Marketing Ideas for Growing Your Small or New Business in 2023
Starting a new business is no easy task and requires a lot of time and effort. You need to perfect your offering, select the right sales channels, research your target customers, and more.
However, no matter how good your product or service is, people won’t know about your business unless you market it. Marketing is an essential part of establishing your brand and generating sales leads for your small business. In this post, we will discuss some of the best marketing techniques that will help you grow your small business both in size and reputation.
Summary
- Build an SEO-Friendly Website
- Tell Your Brand Story
- Leverage Social Media Marketing
- Start a Rewards and Referral Program From the Outset
- Invest in Analytics Early-On
- Establish Your Expertise in Your Niche
- Create and Promote Explainer Videos
- Understand the power of existing customers
- Use free promotional tools
- Consider blogging to attract prospects for your website
- Make sure you’re capturing web prospects’ information
- Use email marketing to nurture leads
- Manage relationships with a CRM
- Lean into word of mouth as a promotion channel
1. Build an SEO-friendly Website
The first thing that any new business needs is a website where people can learn about your business and buy your products or services. If you build a website that is optimized for both the search engines and conversions, then you’ve already crossed the first hurdle.
Getting organic traffic to your website should be your first priority before you start investing in other marketing tactics.
Here are some things that you should consider:
- Create good-quality content on trending topics in your niche.
- Do extensive keyword research before creating your website content.
- Incorporate your primary keywords into all your website landing pages, titles, meta descriptions, etc.
- Use structured data to get better SERP rankings for your web pages and make your SERP listings stand apart from others.
- Focus more on local SEO and long-tail keywords.
- Don’t forget to take care of technical SEO aspects like page-load speed and website design.
There is a lot that goes into building an SEO-friendly website, but these tips should get you started on the right path.
2. Tell Your Brand Story
For any business, it is important to connect with their target audience and form a distinct brand image. Telling your brand story is a brilliant and effective way to achieve that.
Brands that are authentic and have a good story about how they came to be are often more memorable and form lasting impressions. So, if you want people who hear about your brand for the first time to remember it, tell them your brand story.
3. Leverage Social Media Marketing
As a small-business owner, one of the cheapest and most effective forms of marketing that you can invest in is social media marketing.
If you’re willing to invest time and effort into it, you can do this in-house with minimal expenditure. And, as your business grows, you can start leveraging social media marketing tools to manage your accounts.
Here are some social media marketing tips to get you started:
- Select the right platforms where your target customers are active.
- Find your brand voice and stick to it.
- Be regular and consistent in posting social media content.
- Use high-quality, eye-catching visuals to attract audience attention.
- Add your website link in your social media bios.
- Use tactics that drive social media traffic to your website.
- Use popular and relevant hashtags to reach more people.
- Create your own branded hashtags to track your campaigns.
There is a lot that goes into formulating a winning social media marketing strategy. These are just some tips to get you started. Once you have mastered these, you should dig deeper, upskill yourself, and try more advanced social media marketing tactics.
4. Start a Rewards and Referral Program From the Outset
This is a simple yet effective marketing strategy that small businesses often overlook. You may think that these programs are meant only for large businesses who have a substantial number of customers. However, that is not necessarily correct.
Small businesses have a lot more to gain from such an initiative, as it is one of the best ways to generate leads. Think of it from customers’ perspectives.
Would you buy from a brand that you’ve never heard of simply by looking at a promotion or ad? No, right?
But, if someone you know and trust recommends it, would you consider at least checking it out? The answer for most would be yes.
That’s the power and beauty of referral marketing, and that is precisely why you should have a referral program in place. By providing rewards, you can incentivize your existing customers to recommend your brand to their friends.
Also, you can give rewards to customers who complete certain actions, like following your social media channels or making a purchase. This will ensure that they engage more with your brand, fostering customer loyalty.
5. Invest in Analytics Early-On
Having a data-driven marketing strategy gives you an edge and makes your initiatives more effective. As a small business, you cannot afford to make mistakes and need to do things right the first time. That is where data and analytics can help you.
And the best part is that you don’t necessarily need to pay for sophisticated software solutions to get that. There are plenty of free or affordable options that you can use.
6. Establish Your Expertise in Your Niche
This is one thing that can help you distinguish yourself from others in your niche and build your brand image. Everyone else is probably using the same marketing tactics as you are, so you need to find additional ways to set yourself apart.
Focussing on establishing yourself as an industry expert is one such tactic.
Here are some of the ways in which you can do that.
- Sign-up for HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and answer questions asked by journalists. These are usually published on reputable websites and a mention or backlink from such websites is good for your reputation.
