It has nev­er been a more impor­tant time to under­stand small busi­ness adver­tis­ing and how to imple­ment these tech­niques than now. With the recent pan­dem­ic and the impact on small busi­ness own­ers world­wide, hav­ing the abil­i­ty to piv­ot using effec­tive mar­ket­ing tech­niques is a deal-break­er. As a small busi­ness own­er, you are accus­tomed to inno­vat­ing and sell­ing your prod­uct or ser­vice. Now, it’s time to ele­vate your vis­i­bil­i­ty and adver­tise your busi­ness using tried and true mar­ket­ing tech­niques meant to expand your busi­ness pres­ence and increase awareness. 

The Best Marketing Strategies for Small Business

Most, if not all of the mar­ket­ing strate­gies for a small busi­ness list­ed here are free. That’s because we under­stand how impor­tant it is to have as much room in your bud­get as pos­si­ble for every­thing else, espe­cial­ly right now. Tak­ing your busi­ness to the next lev­el will require you to do some­thing more dif­fer­ent than what’s been done in the past. You may not use all of them but iden­ti­fy­ing the right strate­gies for your busi­ness is the first step in find­ing out what works best for you. Once you find your sweet spot, dupli­cate it, and watch your busi­ness grow: 

  • Online — Over 3.6 bil­lion peo­ple use social media and you should be using it too. It is the fastest, cheap­est, and eas­i­est way to reach your tar­get audi­ence. When you’re new to social media, it can be intim­i­dat­ing and over­whelm­ing ini­tial­ly but as you become more famil­iar, you’ll be cre­at­ing engag­ing con­tent in no time. Out­sourc­ing social media may be an option if you have mon­ey in your bud­get for it. But if not, being authen­tic and doing it your­self is the best mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy there is. Cus­tomers con­nect to val­ues, not just pro­files, and mak­ing a gen­uine con­nec­tion can turn into repeat busi­ness over the long term. 

Online Marketing Example

Pub­lish­ing a web­site is like hand­ing out a busi­ness card. It pro­vides your cur­rent and future cus­tomers with a quick snap­shot of who you are and what val­ue you pro­vide. The ben­e­fit of a web­site is the abil­i­ty to reach more peo­ple at once com­pared to a busi­ness card. Anoth­er online mar­ket­ing option is the use of email mar­ket­ing. Using your web­site, you can cre­ate a data­base that can be com­bined with email mar­ket­ing to fol­low up on poten­tial cus­tomers. Many small busi­ness­es devel­op newslet­ters and share upcom­ing pro­mo­tion­al events and new prod­ucts through tar­get­ed email mar­ket­ing campaigns. 

  • Refer­rals - One of the most pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing tech­niques is word of mouth. Refer­rals from trust­ed sources, cur­rent cus­tomers, or friends and fam­i­ly can help you get the word out about your busi­ness bet­ter than any oth­er form of mar­ket­ing. When you think about it, you’ve prob­a­bly asked for a refer­ral for a prod­uct or ser­vice recent­ly. Nowa­days, there are many ways to get a refer­ral using pro­mo­tions, dis­counts, coupons, or plac­ing a link on your web­site. Estab­lish­ing refer­ral net­works are also incred­i­bly effec­tive and can be mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial when it is busi­ness to busi­ness. For white-col­lar pro­fes­sion­als, it is even more pow­er­ful since pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ships and rep­u­ta­tions are at stake. Remem­ber to main­tain rela­tion­ships with those who have the same stan­dards of qual­i­ty as you. 

You’ve prob­a­bly heard a lot about influ­encers on Insta­gram who get paid to sell prod­ucts. You can dupli­cate that con­cept by lever­ag­ing influ­encers with­in your prod­uct or ser­vice niche. They may not have mil­lions of fol­low­ers on social media but thou­sands or tens of thou­sands is still a pow­er­ful net­work­ing tool. This only makes sense when you have sales sys­tems and prod­ucts in place and an eas­i­ly con­vert­ible offer. 

