Here are some tips on what small businesses that want to build effective marketing campaigns should be doing.
1. Segment Your Audience
As many small business marketers very well know, the audience they are marketing to is always very sophisticated and diverse. That is what makes it hugely imperative for small business owners to work with a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes segmentation. Doing so allows them to target specific ads at specific audiences for utmost impacts at very low cost effects.
2. Leverage Your Free Channels
Marketing online requires the use of multiple channels most of which are free to push messages around the internet. Many small business owners are already using these channels. If you know your way around the internet, you can leverage on these free channels to get your message across to your targeted audience. Free channels like your own social media accounts, blog and email marketing lists are available for you to leverage upon in a cost-effective way to reach your target audience. Many of these channels may be free to use but they are very effective for online marketing, the reason you can leverage them for good results.
3. Be Creative with Your Content
Online marketing requires a lot of creativity to be effective. This is more so with videos, graphics or photo content where quality is of utmost importance. With the use of apps like Prequel or TikTok, you can really get creative with videos, graphics and photo editing. By using these apps effectively, you can easily create highly watchable videos and visually interesting graphics/photos thereby sparing yourself the need to have to hire at considerable costs the services of a professional videographer/photographer.
4. Identify Your Business with a Cause
Be sure what your business stands for is very clear before posting messages about it online. You must identify a particular mission your business can truly claim as its own. With that, you can then identify your business with it as a cause then prepare very clear messaging that drives your objectives forward in tandem with that cause. If you present a haphazard approach to many initiatives instead of identifying with one cause, your results will be hugely limited.
5. Target Your Niche with Social Media Ads
It is a known fact among marketers that small businesses typically serve a niche market. The reason it is easy to target that market with appropriate ads. Using such target messages in the very popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, you get very good returns on your investment. For best results, your social media ads must be specific when defining a target because of their own in-house algorithms that enable them to target specific audiences as a matter of course.
6. Develop and Target a Buyer Persona with Ads
For your marketing ads to be more effective, you need to do some diligent research to develop a buyer persona. That done, it becomes easier to channel your messaging to that persona, using the marketing platforms that your buyers interact on the most. That is like taking your message to where your buyers are and can be found. You can deliver such messages with the use of emails, social media accounts and blogs. Doing so enables you to capture easily a small audience that is highly qualified as against dissipating your efforts on a large audience that is unqualified.
7. Use Ads with Multiple Touch Points
If you have listed your business on Google My Business, you can create campaign ads that have multiple touch points by leveraging on it. Google My Business is very popular on Google searches and most people easily turn to it in search of businesses in their localities. Free listing on the platform usually helps to get very good results. This is good for the ads budgets of very many small businesses.
8. Be Consistent To Amplify Your Ads Message
Ads messages when repeated consistently tend to increase remembrance and memorability. That increases their effectiveness. Online tools that help to automate your online messages across several channels are always useful to amplify ads messages online. For this reason, your content needs to be appropriately adapted to any channel or medium you are using to propagate your ads messages online.
9. Deploy Online Metrics to Measure your Efforts
Without accurate metrics, it is very difficult to gauge how well your campaigns are doing. Because measurement is central to the success of your ads campaigns, you must always put metrics in place to make sure what you spend on marketing is converting adequately to sales. That is your ROI which every smart marketer must be interested in. It is a marketing folly to assume your marketing is working. Only metrics measurements give accurate and informed data to help make that decision. If the results you are getting are not commensurate to the marketing efforts you are putting in, with data from your metrics measurements, you can quickly make adjustments for better results.
10. Optimize Your Business for Local Searches
Many small businesses tend to get a very high patronage from local customers. That is what makes optimizing your business for local searches a very smart thing to do if you are running a small business of your own. Doing so is a way of telling your local target market that you are there for them. Google search results do show that many customers are always looking for businesses near their current locations. For this reason, it is just not enough to simply optimize your business for search engines, the business must be optimized for local searches as well. That helps more people searching locally to be able to find you when they need what you are offering.
11. Leverage SMS Automation
For most small business owners, repeat business means good business. Staying in touch with customers is one great way to guarantee repeat business. How do you do this? One very effective way is to leverage SMS automation to keep a constant dialogue going with your customers. Building personal one-on-one relationships with customers helps many small businesses to grow very rapidly. Leveraging SMS automation to keep their businesses top of mind for customers is one great way to build these relationships.
12. Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy
For online marketing purposes, it is not just enough to have a good content. The content must be well-optimized for search purposes because consumers now spend more time online searching for their needs. Content optimization has thus become a good marketing strategy. Consumer behavior now tends towards seeking out more information while looking for ways to be educated, entertained and inspired. Redirecting more of your marketing efforts to content marketing helps your brand to connect better with consumers in places they spend most of their time online.
13. Deploy a Robust Customer Loyalty Program
Nearly everyone I know craves recognition and appreciation. Customers are no exceptions. The existing customer base of many small businesses is their most valuable asset. They can leverage on that asset to get repeat business if they have a robust customer loyalty program in place. This program can take the form of discounts for repeat business or even outright gifts. Marketing experience shows that it is by far easier and cheaper to service a returning customer than it is to source a new customer. With satisfied repeat customers, you can quickly build up brand loyalty. With it, you can easily reach a wider audience through referral programs capable of helping your business to grow exponentially.
14. Market Your Satisfied Customers
By the time your business builds up a good customer base, you can leverage on it to get more and more customers. Many people always want to know what customers are saying about your business. Explore ways to get your satisfied customers in front of your target audience. Get what your customers are saying about your business on social media and such other channels where your target audience is. Their testimonies can get you more and more customers when many consumers chance on such comments online.
