For any business to survive, it is crucial to adapt to the modern ways of marketing. Gone are the days when businesses would rely on pamphlets and steamers; in this day and age, the digital medium plays a much larger role in uplifting a business in terms of reach and size. If your business is new in the market, you must do the right marketing strategy to attract customers. Even if your business isn’t profitable in the beginning, there’s no need to worry. Every business does take some time in blossoming. You must analyse the latest marketing trends which are the reason why so many businesses are performing exceptionally well today in the market. A shocking figure is only 33% of small businesses across the ten-year mark because most of them start declining after a few years. In this article, we will guide you through 13 marketing strategies you must take into account for your small business:
1. Start Blogging
Keep in mind; consumers use the internet to find local and international businesses. This means you need to understand the importance and power of SEO if you want to improve your business ranking on Google. An interesting figure is that roughly 47% of clicks make it to the top positions of google. Blogging is the need of the house for most businesses and has the power to improve a business’s presence on the web. Therefore once your website makes it to the top position on the web, you will be able to grab more customers for your naïve business.
2. Give back to the local community
In this day and age, you must do something for the community if you want your business to be recognized as a green organization. If you are involved in charitable programs, you must add it to your business portfolio and tell how the business provides value to the locals. Today’s consumers are eager to know how a business supports the community. Research shows around 91% of consumers will switch their brands if they come to know the other company is involved in some charitable causes.
3. Implement a customer loyalty program
If you want to join the bandwagon of catering for a lot of customers, you must know to navigate a customer loyalty program. The best part about this marketing strategy is you can boost sales without having to rely on old customers. The ethos behind using this marketing strategy is to make new customers pay more. There are two reasons why you need to set up this loyalty program; the first one is to increase the purchase frequency of the customers and secondly to increase their purchase amount.
4. Boost your social media presence
In this day and age, it is crucial to have a prominent profile on social media. Customers always look for social media profiles of the business to check their strength.
You need to take into account the influencers who spread viral content. One is an efficient way to promote your service is to buy tik tok accounts to extend your social media activity.
With less costly campaigns, it is easy for businesses to target the right customers for their products and increase their reach. You must register an active presence on social media to respond to customer queries and announce any possible discounts. Facebook is, without a doubt, the best platform to be on, but others like YouTube, Instagram, and twitter are also suitable options.
5. Set up a customer referral program
The customer referral program is very helpful for it doesn’t require the investment of a lot of money and does its magic by bringing in more customers at the end of the day. It works in a way that only the customers will have to do the hardest things. The program focuses on retaining customers and acquiring new customers which is the dream of any business. However, if you want to make this program successful you need to offer an incentive to both the parties. Even if you have an old customer, you will need to offer something in exchange to make them remain glued to your business.
6. Give discounts
Customers like to avail discounts and coupon codes. As a new business, your company should either offer something very valuable which buys in the customers or should give discounts in the beginning to grab more customers. When a business is new, it becomes difficult for it to penetrate in the market when there is already a perfect competition going on with every company trying to offer the same product. Discounts attract customers and compel them to save money on a brand that they haven’t even tried before.
7. Add subscribers to your email list
E-Mail marketing is another important tool that sells a business. Though it is not the most coherent marketing tactic, one which gives a professional appeal to the business. You will be surprised to know more than 80% of small business owners claim e-mail marketing helps their business in retaining customers. This strategy is cheap and increases the return on investment. So if you’re spending $1 on e-mail marketing, you will get $44 in return for sure.
8. Make your website
A website is a marketing agency that sells your product 24/7 without a gap in between. The benefit of a website is it markets the product all the time irrespective of the time. If you set up an office to do the marketing of your business, you will have to hire a marketing agent to meet the customers for a limited time slot. With a website, your content and blogs will do the talking without needing for a person to manage conversations. Therefore you must shift to the digital medium if you want to get more customers for the business.
9. Improve your customer service
It is the responsibility of a business to provide get customer service to customers. If you don’t have a sound customer service, you will lose out on many clients. Even if you don’t know how to do it, there’s nothing to worry about. There are professional companies in the market which provide excellent customer services on call to your business. You can hire call center if you want to get your work done professionally in the best way possible.
10. Launch a mobile app
Mobile applications are less costly and provide great benefit to the business. The best part about a mobile app is it doesn’t discriminate between the type of business or the nature of the business since all users have mobile phones today. It isn’t expensive to build a mobile app which is why you must consider this option. Businesses who want to grab a massive number of customers have their presence on the digital medium. Surprisingly most customers spend 90% of their time using mobile apps. So when your business has one with good ratings, Google will encourage people to download your app and use it.
11. Work with local influencers
If you have few people in your community with a massive fan following on social media, you must grab them to promote your business. Today it is common for YouTubers to get paid well by local businesses for promoting their product or service. In this way, you will be able to increase the potential reach of the business. The best part about this marketing tool is it is less expensive and has the power to uplift the presence of the business. Every post will cost less money and might even be free at some point in time if you offer something in exchange.
12. Set up Google Alerts
Google alert is the easiest way to know what is being written about you. Today, most businesses have google alerts which help them in getting to know about the negative and positive feedback in time. Reports will be emailed to you once anything is published about your business in the news or any other website. This will help you in realizing the loopholes of your business. Let’s take a simple example of a blogger writing negative things about your website. You will be marketing about it via google alert instead of having it on your computer screens days later.
13. Run contests for people
Customers are always interested in businesses that offer great discounts, coupon codes and run contests. Running contests is a great way of grabbing more customers in the business. Even if your business is new, you can offer something valuable in exchange for making them do something concrete for the business. For example, if you want to increase the customer count on the Facebook page of your business you can ask the customers to share it maximum and select one or two winners randomly. Therefore you must engage the audience with something which invests their interest too.
Conclusion:
Lastly, a new business takes some time to penetrate the commercial market. The above-mentioned marketing techniques are less costly but very effective. If you want your new business to prosper, you must be patient enough and should have the audacity to take cold risks. Secondly, you need a great marketing team that will do the promotions of your business in a way that it gets successful in gaining momentum over the internet.
