Business

When you establish your own small business, there’s an awful lot to bear in mind and a seemingly never-ending list of tasks that you’re going to have to carry out in order to get things up off the ground and running. But even once you’ve achieved this, the hard work isn’t over. In fact, you could say that it’s only just begun, as now you have to ensure that the consumer market is aware of the products and services that you have on offer and want to purchase them, thus making you a healthy profit and keeping your business out of the red and in the black. One area that you really need to focus on is marketing. But what actually does this entail? Well, marketing is essentially the practice of encouraging consumers to purchase your products over a competitor’s. While this may sound simple, consumers are relatively complex individuals and not only do you have to make them aware of your product in the first place in order to start convincing them that it’s something that they need, but you have to be very careful about how you go about encouraging them to purchase your products. Nobody wants to feel pushed into a purchase, but at the same time, if you lie back and do nothing, they’re likely to run straight into your competitors’ arms. You’re going to have to do a whole lot of market research in order to fully understand what your target audience wants and how they want it presented to them. You also want to ensure that you get the whole marketing process right the first time around. It can often prove to be a pretty costly business, and you want to get it spot on so that revenue from sales encouraged by it can easily cover the investment you’ve put into your marketing campaigns. So, to get you started on the right foot, here are a few marketing ideas that you might like to try out for your small business!

Search Engine Marketing

Nowadays increasing numbers of business people are taking their companies online. Whether this means starting up as an online-only business, making the move from brick and mortar business to an online-only business, or operating online at the same time as running a brick and mortar company. There are various reasons for this. Operating online means that you open your products and services up to a worldwide audience. Near enough anyone with an internet connection anywhere in the world can access your page, browse your products and (if you offer international shipping) start making purchases. It also means that you are open for business around the clock. While a standard store requires constant supervision during opening hours and will generally operate between nine in the morning and five in the evening, web users can use your webpage at any time of the day or night, making orders around the clock. But if you’ve put a whole lot of work into developing a website, you can’t automatically expect that people will find their way to it. In fact, many business owners don’t thoroughly consider how they’re going to direct traffic to their page and end up feeling disappointed when they have few hits when they launch their site. The answer to your problems in regards to this is search engine marketing. Think about it. If you’re personally looking for products online, how do you find them? You input keywords into a search engine and generally opt for one of the first options that appear. Search engine marketing, or SEM, uses various specialist techniques such as keywords, tracking, landing pages, creative marketing, reporting, and management to ensure that as much traffic is directed to your page through search engines as possible. The most important and solid strategy for SEM tends to be a strong keyword strategy, so let’s focus on that one aspect for now. You should collaborate with SEM professionals to use professional keyword search tools combined with their own years of experience to find the best keywords that you should use in your webpage to drive traffic in your direction. They will set up broad keywords, phrases, or exact keywords matched with negative keywords in order to balance volume and quantity as well as targeting specific countries or devices.

Social Media Marketing

Nowadays, almost everyone with a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer has social media profiles set up and these numbers are constantly increasing. Just look at published figures pertaining to social media usage. Facebook has over one billion active profiles,  Instagram is used by at least one hundred million individuals every single month, and Twitter has an average of three hundred and thirty million users online every month too! These are the three main social media powerhouses that you need to focus on. While many people may well think that social media is solely for personal use, it should be noted that having a large social media presence and following can be extremely beneficial for your small business. In order for your company and its products to be on show to as many people online as possible, you should place them in areas where large numbers of people are directing their attention. In this case, focus on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! Now, these platforms are designed to be user-friendly and extremely simple to use, as they are designed for ordinary members of the public who may not have extensive technological knowledge. This means that you can generally set them up alone without having to reach out for professional help. Simply set up new profiles on each of these platforms under the name of your brand. Most social media platforms now have options for business pages, so make use of these when they are available, as they have special features such as spaces to include business profiles, contact addresses, and store locators. Hopefully, your brand name will be free for a username, but if not remember that you can always incorporate dashes, underscores, or numbers into your username, so don’t be afraid to mix things up a little. Upload your branded logo as the page’s profile picture, write a short bio, and you’re ready to start posting. A good approach when it comes to fuelling your site with content is to reuse many of the product photographs and feature photographs from your website. You can’t expect to gain masses of followers straight away, so consider sponsoring posts. They will then be appear in more people’s feeds than just those who follow you. Thanks to the types of targeted advertising that many social media platforms use, your money should go far, as your ads will appear on the feeds of people who are already showing an active interest in the products you’re selling and competitor brands.

