Marketing for Small Businesses
The overall aim for effectively marketing your business is to complete a sales funnel i.e to ensure prospective customers who become aware of your business purchase either a product or the service you are offering.
Apart from completing the sales funnel, marketing your business the right way builds a company-consumer relationship. Effective marketing becomes a way to provide your customers with information about your product/service and also helps you to build your company’s reputation.
Consumers expect businesses to be responsive as that is the only way they would be able to receive information or see it as an avenue to lay any complaints they might have. As a small business, you have the opportunity to tap into consumer satisfaction by creating a solid marketing plan that will set you apart from bigger businesses.
This article provides a little insight on why you should market your business and how to effectively market it the right way in order to build a relationship between your business and your target audience.
Why you should market your business
To sell your product or service
The first reason as to why you should market your business effectively is to sell whatever product or service you are offering. Marketing is an effective tool in ensuring that your business stays afloat by bringing in profit. You might have a good product(service) built but if you do not market it properly, you would not have people ready to buy into it and the reason for creating your business becomes defeated.
Marketing helps sales and sales helps your business. When more people know about your business, it grows. Marketing secures your businesses’ growth and therefore makes you relevant.
Marketing helps sales and sales helps your business. When more people know about your business, it grows.
It strengthens business- consumer relationship
Marketing is more than just promoting your business name out to the world, it’s everything a business does to build a relationship between the company and consumer. Marketing is important because it becomes an avenue for both prospective and current customers to learn more about the business which eventually creates a long-lasting relationship.
Equalise the playing field
One thing small businesses can get right is an effective marketing strategy. Using Social media as an advantage, small to medium-sized businesses can compete with their larger competitors like never before. Marketing is known to be a sure way to move your business from small to large. It also ensures that you can find your own unique brand voice.
How to effectively build a relationship between your business and your target audience
There is a myriad of ways you can promote your small business using the right mix of activities. This will help you identify and focus on the most effective marketing tactics for your small business.
Conduct market research
Conducting market research is seen as the foundation for your business’ marketing strategy. A market research involves gathering information that tells you all you need to know about your potential and current customers. From their buying patterns to their location, a market research report provides you with enough information to proceed. An effective market research also provides you with enough information on how to improve and sustain excellent customer service and also guide your efforts into developing new products and services. Market research also helps in staying ahead in trends that can affect your sales as a small business.
Create a profile for your target market
Group your potential customers based on certain characteristics that can help utilise your marketing efforts. If you try to promote your service or product to everyone, you might end up wasting a lot of money and getting little to no return on investment. Select your target audience according to those who are willing to pay for your product. It might be useful to group your audience according to various characteristics like: location, age, gender, education level, income occupation, behaviour, social class, personality, etc.
Identify your unique selling proposition [USP]
Your USP is the unique reason why your customers buy from you instead of your competitors — it’s what makes your business stand out from the crowd. Therefore, it is important to define what you do differently and be able to communicate that to potential customers. Your USP can be seeking to solve any problems that your potential customers might have had when you conducted the market research. Focus on what your business does very well and use that to leverage more customers.
Select the right channel to run your marketing
When you are done with these steps, select the goals you want to achieve and the right channel(s) for your marketing. It is important to consider where your target audience resides the most before selecting a channel. Another important thing to consider is your marketing budget. Small businesses might not have a larger marketing budget compared to their more established competitors and so you might have to pick the right channels that would bring maximum effect.
Ways to effectively market your business
You know the why and the how, it is time to know some of the different ways you can effectively market your business. There are many ways you can push your business to the general public. If you are a small business looking to save costs, it is time for you to pay attention. This section provides you some ways to market your business on a limited budget.
Let social media do the work
Social media can be a powerful tool for both new and well-established brands. Leverage the reach social media has and put your business out there for the world to see. Create valuable content and watch your customers come to you. To learn more on about how to utilise social media for your business, read this article.
Be visible
It is time to increase your brand visibility. This does not rely on social media alone, wherever you go, talk to people about your business. In person networking is one of the sure ways to get people to know about your business. It is time to apply the rule of seven to your business. The rule of seven states that people have to see your business seven times before they remember who you are.
Lastly….
Monitor and review
You have done the work, it is time to monitor and review your marketing efforts against the goals you set aside. All the best!
