Poor marketing is one of the top 10 reasons small businesses end up closing their doors. Strong marketing and sales strategies can have a massive effect on the success of the business overall.
Most small businesses create social media pages, advertise with local papers, and create a website and think that most of the advertising is done. They neglect to make the most of the digital outlets available to them. This could be out of ignorance of what is available, or it could just be that they are hesitant to spend too much money on marketing. Regardless of the reason, neglecting a strong sales and marketing campaign can be crippling to any business.
It is important to remember that money has to be spent in order to make larger profits. Large corporations figured this out, and that is why so many of them have large and successful marketing campaigns.
Poor Search Engine Visibility
Consumers today turn to search engines to find the information they need with a few quick keystrokes. Small businesses that could potentially fulfill those needs often neglect to remember that creating a website does not mean users will find it easily. In order to enhance search engine results in favor of the business, it must:
- Register with all available search engines. While some of the search engines have bots that are good at fishing for information, there is no guarantee that your business will come up if it isn’t registered. If it does come up, it could fall to the fifth page and reach only a handful of potential customers.
- Utilize SEO (search engine optimization). The better the SEO for the site is written, the better the results will be with search engines. That means clients can find you faster and easier.
Poorly Designed Websites
Consumers today don’t want to be beaten with advertisements for products that are not relevant to them, nor do they want to dig around on a website to find the information they are looking for. A quick way to turn off consumers and hurt your sales goals is to have a poorly designed, hard to navigate website.
User-friendly designs will boost sales and increase referrals. That means small businesses may have to spend a little more cash to hire a professional web design company to create their website for them. In the end, it’s worth the investment.
Ignore Social Media
Nearly everyone has some sort of social media account, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Google+, LinkedIn, or Tumbler. Because so many potential consumers are tapped into these sites, corporations and small businesses create their own pages with the hope of reaching this audience. This potential is why social media matters.
The mistake that many small businesses make is ignoring the social media site once it is set up. Don’t set it and forget it. Find a way to link in every advertisement, article, or other piece of positive promotional material to that account so that people can find it. Spend a little extra money to boost the promotions on the social media sites so that the small business can reach a wider audience.
This is a challenge for many small businesses, primarily because they just don’t have the knowledge necessary to promote the company through these outlets. Instead of gambling on the do-it-yourself plan, hire a company that specializes in marketing and promotion on social media. Matomy Media Group is a good example of a company that has the knowledge and skills to promote across multiple platforms, because Matomy is a larger company with divisions that specialize in each section of marketing and promotion online. Companies like this know how to play the social media marketing came, and they are worth spending the money on to increase visibility and sales.
Over-Targeting Emails
Nobody likes spam in their email. It fills up the box and makes it frustrating to get to the important information. Another mistake that small businesses make is sending out promotional or newsletter emails to anyone who has given them and email address, without asking permission first. Consumers are often turned off by unwanted ads in the inbox, which makes it less likely they will return to the company for future information or business.
This does not mean that target emails should be avoided at all costs. The important thing for small businesses to keep in mind is to give consumers the ability to opt-in, instead of forcing them to opt-out. That means they can check a box or request the information be sent to them with updates. It also means that there should be an easy to find Unsubscribe link in every email. If the consumer doesn’t want it anymore, they should be able to easily remove their email address from the mailing list.
Hiring a company that knows how to play the target email marketing system game can remove the hassle and stress of making small businesses deal with it alone. Marketing companies with this knowledge not only can help decrease lost sales from spam ads, they can increase sales by targeting the best audience for the products.
It can be hard for a small business to spend extra money on marketing firms that know how to increase marketing and boost sales, but in the end it can increase sales and pay for itself.
