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How do small businesses develop marketing strategies? What should we do to ensure that implementation results are obtained? With limited time, budget, and resources, creating and implementing a successful marketing plan isn't easy.
The key to successful small business marketing is investing time and money in the right places. Doing “everything” isn't realistic, so having a strong sense of concentration is a must. Small business marketing plans must prioritize what actions will lead to team success. The seven tips in this article will help you narrow your focus so you can choose the areas you think will have the greatest impact and invest.
1. Write your own SMB marketing about us
There are so many fluid elements in business, so it's easy for marketing to lag a little behind. Maybe they were writing social media posts in between phone calls or doing email marketing in a hurry during lunch. Before you start writing your entire marketing plan, take a step back and evaluate your current resources. This exercise will be the basis for what measures should be taken to develop a marketing strategy for small businesses.
The first hurdle is figuring out what content you already have. For small businesses, there might not be that many. However, this simply means more opportunities to strategize while creating content. (And if you have a long list of content that's already published online, great. It's ahead of its time! (If so, think about which old posts can be remade into newly updated articles.) Next, do some research to find out what a niche market is and how you can structure your marketing efforts to meet the needs of that audience.
Once you've done this homework, you can write two or three sentences about the resources you have, what your company offers, and who you plan to market to. Small business marketing is tough. Having useful information ready when things get messy will keep your eyes peeled for prizes.
Speaking of understanding the niche small business market, let's talk about how we understand customers.
2. Target your ideal customers
Who are the ideal buyers for your products and services? When creating new content, keep your audience's needs and search intentions in mind. If you're a startup, you might not have that many ongoing customers, but you need to think about who your marketing message is directed at. Small business market research is a key principle for understanding customers and building a seamless inbound marketing strategy.
One of the biggest mistakes we see is companies that jump right in without doing this research to understand their customers. They explain about the buyer but may not explain the purchase decision. For example, what is the attitude and judgment criteria of a buyer persona when considering a deal with you?
To get started, consider the following:
- Where are they currently working?
- What challenges are they struggling with?
- What useful knowledge can you provide?
One way to really target your audience is to create a buyer persona. Take a few hours to do in-depth research to understand the buyer persona and understand what you can do to help them. It may seem like a daunting task at first, but the return on creating a great buyer persona will outweigh the initial time. Since you can get to know your customers better from these personas, your marketing activities will become significantly more relevant and effective.
3. Formalize business goals and develop a marketing plan
SMART goals are used by many businesses around the world, and for good reason. It helps keep goals specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. This simple framework helps you evaluate things like performance, marketing, and maintain a clear vision of your priorities.
For example, it's a good idea to write a general goal that you want to increase leads this year. However, this is a vague phrase and doesn't make for an appropriate time frame. You can redefine this as “I want to get 50 leads per month by the end of this year.” Don't you feel like that is more organized and has an impact?
You know your business better than anyone else, and clearly outlining your small business goals will only benefit you. By focusing on what needs to be achieved, time is wasted less and employees are more motivated to achieve attainable goals.
Clarifying general goals is essential for successful marketing. This allows you to:
- Check past metrics to understand what your marketing infrastructure looks like
- Measure future marketing campaigns and efforts, and identify how many future MQL and SQL you want to target per month.
Keep in mind that team size is a big part of setting reasonable goals. Whether you're managing a small group or a dozen people, your new goals should be at least six months away. Start small so your team can scale up. Overestimating or underachieving is too easy. Start with goals you can achieve each week, then gradually scale up to long-term goals that have begun to decrease.
How have business (and marketing) goals changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic? Another benefit of writing down the goals you've compiled during the workshop is that you can easily redirect your marketing strategy in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
4. Use KPIs to measure the success of your new strategy
Put your new marketing plan on paper and then take a break. Unfortunately, new SMB marketing plans often take 3 to 6 months or more before implementation results are achieved. That's why it's so important to establish action items right from the start. Small businesses must repeatedly publish content, post on social media, and email customers. You'll be rewarded with more organic traffic and higher SEO rankings.
Not every marketing success is a direct lead. Funnel content allows you to analyze surface-level data and track KPIs. You can analyze website traffic to see how long your audience has been on your site. If time is increasing, you'll know you're moving in the right direction.
Social media statistics are another place to measure KPIs, how many followers did you start with and how many followers each platform is gaining each month? Since click-through rates are recorded in KPIs in the middle of the funnel, email-related metrics are sometimes necessary. The email can then lead to form submissions from linked landing pages.
At the bottom of the funnel KPI, marketing qualified leads (MQL) and customers are best measured. How many MQLs are you trying to earn each month?
5. Identify competitors to target your audience
When wearing a figurative hat in the ring, it's important to know who you're playing against. Once you know who your opponent is, ask yourself these key questions:
- How can you make your service/product stand out from the crowd?
- What are your small business competitors posting on social media? What platforms do they use and which ones they don't care about?
- What kind of content do you offer?
- How are they ranked on Google? Are they investing heavily in SEO?
Researching competitors can help you understand possible marketing strategies and strategies. For example, if your competitor has a lot of LinkedIn followers and high engagement, chances are high that LinkedIn is a good channel for you too. Also, if your opponent is lacking in one field, you can extend a virtual red carpet to your customers.
However, there is a caveat. Be careful when basing your strategy solely on what your competitors are publishing online. Just because a business is doing something online doesn't mean it's the best course of action. They might be taking the wrong approach to your industry, or maybe their content isn't up to par. This competitive research helps you find out what they're doing, but you'll need to apply your own experience (and the knowledge you've gained from your buyer persona) to determine if what they're doing actually makes sense.
An example of this is blogging. If your competitor is blogging, determine if they're doing well. What level of engagement are you getting with your comments, and how many social media followers do you have? If you're getting a reasonable response from your audience, scour through the content to see what keywords or topics you're targeting. And if they aren't doing it, then you have a huge chance to outdo them by doing that work yourself! From there, you can easily start launching your own targeted content.
6. Optimize your current channel
Social media platforms are new (and old!) It is essential for publishing. Customers know your brand, your voice, and what you offer. Utilizing free social media platforms is always the foundation for a great inbound marketing strategy.
As you write new content to publish, try out intriguing new tactics. For example, try adding a short video to the top of an old website page or social media post. Keep in mind that the human brain processes images 60 times faster than words.
Small business owners have lots of meetings and task checklists. You can make content marketing tasks for small businesses as easy as possible by setting manageable deadlines, dividing the workload, and scheduling posts in advance.
7. Set a reasonable budget
What are the most pressing needs and goals for your business? How long will it take to complete these tasks? Also, can we outsource it? Create a spreadsheet listing all operating costs, such as website hosting, expert fees, and potential content outsourcing. How much leeway do we have left?
Consider investing in marketing automation software, or consider hiring an agency or freelancer to write these extensive blog posts. Content marketing for small businesses doesn't necessarily have to be expensive, but you may need to be prepared to invest if you want to see implementation results. This should help the team understand marketing strategies where budgets are limited and what they can invest in.
If you're a small business leader, you probably already have a good idea about your current content strategy and customer profile. By following these tips, you can clarify your business goals and directly reflect them in modern small business marketing strategies. Don't forget to research your competitors to see if they have marketing paths that could give you an advantage.
Now that we have new goals for our sophisticated inbound marketing company, preparations for formulating an effective small business marketing strategy for 2021 are progressing smoothly.
Download our free ebook to create a successful small business marketing plan!
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