To be successful as a small-business owner, you need to connect your product or service with the right customers. You can reach out to different audiences using a variety of channels. But before you start, you should take some foundational steps.
Marketing is an integral part of any business strategy. It should help to increase your brand’s visibility and get people excited about the products or services you offer. Effective marketing for small businesses does not have to be complex. We’ll cover the steps to setting up your marketing strategy for success in this article.
How to promote your small business
You should always aim to communicate the value of your business when marketing it. This can be done in two ways. You could communicate the value of the product or service your small business offers, and you could also communicate the value of the brand.
These two types of messages will help you stay competitive in the long run. Before you start communicating, you should take some steps to define the market that your company will operate in.
1. Start with the four Ps
A marketing strategy is an overarching vision that defines your product’s or service’s value. Start by defining your product’s value. The four Ps is a marketing strategy that focuses on four key components: price, location, and promotion.
Terracotta’s four Ps
You offer a product as the owner of Terrecotta, because you sell handmade ceramic bowls in Greater Los Angeles. Your customers are friends, people you met through word-of mouth, and passersby. You have a logo, a website and social media handles but you’ve done no promotion.
2. Analyze the market
Market analysis provides you with the opportunity to identify your target market, as well as the competitive landscape in which your product will be located. These two factors will help you develop more targeted marketing campaigns.
Market target
You will want to identify the target groups that will resonate most with your products. You can use marketing analytics or surveys to understand the unique needs of your target market.
After you’ve gathered this information, it is a good idea for you to divide these groups based on demographics (age and gender, marital and educational status, income and education) and psychographics.
Create personas after you have segmented your audience. These fictionalized versions of your ideal clients can help you target them more precisely by addressing their wants and needs.
Competitors
It’s crucial to analyze your competitors after defining the target market to ensure that you can differentiate your service or product from others in the marketplace.
Search online to find companies that sell similar products near you. Spend time analyzing the branding and messaging of your top five competitors. How do they communicate their value? Look at your service or product. What are your strengths compared to other businesses? What makes your product special? What is your pricing strategy?
3. Develop a marketing strategy for your business
It’s now time to create your marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy will be based on your budget, audience, and unique needs.
You can choose between many different types of marketing, including traditional (print and advertising), digital (social media and content, email and SEO), event, influencer and guerrilla. It is more likely that you will work with several different types of marketing rather than focusing on one.
Which channels are the best to use based on your target audience, your competitors and their preferences? If your target audience is very active on social media then a strong presence on Instagram and Facebook would make sense. Or if you find out that they listen to local radio a lot, then placing an ad with local stations could be a great idea.
4. Create a marketing strategy
A marketing plan is the way that you will implement the marketing strategy you have created. For example, hiring a social-media intern, working with contractors in your area to develop blog posts, or the timeline of your marketing campaigns.
You can start by deciding which channels to concentrate on. The plan that you create will depend on how well you understand these factors.
You can review your progress by reviewing the following:
Your marketing efforts don’t stop once you send out your message. You should monitor the response of your customers and how they receive that message.
ROI is a way to show how your efforts have paid off. Your marketing efforts can increase sales and be an indication that your value has been communicated. If you discover that this is not the case, then you’ll need to change your marketing strategy.
Mar Tech is a powerful tool for tracking and monitoring the progress of your marketing campaigns. Different software applications are able to tell you which marketing strategies work and which don’t.