In-Person Marketing Campaigns

While these previous techniques may have a potentially wider reach, as they are based online and can be shared to people all around the world, sometimes the internet just doesn’t quite cut it when it comes to getting people to engage with your brand. Sure, it can raise brand awareness, but nobody gets to interact directly with your company or its products before handing over cash and committing to a sale. This can often put people off and is a big reason as to why brick and mortar commerce is still thriving despite the fact that E-commerce can generally offer goods at a lower price and comes hand in hand with the convenience of ordering from the comfort of your own home and having items delivered to the comfort of your own home at the click of a button. But you don’t need to leave in-person interaction to real life retail in commercial properties alone. You can engage in tangible marketing campaigns too. There are various ways to go about this, but nine times out of ten you will be most successful with any of these types of campaigns if you collaborate with promotional agencies. These are agencies who have hundreds or even thousands of promotional staff in their books who can be booked to carry out any of the following types of work: sampling (so potential customers can try your products out and get an idea of what they’re all about), demonstrating (so potential customers can see how products work), and data capture (this will involve entering customers into a competition of sorts in exchange for their contact details so you can contact them with future advertising and marketing campaigns).

These are just three types of marketing that you might want to engage with, but they are three of the most effective methods that are more likely to gather success first time round. Sure, you can try some more alternative and out-there approaches, but save these as side projects and make sure you get your product out there with these bread and butter marketing techniques. Then if your more daring pursuits succeed, they’re merely a bonus! Get started as soon as possible!

There is much to think about in the early days of any business. But one of the most vital factors is how you are actually going to market your business. This is something which you need to consider regardless of what else you are hoping to achieve in your business. If you are not paying attention to the marketing, you are not likely to get where you want to go, and one area of marketing in particular which you can’t overlook is the digital aspects of it. As it happens, digital marketing is really your best friend in business – and here’s why.

It’s Easy

Before we even get into discussing why digital marketing might be so useful, it is worth considering just how easy it is. The truth is that anyone with any kind of level of knowledge can easily make plenty of their digital marketing, and often without actually having to do much on their end themselves. In most cases, the willing entrepreneur can use a digital marketing agency to do most of the hard work for them, and that alone makes it incredibly easy. But even if the work is done in-house, it is usually hardly impossible to form a passable digital marketing campaign. For this reason alone, no business should go without some kind of digital marketing campaign for too long – and ideally not at all.

It’s Powerful

A business which uses digital marketing is definitely more likely to get ahead than one which does not. This is obvious enough, and yet a lot of people fail to truly appreciate it. If you want your business to be able to succeed in exactly the way you want, it is necessary to use digital marketing to do so. The power of this particular form of marketing is that it has an enormously wide and far reach, especially compared to many other, more traditional forms of marketing – and that it tends to have a permanence in the minds of those who witness it as well. The statistics show that it is generally incredibly powerful, and that is enough reason for any business to make proper use of it.

It’s Diverse

There are a huge many ways to approach your digital marketing, and that can mean that you can reach more people and have much more impact than with other kinds of marketing. Thanks to the likes of social media and so on, you can now more easily than ever approach your marketing in increasingly diverse ways, and this has many benefits within it as well. Its diversity speaks to its power, and also to the ability it has to do many things at once for your business. You should absolutely make sure not to overlook this essential aspect of marketing in your early days – or at all.

As long as you use digital marketing, your business will be in a much better position on the whole – and this will mean that you succeed better in the future as well.

Online marketing is a huge part of business these days, and if your company’s marketing strategies are not up to scratch, you could fall behind your competitors and potentially lose out on lots of sales. Any and all businesses have something to do with online marketing from small local companies posting about their products on Facebook to large corporations brainstorming their next online campaign. Whatever type of business you own you are bound to have some online presence. Granted, some small companies might not need to use online marketing strategies if they deal with customers face to face and are recommended by word of mouth. However, any company can up sales, production and get their brand out there by formulating a marketing strategy. Considering the power on online marketing can do so much for your company and in today’s world, not having an online presence that is successful could potentially damage your business. Read on for some online marketing ideas to get you started.

