Are you planning on starting a business this year? You’ll need a strong plan, first. Otherwise, you might make mistakes that could cost you customers.
With a strong marketing strategy, you can attract customers, highlight your value, and retain a loyal audience. A loyal customer base can improve your ROI and set you up for long-term success
Marketing for entrepreneurs isn’t always easy, especially in light of COVID-19. In fact, marketers are currently facing challenges regarding innovation, cohesion, and engagement. With a strong marketing strategy, you can stand apart from your competitors and keep your audience engaged.
Here are the eight marketing strategies you need when starting a business.
Boost your visibility and gain a loyal following with these tips today!
1. Determine Your Goals
In order to develop a successful small business plan, it’s important to define your goals. Otherwise, you’ll fail to choose the right marketing strategies to accomplish those goals.
What are you hoping to achieve with these marketing for entrepreneurs tips? Do you want to:
- Generate brand awareness
- Develop brand recognition
- Become a thought leader in the industry
- Establish brand trust
- Retain long-time loyal customers
- Generate website traffic
- Generate online leads, conversions, and sales
Different entrepreneurial skills and marketing strategies can help you accomplish each goal.
For example, let’s say you want to generate brand awareness. You can create a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. SEO allows your website content to appear when someone searches for your product or service.
The more often people see your business appear on Google, the more awareness you’ll generate.
You can also use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to develop brand awareness. Eye-catching, branded ads can appear on webpages and social media. As people see your ads, they’ll become more aware of what you can offer.
Do you want to become a thought leader in your industry? You can use content marketing to demonstrate your experience and expertise. You can also host online webinars and conferences to establish your credibility.
KPIs
Once you set your goals, you need a key performance indicator (KPI) to track your progress.
For example, you can track:
- Impressions
- Website traffic
- Form submissions
- Calls from your website
- Chats on your website
- Online sales
Use conversion tracking with Google Analytics to track these metrics. Establishing your KPIs will help you track the results of your campaigns. Otherwise, you won’t know which campaigns are helping you succeed.
2. Understand Your Customers
Audience research is an important step in starting a business. You’ll struggle to reach your customers if you don’t know who they are.
What pain points are your customers experiencing? How can you help them solve their problems? What value are you offering them?
If you’re targeting a large audience, segment customers into psychographics and demographics, including:
- Pain points
- Buying behaviors
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Marital status
- Household income
- Interests
- Education
Segmenting your target audience will help you develop a dedicated strategy for each group. Focus on personalizing your campaigns. Personalization will help you better connect with customers.
Branding
Now that you know who your customers are, you can create a brand with those customers in mind. Your brand can help you appeal to and attract customers.
Take the time to develop a standout brand for your business, too. Brand consistency is key when you’re starting a business. Without a consistent brand, consumers might not remember who you are.
It takes between five and seven impressions before people become aware of your brand. If they don’t know who you are, they’ll choose your competitors instead. Consistency and repetition can help you build brand awareness and recognition.
The next time someone needs your product or service, they’ll recall seeing your brand.
It takes only 10 seconds for someone to form an impression of your brand, though. You need to make sure those 10 seconds give you a strong head start! How do you want customers to perceive your business?
Building your brand will help you make a strong first impression.
First, consider your values. Shared values account for 64% of brand relationships. What promises are you making your customers?
Establishing your brand values can help you generate brand trust and loyalty. Maintaining loyal customers can boost your retention rate and ROI. Loyalty is worth 10 times as much as a single purchase.
Build your brand based on a strong mission and vision. Once you have your mission and vision statements, you can build your visual brand.
Your brand will include your:
- Logo
- Color scheme
- Font styles
- Imagery styles
- Tone
- Voice
- Personality
A signature brand color can boost recognition by 80%.
Make sure to keep your brand consistent across all marketing channels. Consistent branding can boost revenues by up to 23%.
