5 Tips for Marketing Your Small Business in 2022

Small business marketing has come a long way in recent years, especially with the recent global pandemic fast-forwarding the digitization of retail stores. Gone are the days of print ads and word-of-mouth. Now, it’s all about how you can reach the most customers on a limited budget, and doing it online. The good news is, you don’t need to be a big business to invest in your marketing.

However, successful marketing is about so much more than social media and ads. It’s about finding new ways to connect with your audience. Check out this updated and reposted blog for 5 essential and proven marketing strategies for your small business.

Cultivate Your Brand Identity

A lot of new businesses jump right into marketing their business without planning their messaging. As a small business, you have the chance to really connect with your audience. It’s hard to compete with big brands like Amazon on things like price or selection, but you can compete with your story. What sets your business apart? How can you uniquely tell your brand story?

Once you’ve developed your brand identity, create content that conveys your brand’s values and messaging. Your marketing output should constantly reflect what your brand stands for, and the more clarity that consumers have regarding your brand identity, the stronger connection they will feel to your company.

You got them to type your URL in and search your website, which is a significant step, so you wouldn’t want to lose them due to a lacklustre landing page. Landing pages are designed to convince visitors to stay, browse, and even better, buy something. People will judge your website by its landing page. So what elements do you need to create a remarkable landing page?

• Eye-catching design
• Catchy headline
• Clear CTA
• Lead Magnet

These elements are essential for success, and it makes sense as your landing page is the first thing they see. We want them to click within, not out! There are several tools available out there that help you to optimize your landing pages. Let us help you with the perfect landing page that will lead to success.

Social Media is key

1. Create Your Fans

You wouldn’t speak to a wine enthusiast the same as you would a monster truck fan. I’m not saying there are no monster truck fans out there enjoying a nice glass of pinot noir, but we need to develop our audience.

So, before you start creating content, you have to know who you are making content for. Who is your target customer? The best way to answer this is to develop your customer persona.

Here are some key factors to think about when creating your personas.

• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Occupation
• Income level
• Education level
• Relationship status
• Geographic location

Let’s not stop there. Here are some questions to ask as you build their psychographic profile.

• What is their lifestyle like?
• Do they have any hobbies or interests?
• What is the personal characteristic of your customers?
• Do they have any notable beliefs or attitudes?

Answer these questions, and voila! You now have your customer persona created to help choose the right platform and build the right content that piques their interest. When you understand your core customers better, you not so magically create better content and learn how to engage them at a higher level. This is because you know who they are and what they like.

2. Share Others Content

When it comes down to it, people will always come back if they are given great content, or at least spread good word of mouth around! Keep in mind, this doesn’t specifically mean solely the content you create. This can also come for other resources if your brand and your content curation.

Now you may seem a little confused about why you wouldn’t want to create everything, but in fact, content curation builds more value for your audience. Being able to offer some sort of value to your customer’s life that right now builds trust. And trust, trust is what every business wants… Well, trust is genuinely what everyone just wants.

So you want to turn followers into customers with content to create value and value to build trust. Now, why couldn’t we do this without sharing content that isn’t yours? Well, if you only ever post about your company, not only might it start being redundant and boring, the media will become boring, but it will feel like your business is only interested in selling its products. For obvious reasons, we want you to stay away from this!

People do not like to feel like they’re being “sold to”.

People want to decide themselves on what they want to buy. So when you start incorporating outside content, this feels less of a sell and more about educating your customer with the right tools to make their own decisions.

Use one specific and clear CTA

Call To Actions are amazing when used correctly and not overwhelming the customer. For your landing page to start creating the conversions you’re looking for, your CTA needs to be clear and concise. You want your CTA to be just that-a call of action, literally creating an urgency for that customer.

Whether it’s having the customer fill out a form, grab an eBook, or any other action… Your designs, copy, colours, and everything must align for that CTA.

Keep in mind, you want to make sure the colour and contrast is implemented. Your size of CTA is important as well. It shouldn’t scare your customers away and it shouldn’t be too small for them to miss it.

Declutter your landing page and ensure your customers can tell from a mile away what they’re supposed to do on that page. Here’s a cool exercise for you:

After creating and implementing only one CTA, step back from your screen, squint your eyes until it goes blurry. If everything meshes together as one and you can’t tell where your CTA is, it’s time to revise!

Create Content That Includes Your Community

Content remains incredibly important in marketing. It is one of the best ways for your business to show its value and to foster a connection with your audience, which helps increase brand loyalty. Not only do you want your audience to respond to your content output, you want them to actively engage with it.

As effective as celebrities and influencers can be when it comes to promoting brands, consumers are most likely to trust a regular person. In fact, about 90% of purchasing decisions are influenced by user-generated content (UGC). Though incentivizing your audience to create content can be challenging, it may be the most rewarding marketing tool.

Be Ready For Change

Not only does technology change at a rapid pace, but so do people. The way consumers interact with ads and brands this year may be completely different next year. That means that the most successful marketing strategy for your small business is one that is constantly changing and adapting to new behaviors.

For marketing, this could mean switching focus from search engine advertising to social-led marketing, or using different in-app tools offered by leading social media platforms. To stay on top of changing trends, you should always be analyzing data relating to your audience’s habits and thinking about how you can apply them to your marketing strategies.

We appreciate you sticking around this far! Catch us here next week for more business tips and tricks, and all things business, eCommerce!