More than 75% of businesses believe that digital marketing is either effective or very effective at attracting new customers.
If you are planning to start a new business or if you have recently launched your startup website, you need to get serious about marketing because it helps you gain customers and eventually helps generating revenue.
The following is a list of some of the best marketing tips for small businesses and startups.
- Clearly define marketing goals and objectives
Define marketing goals and objectives. This is the first step towards a successful marketing campaign.
The goals and objectives should be clear, documented, and must be communicated to every single employee in your organization.
Vague and fluffy goals that do not make much of a sense should be avoided. For instance, an increase in sales or increase in business growth are poor marketing objectives that are hard to measure and harder to achieve.
Marketing goals should be quantified so that they can be measured easily.
The overall marketing objectives should be divided into smaller goals and monthly plans. This will make sure that your business moves towards the annual objective.
- Know your customers
Do you know your business’s primary customers?
How well you know your customers.
The more information you get about your customers, the better it is because it will help you target the exact and most appropriate type of customers.
- What are the interests of your customers?
- What type of food they like?
- Which social networks they use?
- What is the average monthly income?
- What is the biggest challenge they face in their lives?
These are just a few basic questions. You should find answers to these and several other questions. This will help you and your marketing team understand your business’s customers.
If this information is hard to get, conduct surveys. Conducting surveys can be expensive so be prepared to spend money on market research.
Pro tip: Run a survey on Facebook backed by a lucky draw or give away. No one will bother participating in your survey if there is no output. Monetise the survey or link it to something expensive that your target market is interested in.
- Use social media to reach your target market
One in every three people in the world uses social network regularly. And the number is expected to increase by 2020.
This is one reason why social media marketing should be your business’s top marketing channel.
Create a Facebook page for your business, create a Twitter account, and try to be active on as many social networks as possible. Not everyone uses Facebook so sticking to a single social network is not really a good idea.
Use multiple social accounts.
Engage with your customers on social media. Read comments. See what type of posts they like. Get involved.
Statistics show that 71% of customers who have a good experience with a business on a social network are likely to recommend the business to their friends. Try to provide your followers with an exceptional social media experience. Keep response time under an hour. Respond to all messages, comments, mentions, likes, and shares.
If you do not have the resources to stay active on a social media, remove your account. Only use social networks if you can stay active there. If you can actively participate on one social network, stick to it and do not use other social networks.
- Build a strong relationship with customers
Customer relationship goes a long way. The best business approach is one that puts the customer at the center of the business.
Building lasting relationship with customers is something that is not easy. It needs time, patience, and a customer-focused marketing strategy.
Here are a few tips to build strong relationships with your customers.
- Listen to them. Take feedback seriously. One nice way to get feedback from your customers is to send them a short survey via email once a month.
- Send emails regularly. The emails should be non-promotional and content-rich.
- Segment your subscribers and customers based on their interests, demographics, buying patterns, and other variables. This will help you send them customized content and offers. Treating subscribers individually always makes them happy.
- Initiate a customer loyalty program to reward your existing customers. Not having a customer loyalty program means you are leaving a lot of food on the table.
- Measure marketing ROI
As much as 60% of small businesses are unable to track ROI of their social media marketing. Measuring ROI of your marketing activities is a massive marketing challenge that must be addressed.
Why?
Because marketers that calculate marketing ROI are 1.6 times more likely to receive higher marketing budgets.
As a business, you need to see results. If you spent €10K on marketing, you should know what is the return on this investment? If you have no clue and your marketing team is blank, you will most likely see a reduced marketing budget.
The starting point, therefore, is to select metrics and creating KPIs.
How will you measure performance?
This is the question that should be answered.
You can measure marketing ROI by tracking sales, conversions, leads, traffic, customer engagement, etc. There are several metrics to choose from.
To choose the most appropriate metric, go back and look at your marketing objective. If it is related to sales, choose sales as metric. If it is related to brand awareness, choose customer engagement and/or conversion rate.
Fine enough.
But the real challenge is tracking and measuring it.
Sales, conversions, revenue, and leads are some of the metrics that can be measured easily as long as you are using the right tools.
Customer engagement is, however, hard to measure.
For business startups, the best metrics are conversion rate and sales. These can be measured easily by Google Analytics.
Conclusion
These five marketing tips will give your startup a jumpstart. Time to put your new business on track right from day one.
Rebecca writes for Accountant Online; her latest post asks if you have what is needed to start a business. You can read more of her thoughts on small businesses on the blog.
