The focus of this article is on SMB (small-to-midsized business) owners who are trying to market their business through digital marketing. Through SMB Marketing, you can promote your business or brand digitally, while also gaining more leads and conversions.
But to do this, you must first understand what the concept of SMB Marketing is all about, how to create a strategy that works, and how to apply it to your business!
What SMB Marketing is About
Businesses with 0-999 employees qualify as small-to-midsized businesses. It is these businesses who need to implement SMB Marketing strategy into their overall marketing goals.
SMB Marketing is a group of methods that small-to-midsized businesses use in marketing their organisations. The reason why SMB Marketing is used for small businesses is that contrary to big businesses and companies that have a lot of employees and a larger budget, small businesses have few human resources to spare and a smaller and limited budget. This can be very restrictive on the type of marketing campaigns such businesses can do, which is why SMB Marketing strategies cost less and can be very effective for small businesses.
Essential SMB Marketing strategies include:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
If these strategies are integrated into your marketing plans, they will help you build your brand image, and get more leads and also more conversions.
10 Methods to Build an Effective SMB Marketing Strategy.
- Set up your Campaign Goals. Before going into any type of marketing, it is important to first establish your campaign goals. Setting campaign goals will help you determine the budget for your marketing, determine the resources that will be needed and direct your strategy. Tracking and collating data (analytics) from your marketing campaign will be easier too if you know the goals of your campaign. A clear list of your goals will help keep your whole campaign on track towards success and keep it realistic and measurable.
- Design an Attractive and Easy-to-Understand Website. No matter how small your business is, to apply SMB Marketing strategies to your campaign, you need a website. One that is eye-catching, user-friendly, and does the job of making visitors click on CTA (call to action) buttons easily. Your website should also be able to give first-time visitors all the basic information that they might need on your business or organisation. You should list your products or services there. It is your platform to convert people, it is your face on the Internet. It is the front door of your business online. If your business website ticks these boxes, then you are all set:
- User-friendly
- Well designed
- Fast
- Mobile responsive
- Very informative
Editor’s note: do you need a professionally designed website for your brand? Contact us today!
- Interact with your Audience on Social Media Platforms. Social media platforms are the best places to get personal with your target audience. You get to be able to bridge the gap between an organisation and its customers. Having accounts on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn is important for an SMB. Through this, you get to know important information about your audience that will be needed for future campaigns. Information about their likes and dislikes, what platform they use most, age bracket, the kind of content they appreciate most, and so on. After figuring all these out, get started with sharing content and engaging their comments. Social media allows you to use the content you post as mini-marketing campaigns through paid promotions, to reach out to a larger audience of your choosing and gain more following.
- Creative Content to Engage your Audience. Consistently creating the type of content that catches the attention of your audience helps you build your credibility and image as an expert in your field. Content creation is an important strategy in SMB Marketing. If the resources are available in your budget, you can get a professional content creator to do this for you or you could do it yourself. Either way, content creation is essential in your SMB Marketing strategy. The types of content include blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, ebooks, guides, and so on. Whatever you use, consider the type of content that appeals to your audience the most. It must be relevant, high quality, and keyword-focused. Also, make sure that you are using relevant keywords so that you can rank higher on search engines. You can combine two or more types of content to switch things up to make your content marketing more interesting and spontaneous.
- Implement SEO into your SMB Marketing. SEO is what get you found on Google; implementing it will help to boost your site to the top of searches, therefore, giving you more visibility and bringing in more leads. Optimize your content for keywords so that Google will be able to tell what your page is about and bring it up during searches relating to your keywords. Also optimize your page of user experience (UX), to keep users longer on your site and increase your chances of converting them to customers.
Editor’s note: The Dik3n Team specialises in SEO optimisation for small businesses. Click here to book a consultation right away.
- Register your business on Google Business Profile. Registering your business on GBP is free and setting it up is easy. It helps you market your brand locally on Google. It makes your brand look more authentic and would help customers locate you more easily. It always contains details like the name of your brand, what you do, phone number, shop location, opening and closing hours, pictures of your product, and so on.
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads. For SMB Marketing, this type of paid ads in search is very affordable especially when you have a tight budget. It is also cost-effective because you only pay whenever someone clicks on your ad. Another cost-effective option for an ad is Google Local Services Ad. It is pay-per-lead, meaning that you only pay whenever someone contacts you from your ad.
- Remarketing. Utilising remarketing is a great idea for SMBs. It involves marketing to people who already know what your brand is about. They are the ones that have previously visited your site and might have patronised your business before. All you have to do is remind them about your business which is better, easier, and less expensive.
- Email Campaigns. The first step to doing this is to encourage people to sign up for emails. You can do this through your social media pages, CTA on your website, landing pages, and blogs (if you have one). After getting emails, send personalised emails to your audience. Personalised emails are a great way to build relationships with your audience and promote your products and services. These emails will help remind your audience about your brand and get your content across to them. Asides from content, you can use emails to welcome new customers and subscribers, publicise any sales or special deals that you have going on, celebrate special occasions, follow up on ongoing purchases, and so on. To manage costs and save time, you can automate your email campaigns by using automation software to help you create, send and monitor your email marketing.
- Be Creative. When your contents and marketing strategies are outside the box, your brand gets a lot of exposure. This is why you have to think outside the box. Creativity in your SMB Marketing strategies will make you stand out and pull traffic to your business online and offline. The key to doing this is to know your target audience first and foremost. You have to understand who they are, their likes and dislikes, their age group, and their demographics. Knowing this will guide you toward creating the best SMB Marketing campaigns. Take extra care to make your content relatable and interesting. Add humour. Nobody will follow boring campaigns; make it interesting enough to grab the attention of people your adverts come across. And lastly, be yourself. Represent your brand for how it is, don’t try to be who you are not. People can recognise authenticity and appreciate it, so try to stick with the core values of your business and represent it well in your SMB Marketing campaigns.
Whatever digital marketing needs it is that you need for your business, The Dik3n Team has got you covered. We are a Digital Marketing company that deals with both big and small businesses; helping them build strategies and campaigns that conform with their core values.
Contact us today to schedule a consultation!