Get People Reviewing

Reviews can make a huge difference to people investing in your services and buying your products. As few as two negative reviews can deter customers from buying from you, which shows how important reviewing is to your business. This direct customer feedback shows a dialogue with your audience and shows that your business affects people’s lives in a positive way. Replying and talking to customers that may have had negative experiences can also be a good way to deal with negative feedback. Engaging with the customer about their experience, offering them solutions, their money back or advice on their dilemma can make you and your business look really good. If you are replying to customers and helping them with their problems, you look like a caring company that will help customers out with any concerns they have. Reviews are a great way to use customer written content to promote your business, and negative feedback can be used to shed the best light on you.

Update Your Website

Your website is the front of your shop, and having one that is ineffective or looks bad can deter people from using it. Coding and designing websites is an art, and so this is something that you need to hire someone to do. Making the design simple, sleek and easy to navigate is something every business should aim for. It can be useful to keep in mind the customer’s perspective and what they want from the site. If you want help with your website consider Praxent, a web app development company. Using conversational English that is free from jargon is the best way to inform customers and relate to them. You might have to use some specialized language depending on the product, but make it clear and simple. No one wants to read over-complicated language when looking at your website.

Good Quality Content

If you are new to online marketing, it is tempting to buy adds on various websites and assume customers will automatically come to your site and buy your product. This is not all it is cracked up to be though and is often expensive and not that beneficial for many businesses. Creating good quality online content is, however, a great way to get traffic to your site and people engaging with your business. A great way to do this is creating a blog on your website if you don’t have one. A blog is a way to get traffic to your site and a way you can subtlety promote your products and services. Writing useful content that is genuinely informative can be an amazing way to inform customers and highlight what you can offer them. This is not a sales pitch though! Write something customers want to read, and make the subject of the article insightful information that only you can offer as an expert in your field. Getting content out there and linking it back to your site is a great online marketing strategy to get customers to your site.

Here are just a few ideas to get you started with online marketing. Following some of these ideas could give your business the boost that it needs. Having an online marketing strategy is the best way to get your business ahead of competitors and get you noticed. Creating good quality content through a blog, using social media and making sure your website up to scratch is the best way to improve your business. Make sure you prioritize your online marketing and try some of these ideas out today.

A typical business owner tends to prioritise one issue over others, and that’s cost. Business owners are always looking for a way to reduce costs and make their model a little more financially friendly. By doing this, they can make sure that their business is competitive and that they don’t have to worry about another businesses being able to lower their prices, pushing them out of the market.

It’s for this reason that a number of business owners resort to DIY marketing. This can seem like it makes a lot of sense. Particularly, if you are a running a business solo without any extra employees. If you can avoid it, you probably don’t want to take on that extra paycheck because that’s going to weigh down on your business costs. But there are a few fatal flaws of a DIY marketing campaign that you must be aware of, so let’s get into it.

Google Penalties

The first issue you need to know about are Google Penalties. You might think that there’s no risk in completing your own marketing campaign, but you could not be more wrong. If you complete your own marketing, you may, accidentally, stumble onto blackhat SEO tactics including keyword stuffing. A lot of people think that a technique like a keyword stuffing is easy to avoid because it’s obvious what’s over the line, but that’s not true. A couple more keywords than you should have could be enough to push your business into dangerous territory, and you don’t want that. Keyword stuffing doesn’t necessarily mean that the content is unreadable. It just means that you’ve used a keyword enough times to get picked up by the Google Algorithm.

Wasted Opportunity

According to a top SEO agency, there are 40,000 searches on Google every minute. Let that statistic sink in for a moment because it’s important. Now, granted not all of these customers will be searching for your product but that still means you could earn potentially thousands of clicks a day if your website is high up enough on the SERPs.

The only way you’ll be able to do this is by using a professional service. You can try to get there without the help of an expert, but there’s a problem there that can’t be overlooked.

A Powerful Competition

You might decide to cut costs by avoiding paying for marketing but don’t think that your competition will follow suit. Big companies that are competing with you are more than happy to pay for extreme levels of marketing, adding fresh content to their site like clockwork and running this social media using professionals. Even individuals often have social media managers these days to make sure that each post has the greatest impact.

