ll elevate your brand. For instance, digital marketing strategies such as networking, SMS messaging schemes, pay-per-click ads, video marketing, and the like are all promising strategies that can increase your success rate.
However, one or more of these might not be relevant to your customer’s needs and preferences.
You may have great marketing schemes, but they may not be addressing the specific issues that your target market cares about. It’s critically important to get to know your target market, identify their needs and trigger points, and use these as your baseline for creating solid strategies. For starters, you can conduct online surveys, do research, learn demographics, and even check out your competitors.
Consumers look for a connection between them and what you have to offer. Your products and services must resonate with them. They should offer solutions that add value to their lives. By having some idea about what they’re looking for, you’ll be able to show up in marketplaces and other online platforms where they tend to congregate. You’ll be able to incorporate marketing schemes that are timely and relevant to their current situations.
Providing the right answer at the right time should set the tone for all your marketing campaigns and efforts. When your strategy is successful, you can push conversions, strengthen existing client relationships, and invite more investment in your brand.
4. Set a budget for your marketing strategy.
Every business should be allocating at least some funding for its marketing campaigns. To figure out your marketing budget, you may need to do a little bit of research, balance a few accounts, collect pricing information, and ask for return-on-investment (ROI) numbers from the media outlets you are considering.
Your budget can help you more easily set aside strategies that might seem appealing but aren’t suitable for your intended audience. However, if you believe that a costlier scheme might work, you’ll need to look for ways to expand your budget while keeping a much sharper eye on ROI.
Alternatively, you can look for other effective means that’ll help you stay in touch with your target market. For instance, let’s say you want to host a webinar but don’t have the budget to shoulder all of the costs. You might want to partner with niche experts new to the digital landscape for a strong win-win. These professionals may well need businesses that can help them find an audience. That audience might just happen to be your target audience, too. By leveraging each other, you both gain traction in your respective markets.
Your budget should serve as a touchstone but shouldn’t be a barrier that impedes business growth and success. Instead, your budget should encourage you to think outside the box, find ways to help you stick to it, but also know when the time is right to break the rules.
Wrapping It Up
The right marketing strategy is going to be the result of a combination of factors unique to your business. Define your goals. Get to know your audience. Determine your budget. Maximize your existing resources. When you take those steps, you’ll be able to identify the most suitable strategy that’ll set you up for success.
