Marketing ideas for small business owners can be tough to come by. Sometimes it seems like there’s a million and one ideas out there (and there are). Having so much to choose from is almost worse than having nothing to choose from. You don’t even really know where to begin.
If you’re looking for marketing ideas for your small business, we urge you to think digital first. Digital marketing can bring quite a few leads, and more and more customers are turning to their devices when looking for products or services. Plus, the barrier to entry is generally lower than traditional advertising methods.
Let’s talk about some digital marketing ideas for small business owners and how they can help you reach new customers and become more known without bankrupting your small business. We’ll also talk about an old school method that will always be relevant in the business world.
1. Social Media
This one is a no-brainer. The number of people on social media is staggering (Twitter has 288 million users active users, Facebook has 1.23 billion users total), and tapping into that enormous user base is essential to any digital marketing strategy.
Creating a business page on Twitter is a good place to start because a basic business page costs nothing to set up. Maintaining the page, on the other hand, will definitely cost you some time. You may want to think about Facebook later down the line, but just know that Facebook requires you to spend money to really get a wide reach.
I can’t stress this enough: if you have a social media account, on any site, you need to keep it updated regularly. It’s not going to do much for you if you aren’t putting content out there. In fact, an idle page can be harmful to your business.
If customers find you and see that you haven’t been active on there in a long time, they may assume that you aren’t active at all. The last thing you want is for a potential customer to think you don’t exist anymore!
Other social media sites should follow Twitter; consider LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. Don’t take on more than you can handle. It’s ok to be on just a few sites in the beginning.
2. Blogging
Another one of the more effective marketing ideas for small businesses is starting a blog. The importance of getting blog content out there is not simply to blog about all your great services (though you should definitely include those in very small bites). The main goal is to become an authority, or thought leader, in your niche market.
As people start to see that you are a thought leader in the market, they will be more inclined to read what you have to say, read your posts on social media and follow you, and check out your products and services. You can establish thought leadership through blogging and social media, though ebooks can also help you to establish yourself as a thought leader.
Blogging is also a fantastic way to create amazing content at no cost to yourself but time (as long as you can write well). If you don’t have a website yet (click here and we’ll help you with that), then you can always blog on sites like WordPress.com for free. This may be a good way to get started creating your online presence when money is still tight.
Once you have a website up, you should be able to use it to blog for free. Your website should be the hub of all your digital marketing, so the goal of any digital marketing outside your website should be to direct traffic back to the website.
If your website doesn’t allow for blogging, you may want to consider moving your website to a content management system like WordPress. Content management systems will make your website easier to manage in the long run, and they also come in handy if the person who built your original website moves on or is unavailable
If you are a great writer, you might be able to blog on your own. However, you need to ask yourself if you have the time to blog. If you’re too busy running your business, or if writing just isn’t your thing, you might want to consider hiring a writer for this one, or even talking to a content writing company about their services.
That being said, this is one of the marketing ideas for small business that you can absolutely do yourself, and it doesn’t have to cost you a dime if your website is set up correctly. When you start your business, you may find yourself with a lot of time on your hands because leads aren’t coming in. Use a portion of that time writing blog posts. This can be a completely free method of digital marketing if you are able to do it yourself.
3. Ebooks
These will cost you more time, and on top of a writer you might need a designer, but the result can be really beneficial to your digital marketing strategy. Ebooks do the same thing that blog posts do—establish you as an authority in your field.
Ebooks are better than blog posts though because of their size. Someone who downloads a 20-page booklet from you knows that you must really know what you are talking about if you were able to write this much. It gives your words a lot more weight.
Another major benefit of ebooks is that you can require anyone who downloads them from your website to fill out a form with their contact information. Email addresses are the cream of the digital marketing crop, so collecting them should be high on your priority list.
Once you have a customers email address, you can add them to a variety of mailing lists to try to draw them in for a sale. Getting those email addresses is crucial to the final portion of your digital marketing mix: email campaigns.
4. Email Drip Campaigns
The last of our marketing ideas for small business is an email drip campaign. They’re called “drip” campaigns because you send your email list one email during each pre-determined period, say once a week or once a month, “dripping” emails slowly to your customers.
One of your goals with a campaign like this is to keep yourself in the mind of your customer, to remind them that you exist and that you are available to help them solve their problems. You also want to try to draw them into your website, or even into a sales call, so you need to have some calls to action in each email.
Email drip campaigns are great supplements to your blog because you can push out your blog content to your customers through a drip campaign. You can also promote your ebook with a drip campaign, so you’ll want to consider adding an email drip campaign to your marketing mix.
To do a good drip campaign correctly, you’ll probably want to consider using a web application. MailChimp is a free option that you can consider, although there are several paid options out there as well. Don’t do try to send out an email campaign from your personal or business email because you’ll probably get marked as spam.
5. Networking
And now the old school method. As a small business owner, you know the importance of networking. And if you didn’t before you started your small business, you’ve probably had more people than you can count tell you the importance of networking. Well, those people were right, and we’re going to reiterate it—networking is extremely important! And it doesn’t have to cost you a lot to do.
Networking is one of our favorite marketing ideas for small business owners to take part in. We talked about the importance of networking last year in one of our blog posts (read it over for an extensive overview of the right way to network), but I’ll summarize it for you here: don’t make it all about you. Just like with social media, if all you’re doing is running into a room and flinging business cards at people followed by an elevator speech at high volume, you’re not doing yourself any favors.
You need to consider what you can do to help the other small business owners, and you need to think in terms of relationships. Good relationships have a give and take, and you need to think about what you can give to the other people at a networking event, what you can do for their business, before you think about what you can get out of it. If you are honestly trying to be helpful, you will naturally get the connections you are looking for.
In terms of cost, networking events can be a hit or miss. Sometimes they’re free or nearly so, other times you’re going to have to spend a little bit to take part. Choose your events carefully, and only go to the ones you think are most likely to benefit your business the most.
Marketing Ideas for Small Business Owners Don’t Have to Be Expensive
Most of the methods we’ve provided here can cost you next to nothing, but there is truth in the adage that you get what you pay for. If you’re interested in discussing some paid options so that you can get back to the business of running your business, click here to contact us about some of the marketing solutions we have for you.