A good marketing strategy doesn’t have to blow the budget
Many small business start-ups fall into the trap of thinking that since they don’t have a lot of experience in marketing, they’ll need to hire professionals to do it for them. With all the available advice, tools and resources available online, this doesn’t have to be the case. You can create a DIY marketing strategy that fits within your budget and is just as effective as a professional one.
Great marketing comes down to how well you know your customers, and how much time you’re prepared to spend researching their wants, needs and buying behavior. The better you know them, the more effectively you can tailor your marketing strategy to target them.
Track online behavior
Getting a good idea of the online behavior of your potential customers means you’ll have a better chance of selling to them. Try:
- Using Google® Analytics to keep track of website traffic, including what people are clicking on. It’s a great way to determine statistics like age and gender, as well as which pages are being clicked. You can also find out how many people are coming from referred sites.
- Conducting polls and surveys through platforms like Facebook® to give you a better idea of what your customers are looking for. One of the most popular tools is SurveyMonkey™, and it can be easily embedded into your Facebook page. You can share your surveys and get your results in an easy-to-use format.
Collect and use customer data
Your website should have a way of collecting customer contact details such as email addresses. Encourage people to register on your site by offering free downloads of whitepapers and other content, creating giveaways or loyalty rewards, or even providing advanced notice of specials and clearance deals.
What’s the point of collecting data from your prospects? Sending a regular e-newsletter that offers relevant, useful content to your customers, for example, keeps your business at top of mind to your customers and encourages them to keep buying from you.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is a process to help optimize your website so that it’s attractive to search engines. On Google®, few people click on a result that is fourth or fifth in the list, and hardly ever do people look at the second page of results.
If you can ensure that your website is one of the top few results when someone does a relevant search on Google®, it’s much more likely a consumer will visit your website.
Look for free advertising
With a dash of imagination and persistence, you can get others to promote your business for you. One way is to advertise your business through other companies and do the same for them.
This is especially popular via social media. If you have other businesses following you on popular outlets and vice versa, you can promote each other for no cost.
Display guarantees and testimonials
Testimonials increase your credibility and are great ways of increasing business. For people who are thinking of buying from you, this social proof – knowing that other people have used your product and recommend you – builds their trust in you and means they’re more likely to become customers themselves.
On your website, add quotes from customers, any warranties or ‘lifetime’ guarantees that help reduce potential new customer concerns.
Retaining customers & improving satisfaction
Once you’ve won your first-time customers, you want them to keep coming back. You should always be thinking of ways to improve their experience with you, and convincing them that they’re more important to you than they are to your competitors.
Complementary marketing
It’s the basic “Would you like fries with that?” approach. If you can offer complementary products or services to your customers at the time of purchase, you’ll improve your sales and your customer experience.
If you don’t have any complementary products or services, you could enter into an alliance with a similar business.
Build alliances with suppliers
Develop alliances with suppliers and hold joint promotions or get them to share the costs of signage or events.
You can hold an event at your business where the supplier sends an expert to demonstrate a new product or train people in its use. Be sure to invite your top customers.
Promote special events
These work really well for retail. Think Mother’s Day, Christmas, Easter or school holidays. If you’ve got a well-established social media platform, you can use it to promote these events.
Encourage word-of-mouth and referral business
Word-of-mouth is one of the best, most effective and cheapest forms of advertising you can use. Try to get your customers talking about you on social media, and get permission to use their testimonials on your website.