The mistake that people make is thinking that jobs like social media management are so easy and quick that they can be completed without assistance. However, tweeting in your spare time will never be the same as tweeting to build up leads and make an impression on the market.

We hope you see now why it is indeed in your best interest to invest in pro help when marketing your business.

Marketing is meant to bring in business and up your profit through increased sales. However, get it wrong, and it can end up costing your company money! To prevent this from happening take a look at the most common marketing bungles below so you can steer your business well clear of them.  

Forgetting the data collection

Marketing is no longer just about getting your product in front of potential customers. In fact, a large part of any modern marketing strategy will be to collect data both on how the customers are responding your campaign, as well as their contact details.

Collecting contact details, in fact, is a hugely important part of a successful marketing campaign. This is because it is these that can be turned into warm leads, as the individual conceded has already shown an interest in your product. Something that as any salesperson knows is far easier to convert into a sale that will make you money than a cold lead.

Ignoring personalization

Ignoring personalization in marketing is a mistake that many companies are still making. They are still working on the old school assumption that the more impressions you can get in front of people the better. However, this isn’t always the case. You can bombard people with images and slogans all day long, but if they don’t find anything relevant to themselves or their life, they will discount them without a second thought.

That’s where the personalization of marketing content comes in. It’s a way of appealing directly a group or individuals that are picked on the strength of their demographic to be the most likely to want or need your product. Something that can make your marketing much more effective in terms of conversion, even though you may be reaching fewer people overall.

Not tailoring content to your industry

Not all fields and industry are alike, and more business would do well to remember this in their marketing campaigns. After all, the content and approach you take for a breakfast cereal are not going to work in a situation where the main product is luxury perfume or vice-versa.

That is why it can be valuable to your business to keep your marketing methods appropriate for the industry that you are in. To do this, you can work with a specialist like Berbay Marketing & PR that have extensive experience in particular industries such as finance and law. Something that gives you the best chance of finding an effective and appropriate approach.

Alternatively, you can also do some research on your closest competitors and see how they are running their marketing campaigns. Although, it is worth bearing in mind that you don’t want to come out with something too similar as the possibility of confusion in the eyes of potential customers is too strong.

Relying too heavily on influencers

Influencers are the big dogs of the marketing world, right? It’s them that everyone listens to and if you have their stamp of approval then your product is guaranteed to sell, or is it? Actually, experts predict that the power of online influencers will sharply decline in 2018, making investing a fortune in sponsorship, collaborations, and free products for review a bad idea.

Instead, focus your marketing funds on tech solutions such as automation and increased personalize as noted above, as these can help you generate profits more effectively.  

Being too traditionally minded

Last of all, a mistake that some firms are making, and that is costing them big, is their overreliance on the traditional forms of marketing. Forms such as TV, radio, and cinema adverts, as well as direct mailings, and newspaper and magazine articles.

It’s not that these methods don’t work at all. It’s just that there are more effective ways of spending your marketing budget. Something that you will need to keep an eye on if you want to make a profit.

For example, the open rate of direct mailing is super low, but nearly everyone will open and read a text, even if it is sent from a company that they have not heard of before.

Even email marketing isn’t as strong as it used to be, as most people have spam filters and can easily delete items if they don’t have incredibly effective taglines in the title. However, buying ad space through instant auctions that match the type of customer to your demographic are much more likely to end in a conversion.

Something that means even if you are not willing to go entirely digital in your marketing approach, using both will help you to get the best returns for the money you invest.

When you look at your website, what do you see? Do you get excited? Do you feel as if you’re meeting all of your marketing objectives? Do you think your customers have everything they need when they’re on site? If not, then maybe it’s time to up your website game. Of course, not every website can be perfect, but it should always be your aim to get as close to that as possible. And we’re not just talking about the look of your site, but the functionality too. Because your web functionality is a huge part of the sales and marketing process. Your customers need to be able to use your website and get the most out of it. But how will you know that they are?

