Marketing Tips for Small Businesses
Entering the arena of marketing may seem like a daunting task, especially as a small business, but while it is certainly not an easy one, there are some aspects to the size of your business which provide unique advantages over large corporations, in terms of credentials, your ability to establish partnerships, attract brand ambassadors and digital influencers. Here we outline a few of tips for maximising your marketing footprint as a small business.
Unlike big companies, which struggle to maintain a human face through the ubiquity and anonymity of their advertising, small businesses can leverage their localness as an immediate and effective marketing method. Reaching out to the community in this case could be as simple as introducing you and your company to people wandering past via the handing out of literature or a quick tour given to intrigued bystanders.
Likewise, introducing yourself to other businesses in the area can offer the opportunity for partnerships and collaboration, such as the display of products in shop windows as free advertising, or the offer of discounts to members of social clubs or staff. This is a great way of encouraging word of mouth discussion, by in effective recruiting your local community as brand ambassadors.
On brand ambassadors , these are perhaps the most essential part of your marketing profile and identifying, and working with the right one can make a big difference to your image. Depending on your product and audience, identifying the right ambassador will be up to you but the aim is the same – choose someone who does thought-provoking or striking things, who is good at photography, video work, blogging or social media, and ask if they would like to get involved, in return for a generous deal or discount. Content from them will boost your pull with people, who will engage with the product behind the human face – this is a lot more memorable than just another advert.
Lastly, ensuring the customer-facing parts of your website are up to date and fully functional is incredibly important. Customers are accustomed almost entirely now to the idea that they can find out whether a particular item is in stock by going online rather than going in or picking up the phone – the better you serve up that information, the better you will stand to pull in that footfall.
Doing so entails removing your pages of errors like typos, symbol errors and styling issues, as a customer visiting your suite won’t even read the text before forming a less-than-positive opinion, and the level of trust in your brand will drop. Also, if you are importing your stock from a supplier, ensure that you have fully read and edited the product descriptions they have provided – these usually are not created with a consumer-facing purpose in mind so need to be changed to ensure the style and logic of your webpage is not broken. Additionally, these descriptions can act as original content, which is rewarded by search engines, whereas web pages that share content are penalised – to ensure this does not occur, even the most basic re-write can set you apart. If you’re concerned that it is too much work for such a specific area, bear in mind that all this original content can be used elsewhere – from social posts and email newsletters - differentiate yourself to stand out to the algorithms and the customers on all fronts.
Taking these small steps can pay dividends for how your brand is perceived and spoken about, which ultimately will improve your engagement and bottom line.