If you are a creative looking to improve your marketing efforts, then you are probably looking for a good small business marketing strategy.
Whether you want to build a close relationship with your clients and gain their loyalty, or you want to expand your creative business and reach your highest potential, a solid digital marketing strategy is absolutely necessary.
Nowadays, it is easier than ever for an SME to create a high-quality marketing strategy, as we have all the necessary means of information and communication available at our fingertips, literally.
How to Market Small Businesses
- Use social media marketing
- Promote your business through email marketing
- Establish a good brand style guide
- Create a good brand story
- Listen to the audience’s feedback
Being a small business owner working in a creative industry has its perks.
What do we mean by this? Well, from a marketing standpoint, it’s easier for an artist to showcase their work and use it as marketing material. People actually get to see what they would get for their money.
So, make sure to use your work as a way to differentiate yourself from the competition and emphasize your unique selling proposition (USP)
To make your small business stand out even more, you can use marketing practices such as storytelling, social media marketing, and your one unique brand asset to promote your products and services.
5 Small Business Marketing Tips for Your Creative Journey
Sometimes it can be a bit tricky to reach your marketing goals when you are in charge of an SME as a starter. Lucky for you, there are lots of small business marketing strategies available for creatives.
Without further ado, here are five valuable marketing tips for small business owners that you can use for constant growth!
1. Use Social Media Marketing
In the last few years, social media has become the most important means of communication, and one of the best marketing tools available.
With this being said, if you aren’t already using social media to promote, it is time to start right now.
Why? Because it’s an effective way of increasing brand awareness, generating new leads, and boosting your sales.
In social media marketing, it’s crucial to know your target market very well before creating your social media marketing plan and choosing the right platforms for your business.
Remember that you don’t have to set up multiple social media accounts on all the platforms to be relevant. You can choose those that will bring you the most value, the ones your audience uses the most.
After all, your main goal is to reach your customers and convince them to invest in your business by providing valuable content that solves their needs and desires. This is why analyzing your audience and creating a buyer persona should be one of your main priorities.
Here are the main things you should know about your customers:
- Demographics
- Interests
- Buying behavior
- Challenges
- Objectives
- Preferred social media platforms
Another aspect that should definitely not be overlooked is making sure that your brand image is consistent and well-defined. Your brand image needs to resonate with your customers and reflect their values. So, make sure to create a very appealing image based on your buyer persona and stick to it.
In social media, creativity is key. You always have to find new ways to stay relevant and grab the attention of your online audience.
Here is how you can get your posts to generate a higher engagement:
- Visuals – Make sure you use plenty of attractive visuals, in both image and video form. Also, keep in mind that images should have the right size, which differs on each social media platform.
- Copywriting – Adding attractive descriptions to great visuals equals success! Use your creativity, and make sure to also add some emojis and hashtags.
- Posting at an optimal time – There are certain moments in the day when it is much better to add a post to social media and it’s different for each platform. Make sure to respect those timeframes for each channel, and the reach of your posts will be maximized.
It is highly recommended that you use a social media tool, as it will be a great companion in your journey, making everything so much easier. With SocialBee, you can create and share social media posts, and also create customized schedules for every platform.
SocialBee’s schedule set-up for posting across multiple social media platforms.
2. Promote Your Business Through Email Marketing
Email marketing is an effective and budget-friendly way you can promote your small business — even large companies still use it to increase website traffic, increase sales, and nurture leads.
The best thing about email marketing is that you can make sure your target audience receives your messages.
People are more inclined to scroll over larger messages on social media, but emails are marketing tools that tend to look more official, hence driving the audience into actually reading the text.
If you have a list of customer email addresses, you should absolutely put that list to work by sending creative emails that promote your products and services and bring traffic to your website. Make sure to add visible CTAs and occasionally offer your customers coupon codes and vouchers they can use to purchase from you.
Keep in mind that the visual aspect and ingenuity of your e-mails are crucial aspects, as you want to keep the readers engaged, and make them want to invest in your business.
One last thing to make sure of when sending newsletter emails is that they offer as much value as possible. It is not enough to only promote your services through them, you also need to show the audience that your services are worth investing in. One effective strategy to provide value and engage your audience in newsletter emails is by incorporating QR Codes. By leveraging a reliable QR Code generator, you can include a QR Code in your emails and offer additional resources or exclusive content that complements your products or services.
