Unique Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

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By Raji Ridwan

Marketing is a money-hungry activity. Without a huge budget, it’s somewhat difficult to carry out effective marketing strategies for small businesses. However, one of the defining features of a small business is the lack of huge capital.

Thanks to that, talking about marketing strategies for small businesses is understandably a very complex topic. Small businesses require effective marketing tips and tricks that won’t gulp thousands of dollars, no thanks to the unavailability of a large budget.

There are a few WhatsApp marketing strategies for small businesses to leverage in order to scale businesses and promote products.

In this article, we will look more deeply at some marketing strategies for small businesses that actually work. These strategies don’t require a humongous budget and they’re enough to put your small business on the right track for success.

Unique Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

As hinted earlier, there are tons of marketing strategies to help grow any business, but finding a balance between effectiveness and budget can be somewhat challenging. If you’re striving for business growth with a low budget, here are some of the best strategies you should consider implementing for your small business today.

marketing strategies for small business
  • Email Marketing

    It’s no news that digital marketing is an indispensable part of your overall marketing strategy for any business, and email marketing happens to be one of the most important aspects of that. Email marketing is a form of communication with your customers or potential customers using their emails.

    Firstly, you collect their emails and collate them in your email marketing software. Then, you segregate them to fit different demographics and personas to eventually send emails tailored to each group on your email list.

    To get started with email marketing, you need email marketing software. The software helps with storing the emails of your potential audience, hosts your signup form, and offers an editor for you to compose and send emails to your subscribers once you start getting them.

    While email marketing is a good fit for most businesses, it’s perfect for professionals that offer services that you get over the internet. For example, freelance writers, graphic designers, bloggers, and writers can all make use of email marketing to get to their targeted audience easily.

    In most cases, you can get started with email marketing without having to spend a dime. As you grow your audience, however, the email marketing platform will demand money, since you’re almost certainly earning from them anyway.

  • Online Advertisements

    If you’re not advertising online already, you’re missing out on an enormous deal of your potential customers. It’s not 2004 anymore, and almost everyone is on the internet now. One way you can use that to your advantage is by pestering them with ads until they patronize your business.

    Unlike email marketing, online advertisement isn’t meant to be cheap. However, it also doesn’t require a long-term commitment to building a loyal audience that will wait for your newsletter to land every day, week, or month.

    Depending on your budget and your business’ industry, there are many platforms that are available for you to advertise on. The two favorites for small business owners include Facebook Ads and Google Ads, and they’re equally effective and inexpensive, depending on how experienced you are with either.

    For the average small business owner, Facebook Ads is more cost-effective, since it doesn’t require much experience to set up winning ads using this platform. However, if you want hot leads that are already interested in what your business has to offer, Google Ads is the better option for you.

    It’s important to note that both have a learning curve, and mastering either makes them a lot easier to use and also more effective. Instead of spending too much time trying to master either Google or Facebook ads, you can also outsource it to an agency that specializes in running ads.
    Also, you shouldn’t limit your business to Google Ads and Facebook Ads alone. In some cases, going for alternatives like LinkedIn Ads might drive more results with less budget.

  • Content Marketing

    Content marketing is a blanket term often used to refer to anything that involves creating and publishing content on the web. The content can be of any format, including video, audio, and text, and they should add value to your audience or answer questions that they might have.

    Over the years, it has become increasingly clearer that content marketing strategies for small business is one of the most effective forms of marketing for small businesses. By creating and managing a blog or YouTube channel, a small business can attract leads that they can eventually nurture and turn into paying customers.

    Unlike some of the other strategies on this list, content marketing can be very expensive, depending on the business. A one-man blog might be all you need to drive traffic and attract customers in some business categories, but most businesses aren’t in those categories.

    If you have more budget than a few hundred dollars, you may want to consider creating a YouTube channel in your business category. When people go to that YouTube channel to get answers to pressing questions, you can always refer them back to your business, earning new customers in the process.

    Before going into content marketing, it’s essential to note that calculating the ROI is usually difficult. Also, you shouldn’t expect any immediate ROI unlike with online ads, since a blog or YouTube channel needs content and some time to take off.

  • Organic Social Media Marketing

    Growing a social media handle organically is very different from running ads to bring more exposure to your social media. Organic social media marketing is one of the most effective social media marketing strategies for small businesses if you can do it effectively.

    When customers seek out brands to buy from, they tend to favor those with an active presence on social media. While you might already have an active presence, you need something more than just being on social media; you need to have a commanding social profile.

    There are ways to also improve your brand reputation strategy, this also helps how people see your brand and helps to drive potential customers.

    It needs no telling that a brand social media handle with only a handful of followers is just as good as having none at all. That’s why you need to invest in growing your social media followers to showcase it proudly to potential customers.

    To make the most out of your social media marketing strategy, you should consider focusing on only social media sites that are relevant to your business. For example, trying to grow your followership on LinkedIn would make no sense if you sell fashion apparel, but Instagram would be an excellent abode for you.

    While having an active presence on multiple social media sites isn’t a bad thing, trying to become popular on irrelevant ones is a little more than a waste of time.

    If you need to focus on running your business, you may want to outsource your social media marketing to an agency. Most agencies are adept at helping you amass a large collection of followers while ensuring that those followers are targeted enough to make them potential customers for your goods or service.

  • Try Influencer Marketing

    While it seems like influencers are only for the bigger brands, small businesses can also utilize their popularity for growth. Statistically, influencer marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies for small businesses.

    To avoid losing money, however, you must ensure that you approach the entire process strategically. There are influencer marketing strategy tips and tricks for growing a business that will save you tons of money and time while driving measurable results in the long run.

    Before reaching out to influencers, it’s crucial to confirm that their followers are people that fit your typical persona. Before you can do this, you’ll need to create a customer persona for your business, which is another discussion entirely.

    Then, you should ensure that the influencer already knows and uses your product. People who are already fans of a particular brand tend to promote it aggressively as influencers than those who aren’t. At the very least, try to confirm that your would-be influencer doesn’t hate your product.

    For the best results, you should consider contacting micro-influencers exclusively. Micron influencers refer to influencers that are not incredibly popular yet. Depending on how much you’re willing to spend, your definition of a micro-influencer can range from someone with 5,000 followers to someone with 50,000.
    Micro-influencers are a better option for small businesses because they’re more likely to agree to affiliate marketing deals. In an influencer affiliate marketing arrangement, the influencer gets a commission from every sale they facilitate, making it a win-win arrangement.

    While influencer marketing shouldn’t be the first item on your list of the top marketing strategies to try for your small business, it works. Once you feel ready for it, commence your research and start reaching out to relevant influencers to get started.

Conclusion

Growing a small business is no easy task. Using limited capital, you must combine different marketing tactics to double down on the few that turn out to be effective for the business.

If you’re still in the process of sourcing the best marketing strategies for small businesses, this article can help. Note that the strategies listed above may not work across all industries. The secret is trying most of them and doubling down on those that work; that’s how you grow!

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