SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING

 Small Business Marketing

As a small business owner, you have a lot on your plate. One of your biggest tasks is finding new customers, also known as marketing. Some aspects of marketing — including educating customers, explaining the value of what you offer, or asking for referrals — may come easily for you. However, when you’re ready to grow your small business, you have to expand upon what you already do well in order to reach new leads and guide them through your sales funnel.

With the right tools and processes, not only will you expand your lead and customer bases, you’ll also be able to determine your marketing return on investment, or ROI, and see where your marketing budget is most effectively spent.

 

Small Business Marketing Basics: Tools and Technology

Depending on the size and scope of your small business, some of the following tools will be essential, versus just a nice-to-have accessory to your marketing program. Regardless, these tools and technology are highly recommended and will help get you started.

 

CRM Platform

A customer relationship management (CRM) system allows you to organize prospective and current consumer data in one place. This information — plus good record-keeping — is vital for your organization, especially your sales, marketing, and customer success teams.

With a CRM platform, you can discover actionable insights about your users, track interactions with them, and manage the entire customer journey, which helps you better tailor your marketing campaigns. In the U.S., half of small and midsize companies have a CRM system, and 15% of those CRM systems were implemented within the last year.

 

Digital Marketing Platforms

Generally, this type of software provides your team some combination of features: organization, automation, and tracking various marketing activities. Often, these platforms can integrate with other tools, such as your CRM platform.

There are many types of specialty platforms within digital marketing, including the following:

1. Email marketing platform

2. SMS marketing platform

3. Social media marketing platform

4. Influencer marketing platform

 

Market Research

Market research is crucial for your small business, and it doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money. Before you put serious money toward a single marketing effort, you need to investigate everything, from your ideal customer to the competitive landscape. Decide on a budget, determine the data you want to collect, and look into how you want to gather it.

 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics tracks all kinds of website-visitor data and generates regular reports that help marketers make data-based decisions about the efficacy of their websites. With it, you can view the breakdown in your visitors’ demographics, location, and age — even the device they use to visit your site. You can also see which content and pages on your website drive the most (or least) page views, the amount of time visitors spends on a page, conversions, and more. Simply put, Google Analytics hosts a ton of data, and SEO specialists can turn that data into actionable insights.

 

Content Calendar

A content calendar is a centralized place where you list your company’s scheduled content. You can include blog posts, YouTube videos, social media posts — any type of marketing collateral and content that your company is producing and plans to publish during a particular time period.

You can use a shared online calendar or a spreadsheet with tabs for each month in tandem with project management software to keep track of each piece of content. In spreadsheets, you can list each task for each assignment all the way from preproduction to promotion, tag the person who owns that part of the project, and manage each deadline.

Handling Your Marketing: Do It In-House, hire a consultant, or Use a Firm?

When it comes to your marketing, ask yourself three questions:

1. What are my goals?

2. What is my budget?

3. What are my pain points or areas outside my zone of genius?

Depending on your answers, it may make sense to keep your marketing in-house, meaning you have a marketing strategist or manager as an employee. If your company is experiencing fast growth or needs outside experience to propel your business growth, it may be wise to go with a specialist or agency.

If you don’t have a marketing budget, now is the time to create one. Review it against your marketing strategy, and you’ll have a better idea of what you’re working with and who you can hire. For reference, in both B2C and B2B companies, advertising is the top marketing budget line item, while technology is a close second.

Your small business can have a limited marketing budget or ab2c, more expansive one; either way, you can still reach your leads and customers effectively.

 

Conclusion

Marketing isn’t “set it and forget it.” It needs to evolve just as your customers and your company do, and should inspire creativity based on real, data-based results.

If you get excited about your marketing, you can boost your ability to grow. You can spend your marketing dollars wisely and drive conversions if you pay attention.

If you want to grow, reach more customers, increase revenue, have funds to hire more employees, and achieve other goals, then be sure to prioritize your marketing efforts. You’ll be glad you did.