3. Consider Customer Service
The key to marketing for entrepreneurs lies in your customers. Keeping your customers happy will encourage them to come back for more. If they have a bad experience, however, they’ll remember it.
Worse yet, they could spread the word about their negative experience, which could hurt your reputation.
Build a strong customer service strategy into your small business plan. How will you keep customers happy? What problems might they experience?
Determine a strategy for helping your customers before problems arise.
4. Get a Wow-Worthy Website
Your website will help you market your business 24/7. Without a well-designed website, you might struggle to reach customers online.
User experience (UX) design trends will ensure people have an easy time using your website. If they struggle to explore your content, they could leave. Your bounce rate will increase, which can hurt your search engine ranking.
Then, you’ll struggle to reach customers.
Work with a web design and development company. They’ll help you design a website with the latest design trends in mind.
Make sure your website is mobile-optimized. More people research companies from their smartphones. If you’re not mobile-optimized, these customers could struggle to use your website.
Don’t let anything cause your page load times to lag. A slow website could cost you customers, too.
5. Start Creating Content
Remember, you can use content marketing to demonstrate your experience and expertise. Once you start creating content, you can share it on your website. Unique content will impact your social media and email marketing strategies, too.
You can create blog posts, polls, quizzes, and infographics to get started. Once you have a few related blog posts, combine them into an ebook. Then, encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter in exchange for your exclusive downloadable.
This strategy will help you gather email subscribers. Later, you can use email marketing to remain top-of-mind with these customers.
SEO
Once you start creating your content, make sure to optimize it for search engines like Google. Search engine optimization (SEO) can boost your ranking on search pages. As your ranking improves, more people will see your business.
Over 90% of activities online start on a search engine. Unfortunately, 75% of users don’t look beyond the first page of results. If you’re not on the first page of a search, you’re losing customers.
Use keyword research to learn more about the keywords your customers use in a search. Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and Ahrefs can help you get started.
Then, create content with a single keyword in mind. Optimize your content for SEO using Yoast. Add your target keyword in the:
- URL
- Page title
- Headings and subheadings
- Opening and closing paragraphs
- Body text
- Image alt text
Google’s search engine algorithm changes throughout the year. Keep up with the latest SEO trends to maintain your ranking.
Working with an SEO expert like the Benjamin Ogden SEO Agency can save you valuable time and money. They can keep you on track with the latest SEO tactics and trends.
6. Stay Social
Social media marketing for entrepreneurs can help you better connect with customers. Which social media platforms are your customers using? Instead of stretching yourself thin, start on one platform when starting a business.
Create a dedicated social media marketing strategy for each platform. For example, you can post playful content on Instagram but serious posts on LinkedIn.
Make sure to write captions with your target audience in mind.
Add a strong call-to-action to encourage followers to visit your website or start shopping.
7. Keep Up With Trends
You’ll need to make adjustments to your small business plan throughout the year. Keep up with the latest trends to ensure your marketing plan is relevant.
For example, more businesses have started hosting webinars to replace in-person conferences.
Remember, Google’s algorithm changes throughout the year as well. For example, voice search is becoming more popular. You’ll need to adjust the keywords you target with voice search in mind.
Most voice searches are phrased as questions. You can use the question as your target keyword. Then, answer the question within your content.
Zero-click searches are becoming more popular, too. Consumers can now find the answers they need straight from Google. Using schema to format your web content for these searches.
8. Analyze and Optimize
When starting a business, you’re bound to get distracted with day-to-day operations. Make a note to return to your campaigns every few weeks. Which strategies and campaigns are helping you generate results?
Which campaigns are struggling?
Track your KPIs and determine where you need to make improvements. Otherwise, you could waste valuable time and money.
Marketing for Entrepreneurs: 8 Tips for Starting a Business
Starting a new business is easy when you have a small business plan you can follow. With these eight tips, you can set yourself up for success. Keep this guide on marketing for entrepreneurs handy and start boosting your business today!
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