Marketing covers everything related to gaining and retaining customers. It’s hard to imagine a company that doesn’t need clients. But usually speaking about marketing, entrepreneurs fall into the trap of stereotypes: it is resource-intensive, difficult, time-consuming and to some extent even dangerous – the wrong promotion strategy can harm the business.
It is important to move away from misconceptions and misinterpretations. A small amount of resources is not a sentence. Any business needs marketing, and you have no reason to think that all that remains for your small company is to showcase its online presence on social media.
Let’s see what methods you can use to improve your marketing so that you do not break the bank and remain a winner.
Option #1: Stay Local
Your company is not aimed at global domination in a specific niche and is certainly not going to compete with the giants of the chosen field. Therefore, contrary to the common saying, try to think more narrowly, or rather, within the local framework.
So, your choice is local SEO. In other words, this is targeting a specific region where your business is located, and actively promoting in local communities, including regionally linked keywords in content and tags, as well as listing your business in online catalogs.
A little more detail about each variant.
Local communities are Klondike of potential clients. Knowing that there is a company nearby that produces high-quality products or provides first-class services, people tend to go there – this is a kind of good neighborliness effect. In addition to the communities on social networks, where you can declare yourself, it makes sense to take part in local events, as well as organize them by yourself.
Location-based keywords are another small trick. Thanks to it, customers who write the search query “buy something in such a city” will see you first of all – unless, of course, you take care of adding relevant keywords to your content, descriptions and meta tags in advance.
Online directories are even easier: to get started, it is enough to add an account to Google My Business and some local databases, if any. Then, the name of your company name will begin to catch the eye on maps and lists. And the more eyes it catches, the better.
Option #2: Create Useful Content
Everybody heard about content marketing but nobody saw it? In fact, this is not entirely true: high-quality content does not really scream about itself right and left, which, for example, may be true for paid advertising. It works covertly and inexorably: clients cannot even indicate a specific moment when they began to prefer expert articles from one company.
Working with content can be called the cheapest, but by no means the easiest. However, we think you are ready to go. Building authority in your field is a huge advantage that will play into your hands many times when clients find themselves at a crossroads of choice. Once posted on your site, an article that has helped resolve their issue will tip the scales in your favor. And the person who has received valuable information from your post will tell his or her friend about it, opening the way for word of mouth. Isn’t that cool?
Content marketing doesn’t deliver instant results, and you’ve probably heard of it. This is a long-term strategy that works for your business around the clock: once published articles will not go anywhere and will attract new readers again and again.
If you do not have good writers on the staff, and professional ethics does not allow you to contact freelancers (which is absolutely correct), you can seek help from a marketing company that will deal specifically with content marketing. For example, ZRC Marketing Group effortlessly weaves a sleek and engaging network of authoritative content that slowly but surely reaches your clients. And while you master the other options on our list today, your articles will already work to generate leads, increase trust, and enhance expertise.
Option #3: Improve Your Website
When marketing your small business is up and running and getting people to your site, it’s important that they have something to look at. Interestingly, many neglect this when relying on social media. But the latter always remains a third-party platform, while your site is your fortress, your stronghold, and a kind of business card.
A quick response, good page loading speed, and a variety of useful content have a decisive influence on the performance of the targeted action by users: whether it is filling out a form, buying or navigating to another page of the site.
Since we’ve already talked about stereotypes, here’s another one: many people think that a good website is too expensive for a small business. Let’s say this: not having a website will cost you more, because you will miss out on a lot of awesome lead generation opportunities. Building a website is a one-time investment and will absolutely not hit your business as hard as it seems. There are many different price options. Among them, you will find those that are quite affordable, which does not affect their quality.
So, your site should be responsive, that is, adapted for mobile devices. More than 60% of interaction with the Internet is realized through mobile devices, and about 70% of people tend to leave the site if it has not taken care of mobile adaptation.
Once on the site, people should be easy and quick to find what they need. For this, the navigation and blocks on the page must be optimized. The same goes for page load times. If it takes more than three seconds on average to load a page, then more than half of visitors leave it. Therefore, efficient small businesses should invest enough time in optimizing their site, including customizing images, to reduce page load times.
Good Results at Low Cost: Conclusions
We’ve provided three options to help you work wonders for small business marketing with limited resources. Not only will they enable you to achieve better results, but they will also provide an opportunity to channel your efforts in the right direction to get the most out of your investment.
