When you’re starting a small business, or trying to take your small business to the next level, there are a lot of things to worry about. In fact, there are so many tasks to take care of that it’s basically impossible to handle them all!
Some tasks are a higher priority than others—while you might think that buying a huge new sign for the front of your business is of the utmost importance, it might not be quite as beneficial to your business as training your employees, building your inventory, or properly managing your business finances.
As a small business owner, you must have your priorities straight—and that means focusing on and investing in small business marketing for your short-term and long-term success.
How important is marketing for your business? Take it from Bill Gates himself, who once said that if he had 10 bucks, he’d spend nine of them on marketing. Marketing is incredibly important for businesses of all sizes in all stages—without constant and aggressive marketing efforts, you’ll certainly fall behind your competition and have trouble finding sustainable profits and business success.
So where do you start when it comes to business marketing? In this blog, the Atlanta asset-based lending professionals at the Commercial Finance Group will break down major areas of small business marketing, and help you figure out how to implement them into your business strategy. Marketing is crucial for your success—the more you know, the more your business will grow!
Let’s Get Started
First of all, it’s important to clearly state the purpose of marketing—to drive traffic to your business and drive sales in a way that’s as cost-effective as possible. Marketing is a living, breathing thing—a moving target, if you will—and not all marketing solutions are universally effective. It’s up to you as a business to experiment, track progress, and tweak your marketing plan to save and spend money strategically.
Let’s take a look at some of the places that you can spend your marketing dollars in order to create a tailored and focusing business marketing plan:
Your Website
When it comes to digital marketing and sales, it starts and ends with your website. Your website is the hub for all informational and transactional functions of your business—it answers questions about your business and its products, sets expectations, and even allows people to purchase your products or services without setting foot in your brick and mortar store.
If you don’t have a business website, you needed one yesterday—all of your digital marketing plans will revolve around it.
SEO
What does SEO stand for, anyway? Salty Extraterrestrial Otters? Space Engine Overload? In truth, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s hugely important for the success of your website and your business in general. SEO is all about optimizing your website for search engines (Google, basically) so you rank higher in searches and are more visible for those who are looking for your services.
If someone is new to town and needs to hire a plumber for their home, how will they choose the right plumber? While they could certainly walk around town surveying people about the best plumbers in the area, they’re probably just going to search “plumber near me” or just “plumber” to get a list of local plumbing companies and their websites. The plumbers that rank in the first few search listings will naturally get the most traffic from users, and will be the most likely to make sales. Those near the bottom of “page one” will still get some traffic, but not nearly as much as those at the top of the page. Those on page two or three? Well, they might as well not have a website at all. Can you remember the last time you went to page two of Google search? You were probably working on a high school book report or something.
Ranking at the very top of Google searches for search terms that are relevant to your business is critical for your business visibility and public awareness. Otherwise, all that potential business and profit is going right to your competition.
For improved market penetration, better visibility, and business growth, SEO must be a primary focus. You’ll need to “optimize” your website to be search engine friendly, create content that makes your site appear authoritative to search engines and potential customers, and monitor your ranking progress (great search engine rankings don’t happen overnight). There are plenty of websites, blogs, and YouTube videos that can help you become familiar with SEO processes—so do a little research and invest some time and effort into helping your website become more visible!
Paid Advertising
If you’re looking to shell out some bucks to bring your business to the very, very top of Google search pages, paid advertisements are definitely a great option. Google paid ads run on a PPC (pay-per-click) system, allowing you to “bid” for space at the very top of the page (the more competitive that space is, the more expensive it will be). The best part? You only pay when someone clicks (it’s pay-per-click, after all).
If you’re looking for quick traffic to your website, paid advertising is a great place to start. It won’t pay for itself like SEO will, but it’s another weapon to add to your marketing arsenal.
Driving Conversions
Now that you know how to drive traffic to your website, it’s time to worry about the next step—getting the people on your website to request a service, journey to your store, and/or buy your products. Ultimately, the design and layout of your website plays a big role in this part of the process—your website should be visually appealing to entice potential customers and give off an air of credibility and quality, and it should also be laid out in a way that makes it easy to make purchases, enquire about services, and get answers to pressing questions. The easier it is for customers to find what they’re looking for your website, the more likely they’ll be to choose your business.
That’s it for Part 1 of our series on small business marketing tips. Stay tuned for Part 2, and check out our other blog posts in the meantime!
