While it is common business sense that you need to create the right product that fits people’s needs for customers to buy it, even the perfect product will not sell by itself if your customers aren’t hearing about it. Creating awareness about your product is where marketing plays a huge role in all businesses. That is why any business owner you talk to is always thinking about different ways and strategies to reach their existing and new customers with online and offline marketing.
Small business owners constantly face the challenge of having limited resources that they can deploy for marketing strategies and tactics. They do not have the same amount of money, time or employees at their disposal that are available to their larger competitors. This limits them from effectively competing with large corporations and prevents them from reaching their full potential.
Fortunately, the rise of technology and online marketing in the last decade has finally given small business owners the power to overcome these constraints and enact marketing strategies that help them utilize their limited resources more effectively and compete on a level playing field. Here are 4 simple and affordable marketing strategies that will help you get the most bang for your small business marketing bucks.
- Social Media Marketing
Social media has taken the world by storm in the last few years. Prominent social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. have billions of active users who are constantly checking their feeds at any time of the day. Any small business that does not have social media marketing strategy stands to lose out on this important marketing avenue. You don’t need to spend large sums of money to effectively market on social media – the key to success with social media marketing is crafting the right message that will attract your audience’s attention, engaging with them and figuring out the right time and avenue to reach them.
One of the most effective ways to attract your audience to your social media posts is through the use of images and video. Using well-designed and attractive images will draw the attention of those who are scrolling through their posts quickly.
Now, it is difficult to design your own graphics and videos if you have no design experience and it is too expensive to hire professionals to do the job for you, which is where graphic design software like PosterMyWall can help. With thousands of templates for professional-looking graphics, you can customize any to fit your brand style and create attractive graphics with little effort, even without any design expertise. The tool even lets you publish the posts directly on social media without ever leaving the platform. If you want to save yourself time and unnecessary hassle, you can create and schedule all your posts at once with their Premium subscription.
- Email Marketing
Email marketing has existed ever since emails first became a medium of communication. Even after so many years, it continues to be an effective online marketing tool. The idea that people are giving less attention to marketing emails these days is merely a myth – 99% of us still check our emails every day and use them to decide our online purchases. If your emails are not giving the results statistics are promising you, you need to revamp your emails with relevant and snappy content, intriguing subject lines, captivating email headers, and other attractive images and videos to attract your email recipients to read your email and act on it. Short, relevant and interesting content accompanied by good-looking visuals can reduce your bounce rate considerably.
- Video Marketing
While this is a relatively new marketing strategy, it is gaining more and more importance within the online marketing community. The reason is simple – videos provide an effective way for marketers to provide more information than simple text and static imagery by combining attractive live-action with associated commentary. If a picture is worth a thousand words, videos can be worth millions. The challenge for small business owners is to be able to create relevant and attractive videos with a limited marketing budget and design expertise. Not to worry! There are tools available that allow you to create attention-grabbing videos even if you are not Steven Spielberg and do not have a huge budget at your disposal. The use of pre-produced video templates and customization tools can help you create effective branded videos quickly and inexpensively in a matter of minutes.
- Quora
This is perhaps the most overlooked online marketing strategy with small business owners. Quora is a platform for users to get answers to their questions from experts and experienced people all over the world. For small business owners, answering these questions provides an opportunity to promote their expertise along with their value proposition not only to the people asking the questions but also to millions of others who will search for that information later and land on your answers. The beauty of this platform is that your answers will remain on the platform forever which allows you to continue to reach your audience even months and years later.
As you can see online marketing doesn’t have to be complicated nor costly. With the right marketing strategies and proper tools, any small business owner can deploy a cutting-edge marketing strategy to effectively compete with large corporations even with their limited resources and budget. So start putting these suggestions into action today and watch your small business climb to the top of the league!