  • Cold calls — No one likes cold calls but they are nec­es­sary and effec­tive. Whether they are done via tele­phone, door to door, or online, they can make or break your busi­ness. Your abil­i­ty to sell your­self and think on your feet can make a huge dif­fer­ence in how your busi­ness is per­ceived. It also pro­vides the best results for small businesses. 
  • Fly­ers — Using fly­ers may seem old fash­ioned, but they are an inex­pen­sive way to gen­er­ate inter­est and aware­ness. Mail mar­ket­ing is still very effec­tive and dis­trib­ut­ing fly­ers into mail­box­es is high­ly impact­ful. All fly­ers should be brief and direct with con­tent that high­lights your prod­ucts and ser­vices. Adding a first-time cus­tomer dis­count or coupon can make a huge difference. 
  • Posters — How many times have you seen posters around your neigh­bor­hood, super­mar­kets, schools, or work­place? Although anoth­er old fash­ioned mar­ket­ing tech­nique, it is still very effec­tive. In case you haven’t noticed yet, Star­bucks has a board where local small busi­ness­es can adver­tise. Some­times, hair­dressers or local mom and pop restau­rants have spaces to adver­tise. You’ll like­ly find these in a num­ber of places that you fre­quent that you nev­er con­sid­ered before. The best way to adver­tise on posters is to cre­ate remov­able col­or-cod­ed tabs so that you can track the areas with the most leads and read­just tar­get­ed campaigns. 
  • Add val­ue — Anoth­er very pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing tech­nique, val­ue addi­tions come in the form of refer­ral rewards, repeat cus­tomer dis­counts, or point cards. Movie the­aters, fast-food chains, and even Star­bucks par­tic­i­pate in adding val­ue to your repeat pur­chas­es. This is a way to keep cus­tomers con­nect­ed and less inter­est­ed in the com­pe­ti­tion. Val­ue addi­tions can be any­thing from a free bev­er­age with the pur­chase of a meal or a free room clean­ing with the pur­chase of 2 rooms. Just remem­ber to add all val­ue addi­tions to all mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als to ensure your cur­rent and future cus­tomers are aware and can take advan­tage of the deals. 
  • Reviews — These are sim­i­lar to fol­low-ups but much bet­ter! These can be post­ed on your web­site, Yelp, or social media page for oth­ers to see. Every­one loves doing busi­ness with high­ly rat­ed estab­lish­ments so don’t be shy about ask­ing for a review. Even if the feed­back is not all pos­i­tive, you’ll have an idea of what adjust­ments you need to make. A good way to solic­it reviews and feed­back is to send out a ques­tion­naire that includes: 

Leaving Online Reviews

  • Why did you choose our business?
  • Where did you hear about us? 
  • Who do you cur­rent­ly go to for this prod­uct or service? 
  • What did you like most about our prod­uct or service? 
  • What did you like the least about our prod­uct or service? 

Remem­ber the data­base from the web­site? Nowa­days, solic­it­ing feed­back can eas­i­ly be done via the inter­net using your web­site data­base of cur­rent customers. 

  • Affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing — Look­ing for explo­sive busi­ness growth? Affil­i­ate mar­keting is very pow­er­ful because it is a mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial way of reach­ing your tar­get mar­ket. The key to an effec­tive affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is choos­ing the right affil­i­ates to part­ner with. They should have a track record of con­vert­ing leads into pay­ing cus­tomers and have access to the cus­tomers you are try­ing to reach. Also, you should have a good mar­ket­ing sys­tem in place for a larg­er busi­ness to take you seriously. 

Contact Us Today for Small Business Advertising

With over 25 years of mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence, Rosy Strate­gies is well-posi­tioned to help small busi­ness own­ers devel­op their own mar­ket­ing tech­niques. We take a spe­cial­ized approach to all of our clients because we under­stand that each busi­ness is unique with dif­fer­ent needs. We will help you cre­ate direc­tion with a uni­fied pur­pose to help you nav­i­gate the pan­dem­ic and beyond. 

Give us a call or vis­it our web­site for a con­sul­ta­tion today!