Marketing Strategies for A Small Business
As a small business owner working online, your marketing department is likely comprised of one person – you. With so much on your plate already that means you’ve got to enlist marketing strategies that leverage your time and energy well in order to see sales results in a timely fashion.
In an earlier post I talked about the essentials of marketing and how important it was for a small business owners to incorporate “internet marketing” into their overall marketing strategy. Keeping in mind sound marketing principles you can revise and add to your plan at any time as long as it supports your goals and keeps you on track.
Five Marketing Strategies for a Small Business
Let’s look at 5 marketing strategies that can be incorporated into your plan to boost sales this season:1.
1. Social Networking
Get involved in social networking! Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are not just the hottest places to be for those who want to promote their business online they are the smartest places to be for entrepreneurs on a budget – whether you’re online or offline.
Access is free but if you’re inexperienced with social media and are busy taking care of other essential elements of your business you’d be wise to enlist the assistance of a consultant or join a peer mentorship group to help you make the best impression and connections in these forums. Millions of your clients or customers are involved in social media forums so you’ll want to ensure you are too.
2. Online Press Release
Generate valuable backlinks to your website by producing and issuing an online press release about some newsworthy aspect of your company. Use a newswire service like PRWeb and you’ll end up depositing nice links throughout the Internet that users may come across and use to access your website. That kind of activity can improve your search engine rankings and ultimately increase traffic to your website.
3. Pitch a Story to Specific Media Reporters
Prepare a story idea to “pitch” to the media and then email it to a “current” list of reporters and editors at local and national traditional news outlets that reach your target market. Follow up every pitch letter with a phone call.
Newspapers and TV stations were hit hard by this recession and many are currently operating with skeletal staff. Your story idea may be just what they’re looking for. For example USA Today and the New York Times are newspapers with a national focus and they reach millions. What’s even better is they have very popular small business sections.
If you’re not comfortable contacting the media, remember that you can always outsource this to the multitude of writers (and former reporters) who are unemployed and freelancing but more importantly have the experience to do a good job of promoting you to their former employers 
Use Good SEO Techniques
Incorporate good search engine optimization techniques into the production of your website pages. Ensure that the content you’re creating contains well written, comprehensive information along with the key words your target market will be using when they go looking for your product or service on the Google search engine.
If your pages are optimized well for your keywords, your website stands a good chance of showing up in the top results of your customers’ searches. If you’re like me and need some hand holding when it comes to SEO, see what I suggest in #5.
5. Join a Mentorship Group
Connect with peers in your industry to keep up to date on best practices and opportunities. Small business networking groups are invaluable to your business’ development and can considerably reduce your learning curve.
There are of course many other creative and practical marketing strategies that you can put in place for your small business but don’t allow yourself to get too overwhelmed trying to build a complicated strategy.
Do your research and be clear on your goals. Break your strategy down into manageable activities that you can do each day. You’ll feel great as you check each activity off your list. In fact, you may find you really enjoy carrying out some of the activities in your marketing strategy and that will give you tremendous momentum.
What are some of your favorite marketing tasks?
To you success,
Sharon
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