7 Hot Marketing Strategies for Small Business Owners that Truly Delivers

Growing a business is not always easy. There is a lot on the table to deal with. And one important thing that cannot be ignored is marketing. You can have the best products or services in the world, but if your target audience doesn’t know about these products or services, your business is going to crash, as you won’t be generating any profit.

Marketing is how all businesses achieve their sales goals and branding initiatives. However, there are proven marketing strategies that you can employ in your small business to fuel the growth of the business with just a small budget.

Whether you are just starting a small business or you own a small business and want to scale, this post is for you. Here are 7 hot marketing strategies for small business owners looking to scale their business to attract more customers and boost sales.

1. Social Media Marketing

This is one powerful marketing strategy for small business owners. You can’t ignore this at the moment. It is where all the magic is happening. If you ignore this, you are losing a large amount of money to your competitors.

Gone are the days when you need to spend a large sum of money to run ads on newspapers, television channels, and radio stations. These days, with a strong social media presence, anything can be achieved.

Many small businesses have used social media to create awareness of their brands, increase their customer base and boost sales. Social media is a very powerful marketing tool that any small business can take advantage of.

You can join Facebook and take advantage of Facebook ads to either drive traffic to your site or create awareness of your brand.

Most social media networks allow their users to run ads and achieve their sales or branding goals.

If you run a business with a strong visual component, you can give Instagram or Pinterest a try. But, don’t make the mistake of jumping on all the social media networks in the name of building awareness for your brand.

Establishing your presence on a few of them can help your business build up a relationship with your target audience. You can reach a large audience by running a Facebook or Instagram ad for as little as $5 daily. And with a special feature like retargeting that comes with Facebook ads, achieving whatever goals you set with your ads can be achievable.

You don’t need to pay to join any of these networks. Shouldn’t you give it a try?

2. Blogging

If you don’t have a blog for your business, you need to start one now. This is another hot marketing strategy for branding and exposure.

Blogging allows you to tell potential customers and fans about your business and what they tend to benefit. Blogging gives your business the opportunity to add value to potential customers.

As you regularly update your blog with new content that readers are likely to find value in, it helps improve your SEO ranking on search engines, making it more likely for your business to be found online.

Read more on How to Start a Blog.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your site so that it can be easily found when users search for products or services you are into. SEO can be very challenging, but if you can successfully implement it into your business, the sky truly is the limit.

SEO is a long-term game. It can take a long time before you start seeing results. But, it pays in the long run.

One important factor in SEO that can help increase traffic to your site is keyword research. This is because keywords are what users type on search engines that bring up sites that are relevant to the keywords.

So, you will need to create a list of keywords that you know your target audience may type on search engines. Keywords that are relevant to your business. Think of the problems you are trying to solve for your target customers and use that as a way of creating content using possible keywords they may likely type on search engines.

Keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, KWFinder will tell you phrases your target audience often use when searching for information, products or services that your business provides.

Another important factor is local SEO. This involves optimizing your site and content for local search (potential customers searching for information, product or services related to your business from nearby location).

SEO is very broad. So, if you don’t know your way around SEO, you may need to hire an SEO expert to do the job. You can’t take any shortcuts. You will need to put in a lot of work, and you may not have that time.

Learn more about SEO.

4. Google My Business

Google My Business is one of the best marketing strategies for small business owners targeting local markets. This tool immediately gives your business strong visibility on Google.

To enhance this visibility, consider incorporating a QR Code Google for My Business on your promotional materials and storefront, allowing potential customers to access your business information effortlessly.

When someone searches for a product or service in the same location as your business, your business appears in the top searches. This is the advantage of Google My Business.

Ranking top 10 among other competitors on Google My Business listing is one of the most powerful things you can do for your business. If you can rank top 5, you can pull a lot of qualified leads for your business without having to spend any money running ads.

If you run a local business targeting local markets, this should be your number one marketing strategy. Ranking on Google My Business listing is not that hard. You just need to optimize your profile and gather a lot of positive reviews and citations.

When potential customers see that your profile is accompanied by positive reviews and see it listed in the top 5, they will be more willing to trust your business.

So, what is your plan for this right now?

5. Email Marketing

Do people still read emails? Yes, they do.

As a small business owner with a limited budget, email marketing is also a good option for growing your business. It still remains one of the highest tools for nurturing leads and turning them into paying customers.

Internet marketers will tell you that email marketing is one great way to stay on customers’ minds while telling them about your products or services.

Email marketing starts with generating leads using a lead magnet. This is where you give your website visitors something valuable for free in exchange for their email addresses. This can be a free eBook, free webinar or podcast, or a discounted offer.

Once visitors drop their email addresses, they are subscribed to your email list and you can start building a relationship with them by sharing valuable content. As time goes on, you can then start sending them to your sales page or website.

Have this at the back of your mind. Most people access their email using their mobile phones. Make sure your email template is mobile-responsive.

You can start your email marketing campaign with this tool for free.

6. Content Marketing

This is the process of creating blog posts and publishing them on different sites. If you know what your target audience cares about, their pain, needs, and desires, you can create content that can be of great value to them.

With content marketing, you create content and send it to sites in your niche where you know your target audiences are hanging out. This can be online forums, article directories, or guest posting on high-authority sites.

You will need to drop guest posts on high authority sites in your niche so you can gain large audience attention and also get strong backlinks to your site, which is an addition to your ranking on search engines.

Content marketing does not only entail blog posts, it can also be videos, audio, podcasts, and a host of other mediums in which people can consume information.

7. Google AdWords

This is one great marketing strategy for small business owners going for quick results. It is proven to give immediate results as far as you have the budget.

Now, Google AdWords is a paid marketing strategy that helps you show up among the top 3 on search engines when users search for information, products, or services using keywords you bid for. It is quite competitive but it delivers.

A quality score is assigned to your ad depending on your CTR (Click Through Rate), the site you are driving traffic to and the relevance. This score determines your bid rate to get your ad to be displayed. The higher the score, the lower your bid cost.

It is the most expensive marketing strategy among the ones listed in this post. But, if you do it right, it may not be considered expensive, as you will be getting your expected results.

For you to get better results with Google AdWords, it will need to be paired with other marketing strategies.

So, by implementing any of these marketing strategies into your business, you are sure to get a good return on investment and more. Marketing for small businesses doesn’t need to be expensive or difficult. You just have to be willing to sacrifice your time and money to get it started.