- Start a blog and create informative and useful content on topics within your niche.
- Join community forums like Quora and answer questions there.
- Engage in discussions on social media on relevant topics within your areas of expertise.
- Host webinars and podcasts on useful and relevant topics. Invite other experts to get more visibility and reach.
As you start making waves in your industry, people will start inviting you for interviews and podcasts. Make time to participate in these things as it further enhances your reputation.
7. Create and Promote Explainer Videos
This tactic, while relevant for all businesses, is especially important for new ones who want to spread brand awareness.
Even the best of businesses with amazing products can struggle to gain that initial momentum and get people to learn about their brand. And, if you launch an innovative product, then it is even more difficult to make people understand what it is and how it can help them.
This is where product tutorials and explainer videos shine. These videos demonstrate what your product does and the different ways in which it can be used.
This removes that initial hurdle where most businesses fail to make their target customers understand the value that they’re providing.
8. Understand the Power of Existing Customers
On average it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than close an existing one. This means you shouldn’t stop marketing once they’ve made a purchase.
Identify your opportunities for repeat purchasing, upselling, and cross-selling. Because your existing customers have already made a purchase, they already know, like, and trust you. If you’ve provided a good experience, you’ve given them a reason to do business with you again should the need ever arise.
Even if the need doesn’t arise (in cases where it’s a one-and-done purchase with no upsell opportunities), you should still delight your customers. Word of mouth is a powerful (and free) promotional tool.
9. Use Free Promotional Tools
Speaking of free promotional tools, it’s important to note that since you’ve committed to a limited goal and scope, there’s no need to inflate your overhead with gadgets. Use free promotional tools where possible, and only commit to paid tools if you know they will drastically improve existing operations or performance. Here’s a helpful list of marketing tools (some free and paid).
10. Consider Blogging to Attract Prospects for Your Website
Blogging is a great way to generate organic traffic, particularly for those prospects who have not reached a purchasing decision yet. In addition, it can establish credibility in your space and position you as a thought leader.
To start a blog, you can use an inexpensive or free website tool to make a free site and use one of their templates. Even if you only publish once a week, it will improve your website’s visibility online and help educate your potential customers on why they should trust your company. If you’re planning to write your posts yourself, check out this beginner’s guide to writing.
Once you start writing, you can add a call-to-action on your posts for visitors to subscribe to your blog and receive emails This is a great way to start collecting leads and offering potential customers a way to get information if they aren’t ready to buy anything from you yet.
11. Make Sure You're Capturing Web Prospects' Information
We’ve been talking a lot about visibility and traffic but haven’t really covered how these will help drive revenue yet. One simple way to start generating leads or customers from your website is to implement a conversion tool.
A simple, free option is HubSpot Marketing Free. By using this tool to add a pop-up widget to your website, you can start collecting the email addresses of potential customers. From there, you can send out promotions and offers and convert them into paying customers. You can also implement any of these 24 conversion tools to help you optimize your website and use it to drive leads.
12. Use Email Marketing to Nurture Leads
Just because you’ve converted website traffic into leads doesn’t mean those leads are ready to buy yet. It’s important to stay top of mind and move them closer to a purchasing decision.
Email marketing is a critical part of your marketing toolkit. In fact, 73 percent of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email.
This strategy is an easy, free, and scalable way to communicate with both new and existing customers.
Once you have an email marketing tool in place (many are inexpensive or even free), experiment with emailing out newsletters (with your sleek new blog posts), and other promotions to your database. We know small business owners don’t have tons of free time to devote to digital marketing, so consider using marketing automation to make this process even easier for yourself.
To get started planning your email marketing strategy, check out this guide and template from HubSpot.
13. Manage Relationships With a CRM
Email marketing works best when you’re sending personalized, targeted emails. This begins with a customer database or customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Your CRM stores information about your leads, prospects, and customers so that you can keep track of customer interactions and identify sales opportunities more effectively.
HubSpot has one of the best CRMs (and best of all, it’s totally free).
14. Lean Into Word of Mouth As a Promotion Channel
As mentioned previously, delighting customers can have a big impact on your business, primarily in repeat purchases and word of mouth. If you provide a great experience, your customers will be more inclined to leave reviews, give testimonials, and tell their friends about you.
That’s why it’s a good idea to measure customer satisfaction and encourage customers to spread the word.
Conclusion
If you are ready to get started or have an audit done of your current marketing strategy, fill out the form below to contact me. I will analyze your current marketing situation, make data-based suggestions, and offer some free tools to help you succeed – and more. If you are pleased with my free consultation work, let’s discuss working together on the marketing strategy’s full execution.
