5 Powerful Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

Marketing is an important part of running a business. It helps with branding, keeping in touch with your customers, and getting new business. Marketing can be done through many different mediums, but if you’re just getting started there’s a good chance you don’t have time to juggle a hundred different outlets for getting the word out.

There are an unlimited number of marketing strategies for small businesses. As a new small business, you might find that you’re busy just getting your processes together and don’t have time for testing the waters on everything just yet. So in this post we’re going to give you the 5 marketing strategies that are worth spending your time on before you move on to anything else.

1. Google My Business

Google My Business is Google’s official directory for businesses and is especially important for marketing a businesses with a local client-base. If you’ve ever done a search on Google for a particular service, such as power washing or air conditioning repair, you’ll be familiar with the mapped results showing providers in your area. All of these results come directly from Google My Business listings.

Your business will never show up in these searches if you don’t have a Google My Business listing, so it’s critical to set one up. Fortunately, the listings are free and can be done without any technical skill. You’ll need a Google account to manage your business and if your business has a physical address, you’ll have to verify the address with Google. This is usually done via them sending a postcard with a special code you enter on the website and can take a few weeks.

2. Facebook Advertising

Advertising is a core strategy of marketing. While Facebook might be considered the older generation’s preferred social media platform, they have one of the best advertising programs available for marketing your small business.

Paid Facebook Advertising is highly customizable allowing you to choose the location, age, & interests of the potential customers you want to reach. They also allow you to choose a budget so you know exactly what you’re spending.

Facebook Advertising also comes with a strong set of analytics tools so you can see how well your ads are performing and know whether you need to tweak it in order to get better results from your marketing efforts. This makes it one of the best marketing strategies for small businesses, especially those just starting off.

3. Social Media

Aside from advertising on a platform like Facebook, the social media world is where many people go to find services. Platforms like NextDoor are known for posts from individuals like, “Who can recommend a great concrete guy near our neighborhood?”

These types of posts have an incredibly high conversion rate as the people recommending your product or service are trusted by the customer who’s requesting the information. Make sure your business has a profile on the major social media sites so you can be found. Additionally, make sure you post regularly so that folks know your profile isn’t stale.

Aim to post on all of your social media profiles at least once every couple of weeks.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is the easiest way to stay in touch with your customers, promote your products, and build a relationship with them. Building an email marketing list does take some work, but most tools such as Mailchimp or Sendinblue can be used for free until you reach a certain size.

Marketing automation allows you to plan and execute your emails much more efficiently than sending them out manually. You can set up a series of automated emails based on certain events, such as when someone subscribes to your email list or purchases a product. This makes it easy to send the right message at the right time to the right people.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to build your customer base and target your products and services to the ideal customer. Email marketing is not just one of the best marketing strategies for small businesses, it’s also great for any size business.

5. Blogging

You’re en expert in what you do, and blogging on your website is an excellent way to get the point across that you know what you’re doing. People will spend their money on your service or product if you’re a professional.

Blogging can be a great introduction to prospective customers by directing them to blog posts you’ve written that answer questions they might have about your industry. It also gives you a great opportunity to put a partial blog post into one of those email marketing campaigns and direct them back to your website to read it.

Blogging can also help increase your Google ranking to help more potential customers find you via Google search and Google Business.

Final Thoughts: Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

There’s no reason to stop at just 5 marketing strategies to build your brand, but if you’re short on time and just getting started, these 5 items will give you an awesome start and help build your audience of potential customers.

Once you’ve got these down, consider adding more strategies such as geo targeting, and employee incentives.