Well, the first part of upping your game is going to be all about your customers and what they want. We’re going to take a look at some ideas, but you really do need to look at your analytics first to figure out where your website might be lacking. From here, you’re then going to be able to work on the key areas that can be improved to make the most difference going forward. But once you’ve taken a look at those analytics and you know where the issues lie, here are seven ideas on how you can turn that around this year.

Focus On White Space

It’s often hard to look at your website objectively, but you really need to do this in terms of the design. Because something that looks cool to you, may be irritating to your customers. To avoid this, the best option for your design is to focus on white space. When you have lots of space in your design, it looks clear and functional. Your customers will be able to navigate around the site more easily as your menu options should also be a lot clearer (an extra hint here).

Create A Featured Products Section

If you want to work on your product sections a little more, then why not think about adding in a featured products section. By working with a software company, you could come up with something really cool. Whether it’s a plugin that you’ve made specifically, or a section of the site that allows you to showcase certain items, not only can this be a really cool new feature of the site, but it may also help to push your sales too.

Work On Your Account Area

Next up, you’re going to want to give your members’ area a little attention. When it comes to the ‘your account’ area of the site, you’re going to want to make this exciting for your customers. And you have a really great opportunity to increase your sales in the process too. By making this area more exciting with personalized recommendations and features, you’ll be able to keep your customers interested and buying your products.

Offer A Loyalty Program

As an extension of that, or something in its own right, you should also think about offering a loyalty program. Loyalty programs where your customers can collect points and redeem rewards are an excellent way to not only keep your customers coming back, but to increase your engagement with them too.

Launch An App

From here, you may also want to think about what you’re offering in the mobile front. Because if you don’t have a mobile-optimized site, you may be missing out on a large chunk of custom. Not only should you think about having a site that works well on different devices, but an app too. With a specific app, you can target your mobile customers and make shopping easier for them too.

Improve Your Content

How is your content looking at the moment? Because if it’s not engaging or interesting or really getting the results you need, then you’re going to want to work on that. Improving the web content that you have is so important to not only engaging your customers, but getting them on site and keeping them there too.

Work In New Tools

Finally, you should definitely think about the new and exciting tools that your business could use. There are a ton of must-have features that every website should have, so if you haven’t got those covered off yet, now’s the time. But you may also want to speak to your developer about different software applications that you can use to really spice up your website features and see improved results.

Nobody wants to put weeks, months, even years, into their business only for it to fall at the first hurdle. And if there is one thing that is crucial to the success of your business, it is your brand. Your brand is not simply your logo or your slogan; it is your reputation. It is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. In a global marketplace that is quite often saturated with competition, it is important that you have a way of standing out from the crowd. Below are a few reasons that having a strong a trustworthy brand will benefit your business.

Employee retention

If there’s one thing that’s going to keep your staff loyal to you, it’s pride. If they are proud to say that they work for you, you’ve already won them over. You can even develop your brand further by speaking to your employees about what they need. Good pension schemes, and Employee Assistance Program and even an Outplacement service can all provide some strength to your company’s reputation as a good place to work. Try your hardest to cultivate a positive and supportive culture around the workplace. Do everything you can to ensure that your employees are looking forward to heading back to work on a Monday morning.

Customer retention and growth

This is where you can really start to see those dollar signs in your eyes. Not only will your reputation as a good employer mean that your customers will want to use your services, but you can also build on your reputation by providing a first-class service. You can work hard to nurture lasting relationships with your clients. If your customers feel valued and taken care of, they will be more likely to recommend you to their friends and colleagues. This means that you will experience a growth in your customer base without incurring any heavy marketing costs. Word of mouth recommendations are the kind of marketing that people trust the most, and you can’t buy. You must earn it.

Hiring process

As your customer base grows, you will likely need to hire more staff to deal with the increased workload. For every day that you have a vacancy that is unfilled, your business is essentially losing money, so you want to hire the right people as quickly as possible. Good quality staff will naturally gravitate towards good quality businesses. How do they know which are the best businesses to work for? They find out what their reputation is. If you have built up a reputation as a good provider for your customers, and a good employer for your staff, you will find that the best job seekers are lining up at your door.

Building a strong reputation takes time and consistent hard work, but once you have earned it, it will pay dividends to your business growth. Be wary not to relax and simply ride on the coattails of success though, a good reputation can be lost much quicker than it is made, and a bad reputation is not easy to shake off.