Do you know why most small businesses perish in the long run? What if I tell you that 49% of ventures perish because of not doing ONE thing for their business. This single thing can ACTUALLY take you from being a small business owner to the founder of a millionaire company. Yet, 49 out of every 100 business owners don’t do it. If you want to be the 50th one, then let me spill the secret to you.
Business people in a marketing strategy meeting

A well-planned marketing strategy can single-handedly save and grow your business

Yes, it’s true! If you know how to develop a sustainable marketing strategy, you know the secret behind acing your business. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you - After a series of self-doubt, internal monologues, and days of research, you finally decide to invest and materialize that business idea. As soon as you launch your venture, you end up getting quality customers within a short time. You deliver on all your promises and leave the customers extremely satisfied. Once those deals are closed, you're again back to square one. Because apparently, not a lot of people know about your business. Those who do are either not sure whether they want your service/product in their lives. Or, in the worst-case scenario, they don't trust you enough!

Marketing is the sole thing that can solve this universal problem of business owners

But here’s a catch, how do you curate marketing strategy ideas for small businesses? If you’re someone who is still searching for the answer, then we can help you out. Indeed, we don’t know anything about your business. But you do, right? No one knows your business better than you! So we will help YOU find the best marketing strategy ideas for your small business all by YOURSELF in just three simple steps.

1. Who Will Spend The Money - Building a Buyer Persona 

A business is founded by one person but sustained by many. The most important people who help sustain the business are its customers. Its customers are those for whom the business exists in the first place.
Teamwork working on Marketing Project Together
To be successful in marketing, you need clarity about the people who are going to spend money on your products/services. So the first step for developing marketing strategy ideas for small businesses is to know who your customers are.  No two businesses serve the same people. Even if they belong to the same niche, each business has different customers. To know your customers better, you need to create a Buyer Persona. "A Buyer Persona is a hypothetical model of the ideal customer whom your business wants to serve."

To find your ideal customer, you need to:

  • Understand what product/service your business sells. 
  • What problem does your product/service solve? How will it improve your customer's existing life?
  • Who will ideally be interested in buying from you?
  • What are the demographics of the ideal buyer?
  • What are their buying habits? Where are they likely to look for solutions when they have problems?
  • What is their psychographics? (Values, preferences, lifestyle, personality).
Once you have a detailed answer to all these questions, you’ll get to know the best way and place to invest in marketing.

The easiest way for obtaining these answers are:

  • Conducting market surveys through social media.
  • Researching on Case Studies of successful businesses of your niche.
  • Studying the trends of the industry.
Now you know who the ideal person is who will spend their money on your business. This knowledge brings us to our second stop -  telling people that your business exists for them.
READ ALSO: HOW DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCIES CAN HELP GROW YOUR SMALL BUSINESS ?

2. How Will They Know - Creating Content

It's 2021, and you need to find a solution to your problem. You simply pick up your phone and pull up Google. Immediately your feed is filled with hundreds of results offering great solutions. You click on one of them and decide to spend your money and get your problem solved. That’s the power of content.  It makes people who aren’t even aware of your brand’s existence spend money to buy YOUR product/services. The content was previously considered to be a part of mobile marketing strategies for small businesses. But today is the only marketing tool that requires the least investment but brings the best results. So you need to create an online base for your small business and create content. Creating content will serve three major purposes of marketing-
  • Inform the unaware audience about your business.
  • It will show them how your product can benefit their lives.
  • It will build trust with the existing as well as new customers.
 If you're wondering how to leverage the unmeasurable benefits of content, then here's a list of how to do that -

  • Build your website/e-commerce store

The pandemic has changed the entire business industry. We have witnessed several small businesses die out because of it. On the other hand, some of them have reached the top -tiers even in the worst times. That’s the power of the internet. Thus, irrespective of what you sell, you need to have a base online. Creating a website/e-commerce store with a great landing page is the best and the easiest way to let your clients know about your business.

  • Create the content on social media

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, etc. Name any social media, and you'll see that each of them has an active user base in the billions. So imagine how many people you can reach through promotional posts on social media! Creating social media content is the best advertising method for small businesses. It requires no investment but yields returns that can ACTUALLY end up funding your entire venture!

  • Email Marketing 

Email marketing is the best example that shows that being traditional doesn’t mean being backdated. It’s a great way to inform your existing customers about new offers, product launches, or sale seasons. Building an email list is the most effective way to convert existing customers into long-term retainers.

  • Blogging

Yes, you may not realize it, but all we see on the internet are various forms of blogs. Blogs are great for attracting leads and educating your target audience about your business. An SEO-optimized and well-written blog with a clear CTA can convert leads faster than any other method. They are also a great way to build trust with your audience and create a brand identity.
READ ALSO: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IDEAS FOR RESTAURANT BUSINESS

3. Invest In Growth - Promotional Strategies For Small Businesses

You have the best buyer persona. You create content consistently on various social media platforms and have an engaging newsletter and informing blog with a clear CTA. What is the worst thing that can happen now? You are not attracting leads, or your leads are not converting into clients. Here’s the thing, you can have the best product to offer and create the best content to inform people about it. But if you don’t promote it well, it won’t yield any results.
Man working with a laptop. Emails list on the screen, office background
Almost every social media works according to an algorithm. The algorithm drives the posts and decides which one will be shown to whom. For small business owners, it is very difficult to beat the algorithm and reach a huge audience through their posts. Thus, you need to be aware of the various advertising methods for small businesses.  Because of their algorithm-based functioning, every social media offers paid advertisement opportunities to business owners. As someone looking to develop a successful marketing strategy, you NEED to invest in paid promotional strategies for small businesses.

The easiest and most effective paid promotional strategies are :

1. Google Ads

When in doubt, Google it out! We all have heard this phrase, right? Apparently, small business owners can profit out of it.  Investing in Google ads ensures that when your target customer is searching for your niche-related keywords, your website pop-ups as their top search result. If you have an attractive website with informative and engaging content, Google ads will be like a cherry on top.  However, Google ads require an intermediate level of technical understanding. You need to know about SEO and an eye for reading  Google analytics to be able to run successful Google ad campaigns.

2. Facebook Ads.

Neil Patel reportedly confessed Facebook advertisement to be one of their major leads converting factors.  Facebook ads are evidently considered 96% more effective than any other form of advertisement. If you’re a small business with a relatively low budget, Facebook ads should be your go-to. Because, unlike Google ads which require an intermediate level of technical knowledge, anyone with a basic sense of social media can create Facebook ads. While it’s easy to create the ads, you must remember that it’s not that easy to achieve high conversion rates. Before investing in Facebook ads, you need to have a proper strategy in mind. If you have a precise buyer persona, you can effectively succeed through this most preferred mobile marketing strategy for small businesses. Conclusion  Marketing is not easy. But neither is running a business.  Yet you choose to start one. So why not nail both of them? So keep learning and experimenting with different ways. Start with free methods and use their earnings to invest in paid ones. Every industry is evolving, so make sure you use multiple strategies to leverage new trends as well as existing ones. Honestly, there's nothing called "the best marketing strategy." Some methods have brought effective results to various entrepreneurs. At the end of the day, the method you can work out for yourself is the best for your small business.