Outline/Draft
The biggest problem small businesses have is getting noticed. Even if you have quality products/services, you need to be noticed in order to build a customer base. Of course, it’s not enough to get noticed — you need to get noticed in the right way. Here are five marketing strategies you can use to get your small business noticed.
Build a Brand for your Business
The first step to successfully marketing your small business is creating a brand for yourself. Once you clearly define what your business stands for and embody that in your services, products, and advertising content, you’ll create a stronger emotional bond with your customers and viewers. That means they are more likely to keep coming back. Here are three things you can do to develop your brand.
1. Get a clear idea of which market your service or product occupies and figure out what makes similar products valuable. Once you’ve done that, define what it is that your company believes in — what’s the belief that led you to offer your particular product or service? Incorporate those beliefs into the way you explain the benefits of your products and services.
2. Whenever you interact with your customers, make sure the values your company stands for are front and center. This not only means acting in accordance with your company values, but being honest and trustworthy. When customers and leads know they can trust you, they are more likely to continue coming back.
3. Once you’ve defined what your company stands for, you need to make sure that is reflected throughout your marketing content. This means that you need to use a unified tone of voice throughout your blog content, website main text, email blasts — everything that you use for marketing purposes.
Optimize your Local Outreach
Small businesses can boost their ROI by focusing on getting local clients. You can figure out what locals are likely to respond to by using ads on social media and Google.
• Use Google to figure out which keywords are popular for related services in your area, and incorporate those keywords into your social media posts. This will help ensure you’re reaching local leads.
• Use Google Analytics to determine which keywords are gaining traction among people with a PING local to your area. This will help you figure out if your keywords are reaching local leads and figure out which keywords you need to capitalize on.
• Use Twitter’s Trends feed to stay on top of what people are talking about. Set it up so that you get local trend data, this way you can optimize your local outreach on twitter.
Develop a SEO Strategy
Whether you have a company blog or you just have a company website, you need to develop a SEO strategy to show up in search engines and get discovered.
1. Look at Your Ranked Keywords: Figure out which of your keywords are ranking well. Also think of key terms that align with the topics of your site’s various pages.
2. Create Long-Tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords are 2-3 word phrases addressing a specific topic. When your pages contain keyword phrases addressing specific issues, you’re more likely to get discovered. Use the simple keywords that already rank well on your site to develop some long-tail options.
3. Research on Google: Take the keywords you’ve recorded and developed, and take to Google to see what comes up when you enter them. Make a note of which sites are generated by which keywords. The top outcomes will tell you something about what people are looking for when they use those particular keywords.
Once you’ve created a database of keywords, it’s time to implement them throughout your online presence. Place them on the pages that serve as your face to the world: your blog, home page, and product/service page.
Optimize your Landing Pages
Landing pages describe specific offers and why potential leads should buy-in. Here are 4 things you must include on your landing page to successfully generate conversions:
1. Use a bold headline to give viewers an overview of your offer.
2. Directly below your main header, include a sub-header explaining the value of your offer. This should only be one or two sentences long.
3. In case the headline and sub-header don’t motivate your viewers to buy-in, use bullet points to clearly state what potential clients gain from your offer. Make sure each bullet point is succinct so potential leads understand the value of your offer quickly.
4. Keep your capture forms as brief as possible. Keeping the opt-in process quick makes it more likely that potential leads will fill out the forms.
Create Relevant Content
Use your blog as a conversion tool by including downloadable content offers at the end of your blog posts. Of course, you’ll only generate conversions if you provide relevant content. Here are some things that will help you figure out what your potential clients are liable to download:
• Get direct feedback. Conduct a social media survey to determine what kinds of topics people would like to see you write about, the kinds of problems they care about, etc.
• Take advantage of Private Messaging. Take the content suggestions you’ve received and share them with a select few subscribers via private messaging. In this more intimate, privileged context, you can get more specific, in-depth suggestions and feedback.
Once you have the necessary information, it’s time to develop some downloadable content. To get the most out of your content offers, make sure your…
- Downloadable content contains more information than the original blog post. Providing redundant information makes you liable to losing visitors and potential buyers.
- Downloadable content is relevant to the topics and problems your services/products address.
- Downloadable content addresses the various research stages that go into a purchase. You should have separate kinds of content for people who are just beginning the research process, people who are looking for specific solutions, and people who are ready to make a purchase.
