Marketing is the only way to grow any business. It has the potential to change the fate of your small business. However, most small business owners don’t know how to grow their businesses. If you are one such business owner who is looking for proven ways on how to grow your small business with marketing, this article is for you.
How to Grow Your Small Business with Marketing
Growing a small business is challenging. Small businesses have limited budgets, fewer resources, and lack the necessary experience. Most small businesses don’t have a dedicated marketing team. The CEO usually looks after marketing and business growth:
If you are facing similar issues and need help in growing your small business quickly with marketing, try the following proven techniques:
- Create a Website
- Use Content Marketing
- Leverage Social Media.
1. Create a Professional Website with a Blog
If you don’t have a website for your small business, create one. It is a must.
Why?
Because a big chunk of your target customer uses the internet to find your business (and products). A whopping 4.80 billion people in the world have access to the internet which is almost 71% of the world’s population:
Not having a website means you can’t reach almost half of your target audience. This is a big blow for any business.
Secondly, if you don’t have a business website, you can’t use digital marketing. If you rely on traditional marketing to grow your small business, you’ll end up paying a lot of money. Digital marketing is cost-effective and has higher ROI than traditional marketing:
If you want to reach 2,000+ people for as low as $50, you need to have a website.
Not just a website, you need a professional website with a blog. Blogging is essential for business growth. Businesses that blog receive 55% more traffic than businesses that don’t blog. A website without a blog is potentially useless for your small business.
You need both.
The best part: It is extremely cost-effective to create a professional website and a blog. You can create your business website yourself for as low as $100. Here is how to do it:
- Sign up with a hosting company such as HostGator or Bluehost and pick a hosting plan. You will get a free domain name with your hosting plan (Price: $10 to $20 per month)
- Install WordPress on your domain. It is an open-source content management system that powers 42% of all the websites in the world (Price: $0)
- Install a free or premium WordPress theme. You can find free themes here and top-rated premium themes here (Price: $0 – $100+ once)
- Customize your theme, add a logo, add content, images, and other content on your website. You can hire content writers, designers, and get technical support from platforms like Upwork and Fiverr (Price: Variable).
That’s all.
Once your website is live, share its URL with your customers and start promoting it.
2. Use Content Marketing
Promoting your website, content, products, and small business is the next big task once you have created a website. The best way to market your website is via content marketing.
Why?
It costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates 3x more leads:
Content marketing involves creating, publishing, and promoting content to generate traffic, leads, and sales. It isn’t just limited to text; rather it includes all types of content ranging from videos to graphics to podcasts to PPTs to PDFs and more.
It is a form of inbound marketing that’s much more persuasive and cost-effective than outbound marketing. You don’t have to run after your ideal customers rather you create the best content to attract your target audience:
Doing content marketing is a simple 5-step process:
- Define content marketing goals
- Understand your target audience
- Create and publish awesome content based on your target audience needs
- Promote content religiously
- Track and optimize your content strategy and campaigns based on performance.
Read this blog post to understand more about these steps in detail.
3. Leverage Social Media Marketing
Social media is a top source of marketing for small businesses. It is free to get started and you can do a lot without spending a penny on social media marketing. As much as 57% of consumers follow businesses on social media to learn about new products and 47% of consumers follow brands to stay updated about business news:
Your target audience expects you to be active on social media platforms so they can follow your business and get updates regularly.
The best thing about social media marketing is that it is mostly free unless you plan to run ads. However, initially you don’t have to spend money on social ads.
So where to get started?
You need to find social networking platforms that your target audience uses. Check out this list of the top 10 social media apps to get ideas. Facebook and Instagram are must-haves as these are the two most used social media apps.
Follow these steps to start promoting your small business on social media:
- Define social media marketing goals
- Identify the most suitable social media platforms for your business
- Create, publish, and schedule content
- Track performance and improve your strategy.
Read this article to find out the 4 best ways to promote your small business on social media.
Don’t Ignore Marketing Apps
While you are busy growing your small business with marketing, don’t forget to invest in marketing tools. It will not just help you save cost but improve efficiency.
For example, you can use a social media management app to publish and schedule social media posts. Similarly, you can use content marketing tools to optimize content for search engines.
When you don’t have enough manpower, marketing tools (or any types of tools and apps) are your best bet. If you use the best marketing apps for your small business, you won’t have to rely totally on your team. And you can significantly automate marketing.
What’s better?
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
