Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses

Goals, Goals, Goals!

In order to track your progress, you need to have clear marketing objectives. Starting with three measurable objectives will give you something to plan for, work towards and help reach your overall business goals.

Goals can be anything from ‘increasing your Twitter following from 20 to 200’, to ‘gaining a 10% increase in inbound enquiries by 2019’ or ‘attending one networking event a month’.

It really is as simple as making a list. And sticking to it!

Plan

Get planning on ways to hit those objectives! If you’ve decided you want to increase your brand awareness, planning and producing some inventive and engaging content will be the best way to do this. You could create a social media plan to increase your digital following or even plan a direct mail drop to your target area for more local brand awareness. Local radio could be a great way to reach parents on the school run (for example), and really boost an event. What about a PR plan? Hook a release on your USP!

Optimise

Once you’ve set your plan in motion, the best way to maximise the results are to optimise your efforts. If you’ve created some engaging content and you want to it to reach a bigger audience, you might look into boosting the post with some paid advertising (PPC). By optimising your post with split testing, exploring new target locations or even testing different headings, you can gain an insight into who may be looking at your content and what kind of people are really engaging with what you’re posting. By modifying different factors and reacting quickly, you will be able to see what works (and what doesn’t) in order to improve the outcomes and reach your marketing goals.

Consistency

In order to reinforce your branding and business, you need to be consistent. Reviewing your marketing efforts across all platforms and asking ‘is this consistent?’, will help keep the messaging and design on brand. If you are looking to run a digital campaign to boost your brand awareness, take some time to check if it’s ‘on brand’; is the tone or language right? Are the colour ways the same? Do the pictures match your website? You want to make sure you have a strong brand presence on all of your content - whether your logo is on there or not - so everyone who sees it knows it’s you. Not only will this help engage your audience and ensure your brand is recognisable, but also ensure those potential clients or customers seeing your content will become interested in hearing/viewing/engaging with your business.

SEO

AKA Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is the process of getting your website found amongst the competition and is the perfect way to gain traffic and grow visibility. There are many ways to utilise SEO to ensure your website gets seen on search engines such as Google, and even the smallest SEO efforts can have an impact on your ranking. The best way to kick start your SEO is by reviewing the copy on your website and targeting it around keywords that will help get your site recognised. This all contributes to helping you reach your marketing goals, as do regular updates (fresh content) and videos.