What better way is there to show this, if not giving a small bit of your knowledge with every email?
Make your newsletter educational by providing tips, templates and other resources your audience can benefit from.
3. Know Who You Are: Establish Your Brand Style Guide
Your brand identity is one of the most influential elements of your business, as it influences your every marketing move. Whenever you communicate with your audience, your brand style is enhanced either through your tone of voice or through your visual communication, depending on the channel you are choosing.
Many companies invest a lot of time and effort in developing their brand style guide, and their hard work is being shown by their results. Lucky for you, lots of these big companies have made their brand style guides public, so you can easily get a few ideas from the best!
Here is one example from Slack:
Now, what are the most important elements of a good brand style guide? Here are a few essentials:
- Brand Logo – Make sure you provide high-quality variations of your logo and share details that will ensure your logo will be used the right way (e.g, spacing, background, positioning).
- Color Palette – It is essential to have your brand colors on all your marketing materials. In this way you allow your audience to remember your brand and also associate it with specific colors and graphics.
- Typography – You can pick simple, easy-to-read typography, or maybe some quirky style, depending on brand and target audience.
- Tone of Voice – The way you address your audience. Select it based on your ideal user persona. For example, a friendly tone of voice is recommended for all young audiences, while a professional one is better for middle-aged or older audiences from serious environments.
Oftentimes, in creative industries, you are your own brand. So, how you present yourself to your clients is what actually makes a difference.
With this being said, the best way to create a strong presence on the market is to put a lot of work into establishing your brand style. You should also focus on the direction that best suits your brand’s story, and make sure it looks more appealing.
4. Use the Power of Storytelling
It is no secret that most people love a good story. So why not make the most out of this and make your marketing materials stand out by adding a meaningful narrative.
A good way to start is by sharing the story of your business:
- How did it all start?
- What was the reason why you wanted to create your business?
Moreover, your niche is one of the first things you have to take into consideration when coming up with your story. The nature of your business has a lot to do with the direction that the story is going to follow, as well as the channels you will use in order to showcase it.
It is very important that the story is tied to your business mission and values. These elements have to be suggested in a way that creates an emotional bond between your brand and your potential customers, making them resonate with your values.
5.Feedback Is Key: Listen to Your Audience
As your customers and potential clients are the ones that use and invest in your products, how you run and market your business should be highly influenced by their feedback.
But, how does a small business collect feedback? Here are some quick and effective ways you can gather valuable customer information:
Polls
They are easy to create and have become a significant part of social media marketing in the last few years.
Knowing what your audience needs will offer you a lot of power, as you can immediately adjust your products and services and deliver a better customer experience.
Moreover, when the public gets their needs met, they will leave more positive reviews, which will draw more positive attention to your business.
Reviews
Although positive reviews are great for marketing purposes, you want them to be as honest as possible. If you don’t have enough reviews just yet, it is a good idea to just ask for more.
No matter if they are positive or negative, they will show you your strengths and weaknesses and will give you the possibility to make improvements.
Negative reviews should also not be something to worry about, as they can be used to show that you are serious about your business and care about your clients.
A great way to deal with them is to reply, offer a solution and also ask the customer for suggestions that will help you provide a better experience in the future. In fact, to effectively manage and respond to customer reviews, some businesses have taken the initiative to hire virtual assistants from platforms like Virtalent, recognizing the value they bring to their operations.
Showing them genuine care and asking for their opinion will ultimately grow your business. People tend to like the feeling that someone cares about them and listens to what they have to say, so providing that is a great idea because it creates a strong bond and increases customer retention.
Statistics
Check the products or services that have the best stats, and try to discover what makes them successful. In this way, you will be able to improve the rest of your offerings and increase your sales.
At the same time, you should check the products that have lower results, and decide if it is a good idea to keep or get rid of them (based on how much profit they offer and how much effort they take to be created or provided).
Bottom Line
The idea that small business marketing is difficult is a very big misconception. People tend to focus on the negative meaning of the word small when in actuality, it can be quite a positive, as it is going to be much easier for you to develop a unique marketing strategy. After all, you know your business the best.
No matter what your creative background is, if you are truly dedicated to what you want to offer and don’t try to drift away too much from your niche, owning a small business will simply be a pleasant episode of your journey to success.
You have to take advantage of this phase, build connections, learn how to reach your marketing goals, and, soon enough, you will grow your business and achieve the heights of success!
