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Small Business Marketing 101 | Back to Basics

Posted 25 Jun '15

Before launching a campaign, creating content or building the perfect website it is so important to understand the basic marketing fundamentals of your small business. What is the point in having a beautiful website if you don’t have consistent branding and a well-defined target market? Or doing a mail out campaign if you aren’t tracking where your leads are coming from?

It is easy to get caught up in the hype of everything you should be doing to market your small business; like blogging daily, utilising all social media platforms, creating podcasts or vlogs and optimising your website. Marketing platforms are always evolving so there will forever be an influx of new marketing methods and channels. However, we shouldn’t weigh ourselves down with the details until we master our marketing foundations.

The biggest thing to realise is that small business marketing is about doing the basics well – and consistently.

The Empire’s Top Four Tips for Marketing your Small Business

  1. Build your Brand

There are 100 other businesses that offer the same service you do, but none can be who you are. Telling your story consistently through the services you offer, your promotional material, your online channels, your communication and the way you present your business is what you should focus on first. Specifically it will help you:

  • Connect with your target market
  • Create an emotional attachment for your products/services (think of Nike or Apple)
  • Make it easy for clients to recommend your service
  • Allow people to identify you
  • Make you stand out from the rest
  1. Communicate with your clients

Really get to know your clients by communicating with them. If it wasn’t for them your business wouldn’t exist so it is important to be available for any questions or concerns they may have. Communication in your business also refers to how you follow up your quotes, sales and jobs. By consistently touching base with your clients you remain top of mind and the most likely to win their business. Specifically it will help you:

  • Gain first hand insight from your clients on why they use your business and where you can improve
  • Build relationships that make asking for testimonials and referrals simple
  • Connect with clients on a personal level
  • Resolve problems quickly and effectively
  • Have a competitive advantage by following up quotes/queries when your competitors may not be.
  1. Make some business friends

Building alliances with like-minded business owners is an essential element of growing your business. Small business owners especially don’t have the capital or time to spend on fancy marketing tactics so having alliances is key to building your network and business reach. Specifically it will help you:

  • Open your business up for opportunities and potential referrals
  • Share ideas and receive input from like-minded business owners
  • Expand your services that you can offer to your clients as an added benefit
  • Share resources with your alliances – such as joint marketing ventures
  1. Record and Track your numbers

Last but not least, tracking your marketing efforts is SO important!! If you don’t know where your enquiries are coming from, how they are finding out about you and how many you are getting a month, you can’t possibly know where you should be focusing your time, energy and most importantly your cash. If you take one thing away from this article it should be that every phone call you get, you find out where they heard about you and record that information. Specifically it will help you:

  • Find out where you are getting your leads from
  • Show you where you should be focusing your marketing efforts
  • Know when your busiest and slowest months are
  • Know your conversion rate from lead to sale
  • Know your customer demographic information ( ie geographic location, sex, age etc)
  • Help you decide if you are wasting money on advertising ( ie papers, yellow pages)

Branding, Communication, Alliances and Tracking – these four marketing strategies don’t cost much if anything at all, yet they are the strong foundations that you will need to allow your business to grow organically and stay around for the long haul!

To find out how you can specifically apply these strategies to your business, phone us today! 07 3124 0244

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