If you run your own business, you know how hard it can be to stay above water. Even when things are good, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay that way. There’s an ebb and flow of business ownership that can drive even the most mentally disciplined entrepreneurs mad with frustration.
However, much of your business’s success comes down to how you market yourself. What are you doing to create brand awareness? Do the locals even know about you?
We’re here to share some invaluable business marketing tips that you might not know you needed. These marketing tips are all centered around one thing – getting the word out to help you grow your business.
Keeping reading for an in-depth look.
1. Your Website Must Be Perfect
You probably already have a website, if not, you’ve got some catching up to do. Did you know that almost 80 percent of Americans do at least some of their shopping online? If you don’t have a digital storefront, you could be missing out on a ridiculous amount of sales.
Following this mother of all business marketing tips and creating a run-of-the-mill website doesn’t mean you’re in the clear, however. Your website’s success depends on how well it operates, it’s SEO rating and the content inside. This will affect your traffic, bounce rate, and sales conversions.
First, SEO or search engine optimization is what determines how quickly consumers find your website (if at all) through keyword searches on search engine sites such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Your SEO rating influences where your site lands on the search engine results page. This is important because the majority of website clicks go to the top organic search results.
You can boost your SEO rating by following some basic SEO rules. First, you need to make sure you’re using metadata in the form of keywords, keyword phrases, embedded media (photos, videos, images, headers, titles), internal and external links, etc. You should also ensure you’re linking to all of your social media accounts, which can be incredibly important for local business marketing.
Secondly, you can drive up your website’s relevancy by loading it with content – articles, instructional videos, Ebooks, DIY infographics, and so on. The content on your website needs to be relevant to your products and services, valuable and engaging to consumers, and of course, full of SEO metadata.
2. You Should Become a Social Media Guru
One of the most important business marketing tips calls you to become incredibly well-versed in the world of social media. The more followers you have, the more free/organic marketing you can do. For example, by offering a prize to a randomly chosen follower who shares all of your posts over the course of a few weeks, you can inspire hundreds of people to share your content to a much larger audience, resulting in more followers.
You should be posting engaging content that can be anything from funny pictures and videos to links to your blog articles. However, you should also be posting valuable information and content such as how-to videos and infographics.
Finally, you can explore paid social media advertising. On Facebook, for example, you can create ads and market them to your preferred target audience based on age, gender, location, interests, and more. With Facebook’s Ad Center, you can even choose how much you want to spend a day on advertising, which will determine how many people your ad reaches each day.
3. You Need to Make More Friends
They say there is strength in numbers. Even as the sole owner of a business, this saying holds true. The more people you have “working” for you, the better your odds of success. And we’re not talking about employees.
You need to start networking with other businesses to build affiliate relationships. You can do this both online and locally. The key is to find business affiliates with whom you can build mutually beneficial relationships.
For example, a small gym owner would do well to team up with local nutrition and supplement stores. Work hand-in-hand with your affiliates, advertise together, sponsor events together, etc. Primarily, use each other’s audience to advertise for one another through a referral system.
4. Customer Reviews and Testimonials Are Priceless
Speaking of referrals, one of the golden business marketing tips is to optimize your appeal through the use of customer reviews and testimonials. You can do this in several ways.
First, you can run a referral program with your current customers whereby they are rewarded for bringing in new clients or customers. You can give them discounts, free products, or even cash.
You can also set up a page on your website designated for showcasing client reviews and testimonials. Consumers need to be convinced to invest in your products or services. There’s no better way to do that than to let other consumers tell them how great you are.
You can also encourage people to leave reviews on your social media profiles, through Google reviews, and so on.
5. You Need to Get More Involved in Your Community
Finally, if you want to get more attention from your local community, get more involved in it. Teaming up with a local charity and some of your business affiliates to sponsor a charity event is one of the most invaluable business marketing tips.
This is a great way to get out in the view of the public and do some good for your community. By reaching out to other local (non-competing) businesses, you can increase your budget for the event and build new affiliate relationships.
Start advertising the event months in advance to spread as much awareness about it as possible. Your goal should be maximum community attendance. You could organize a movie night in the park, a 5k race, an art gala, a silent auction, or anything else that comes to mind.
Looking for More Business Marketing Tips?
Good luck with your advertising and remember to stay consistent. It’s easy to become disheartened after a few weeks of limited results. But these things take time to work, be patient!
And if you want more advice on business marketing tips, finances, lifestyle, travel, and more, be sure to check out more of our articles before you go.