Marketing is a crucial aspect of operating a successful business.
When done effectively, you can get a queue of customers eagerly looking to purchase your product or service. You can also earn some popularity and a fair amount of credibility in your community for your niche offering.
With that said, marketing strategies come in various forms, and not all of these activities can generate profit.
If you want to boost your reputation and translate this perceived customer demand into sales, then you’ll have to explore different marketing strategies and pick the one that drives the best results.
This can be tough for new businesses since they tend to be unestablished. This makes them have a harder time getting enough traction since prospecting customers don’t put their full trust in the company.
In addition, they also may lack adequate financing to carry out the ideal marketing strategy, leading them to instead settle for second-best alternatives.
Regardless, marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business. If you’re a small business looking to enter that next growth level, here are seven marketing strategies you should consider to bring you one step closer to reaching success.
1. Boost Crowdfund Efforts
Crowdfunding is a type of funding wherein you collect small amounts of money from a large group of people through a marketing effort. It relies on the public’s goodwill and their trust in your ability to carry out your business’s promises.
One way to incentivise people to crowdfund is by putting tiers for different donation thresholds.
For instance, people who donated less than $1 can get access to special exclusive content like a poster upon pre-order, whereas people who donated more than $10 can get a signed item or a special product alongside their purchase.
You can also appeal to your customer’s emotions. Make them invested in your product, and deliver to their expectations. You can put videos or short clips that can compel your customer base to take action.
Besides crowdfunding, there are other ways to finance a fledgling business. Click here to learn more about these ways in detail.
2. Hand Out Flyers and Posters
One way to boost your local presence is by hanging posters and handing out flyers to the local community. This marketing campaign is a fairly cost-effective method of enhancing local buzz since it provides both a visual and tangible appeal to your business offering.
Furthermore, these papers can be printed en masse, enabling you to cast a wider net and potentially promote your business to the masses at a rapid scale.
For small businesses whose market is the broader local community, this process can be effective since it promotes brand visibility to a wide customer base.
You can conduct this marketing campaign in any crowded area, like a public square, a bus stop, outside retail centers, and parks. If you have an effective message and call to action plainly visible in these visual materials, you can reap the benefits with an active or curious line of customers calling your line or entering your store.
Doing this physical marketing campaign also helps provide an alternative to competing against the crowded digital landscape—where you often have to outbid other competitors to get seen by your target demographic.
3. Cold Calling
Another way of boosting your business’s presence is by cold calling.
You can gather a list of numbers and other contact details through sales intelligence platforms like Apollo. Simply filter through the database and you’ll have a workable list of leads that you can consider as customers or partners for business financing.
This process entails a lot of manual labor, but in doing so, you’ll have the resources to provide personalized pitches to companies. This can help in enhancing customer engagement and expanding your business network.
4. Boost Social Media Presence
A lot of new businesses’ main base of marketing operations is through their social media website, and for good reason. It’s a hub where many would-be consumers tend to browse and shop.
Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are some social media websites that businesses can leverage to enhance their online presence.
While it may seem intimidating to go against retail behemoths in these spaces, you’re not completely gatekept by these forces. Many people are happy to support local businesses like yours, especially if it fills a gap that big retailers don’t have.
You don’t have to use your entire marketing budget for this campaign. But you do have to be smart about how you allocate your resources. Be sure to target the right demographic by knowing who your customer persona is. Engage with your audience regularly. And finally, be consistent with your brand image.
By upholding a solid social media presence, you can organically grow your customer base and turn your social media page into an inbound lead funnel for your business.
5. Offer Promotional Incentives
An effective marketing strategy small businesses can consider is offering promos and discounts for their products. Think of deals such as buy-one, get-one promos, free trials, discounts, and the like.
These promotional incentives can excite people enough to consider trying your product, which can increase the traffic in your online or physical store and lead to a loyal customer base and sales conversions.
To make it clear, the goal of these promos isn’t to profit immediately. They’re to build enough demand to get people to try out your product and spark interest in the broader community.
Once you revert back to the original pricing, you will have generated enough demand and attention to have the means to grow your business organically.
6. Email Marketing
Another effective way of running a successful small business is by building an email list and creating a newsletter campaign. An email list helps promote brand building since it allows your company to connect with your target audience in a low-cost platform, in other words, email.
You can collect emails when a customer signs up on your store’s webpage. Sometimes, they give it out willingly in exchange for an incentive like a discount code.
Regardless of how you’ve obtained it, it’s important for small businesses to nurture these email lists.
For one, you can send out informational campaigns that can promote the value of your product. You can push out discount codes every now and then, or limited edition sales. Or you can simply push out text that reinforces your brand identity and your business’s role in the customer’s life.
Whatever the case, email marketing is a fantastic tool for small businesses to capitalize on. Online tools like Klaviyo can also help you streamline this task and connect you to your audience more easily.
7. Collaborate With Influencers
Another way to improve business outcomes is by collaborating with influencers. Influencer marketing is an effective way of narrowing down your target audience to people who are truly interested in your product or service.
Finding the right influencer can be challenging. Not only should you find people who align with your brand, but you also have to match their pricing. For small businesses, it’s best to partner with smaller creators since their budget needs tend to be smaller.
However, if you truly believe in your product, then it may be worth investing in a mid-sized or larger creator with a strong fanbase.
When you have the right influencers, you can generate traffic and attention to your business. This can bring eyes to your business, which can make investors feel more motivated to give your product a chance.
