How to market your business easily and effectively can sometimes be a difficult question to answer if you don’t know what marketing strategies work best for your product or service, or if you have limited funds to spend on marketing your business. Luckily, this guide will help you find marketing strategies that are simple and easy to implement while still being effective at gaining new customers and increasing sales.
Target Your Audience
When you understand who your target audience is, you can focus on things that will resonate with them. Rather than just throwing some tactics out there and hoping for a good outcome, make sure you know who will be interested in what you’re trying to do. If a certain demographic or location seems like a great fit for what you’re offering, don’t try to market it—make sure they know about it! If someone doesn’t click on an ad because they never visit those types of websites or use that type of mobile device, there’s not much else you can do—you need to put yourself in their shoes.
Be Consistent
One of our go-to simple marketing ideas for smaller businesses is using social media as a way to grow a brand. Use social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest to share engaging content about your product or service with followers. Interacting with followers on a regular basis encourages them to share new content you post with their own followers, helping expand your reach. You can also use social media sites to host contests that encourage users to tag photos with your company’s name or hashtag. These simple marketing ideas can help establish your brand’s presence online and drive traffic back to your website.
Get an Email List
If you’re going to launch a new product or service, make sure you ask customers for their email addresses. The best way to do so is through a lead magnet—something free that attracts interest in return for an email address. There are plenty of lead magnets out there, but what counts is using one. You can even create a lead magnet around your industry if you want. For example, if you run a marketing agency, give away an ebook on marketing trends; it doesn’t have to be anything fancy; just something that will entice people into signing up for more information.
Do Video Marketing
If you’re just starting out, video marketing is a great way to promote yourself. People love visual content, so consider making videos—either on YouTube or your own site—about who you are, what you do, and why people should work with you. It’s not too hard to get started: all you need is a webcam. But make sure that you’re consistent about creating content; viewers will lose interest if they don’t see new videos regularly. Also, it’s important to remember that videos are only one part of an effective marketing strategy.
Create a Social Media Strategy
There are a lot of social media channels out there, and it can be overwhelming trying to figure out which ones make sense for your business. Luckily, you don’t have to worry about creating an effective social media strategy on your own—you can find resources online or get help from people within your network who have already created successful strategies. It’s not a bad idea to talk with others in person, too. You might learn a few ideas by listening to other entrepreneurs’ strategies at networking events or during informal conversations about current projects.
Diversify Your Content
In today’s age of content overload, it can be difficult for businesses with a limited marketing budget to cut through. One way to make sure your brand has a place in people’s minds is by diversifying your content. That means you should try everything from blogs, infographics, and webinars to slideshows, PDF downloads, and Pinterest image collections—especially if you have several aspects of your company that you want people to understand or know about. The more content you create, the more likely you are to appear on search engines and social media feeds; when done right, these efforts will help build your brand awareness and influence potential customers.
Promote Events
One of the easiest, most effective ways to market your company is by promoting events or services through social media. Make sure you are promoting events that are related to or sponsored by your business; if you’re not certain whether an event would be appropriate for marketing purposes, it’s best to hold off until you can confirm with someone in management. An easy way for companies big and small to publicize their events is through Facebook Event postings.
Pivot If Something Isn’t Working
No one is going to blame you for trying a marketing strategy that doesn’t work. That said, I think you should be willing to pivot on strategies if it’s not delivering results. If a marketing channel isn’t delivering, try something else—no shame in that. Once you decide on an approach, make sure you’re not losing sight of customer acquisition costs (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV). CAC is how much it costs you to acquire a new customer while LTV is how much revenue they generate over their lifetime of use. Don’t get lost in vanity metrics like number of signups or active users because these don’t give you any indication of what’s working or what’s failing with your strategy. Instead, focus on how many customers are coming back to buy from you again. You can figure out where most of your money is being spent by looking at which channels are driving sales and which ones aren’t. For example, say you’re spending $5 per sale through Facebook ads but only making $3 per sale from organic search traffic; that means Facebook ads are likely bringing in more expensive sales than Google search traffic but also generating more total revenue due to volume. This will help inform future decisions about where to spend time and money since you know where there’s potential for growth (in our example above, Facebook ads). Always compare ROI across different channels so you can identify which ones are giving you a good return on investment versus those that aren’t performing as well.
