Marketing Tips for Small Businesses
Whether your messages don’t seem to be landing the same way they used to, or business seems to have gotten stagnant, there’s never a bad time for owners of small businesses to think about effective ideas and marketing tips to consider.
There’s always room for improvement, no matter if your business is brand new or decades old, so we’ve put together a list of great ideas to improve your marketing. Check it out, and improve your edge over the competition!
Know Your Audience and Target Them
Probably the number one tip we can give is to know exactly who you’re marketing to. When you’re considering marketing, ask yourself – who is my audience? What do they do, and what can I do to help them do it better?
Compiling a buyer persona correctly is a great way to give you a target to aim for, with more personalized marketing messages and segmentation to your list. Define your audience demographic, their interests, and their responsibilities.
When putting your buyer personas together, don’t forget to take into account how a customer who needs help and a little push will need a different message than a customer who’s already ready to buy.
Once you have an idea of what your audience looks like, you’ll have an easier time creating targeted, relevant, and valuable content to market to them. Stay away from “clickbait” and dozens of sales pitches – focus your effort to reach your audience on a more personal level using the buyer personas, and show them that you care about their wants and needs. Instead of pushing your product or service, try providing insight and information to your audience.
Email Optimization
Many consumers, up to 86%, prefer the use of email for business purposes, so while it can be tricky to accomplish, email marketing is important for small businesses. Even if you have great content, there’s no guarantee your recipients will open your emails, but there are ways you can improve open rates, audience engagement, and conversions.
Take a look at some of our recommended tips:
- Make sure your emails are coming from a recognizable address – one that preferably is dedicated to your business.
- Check your subject lines so they’re engaging to the reader and encourage them to click and read more.
- With how many people use their phones for everything these days, mobile-friendly viewing is essential.
- Visual appeal and design is a must on emails.
- Deliver what the subject line promises. Don’t be misleading.
- Have a call to action that your readers can understand and is easy for them to accomplish.
Check Data Regularly
If this isn’t something you do more than once a year, it’s easy to fall behind in your marketing strategy. Successful marketing is reliant on data-driven decisions, and if your data is inaccurate or out-of-date, the decisions you make will be too.
Our recommendation is to do a monthly assessment of your data, cleaning out anything that isn’t up-to-date and accurate. Ensure that every month, your marketing strategy is on point with how your audience and methods of reaching them are changing. But, if you need further guidance, look no further than Emu Web Marketing.