Small Business Marketing Success
Many small business owners are primarily concerned with two things – cash flow and growth.
Growth is difficult to achieve without cash flow.  Cash flow is critical to sustain operations, and depending on how your business is performing, there may not be much left over to invest in growth.
I’m not going to include things like “create a remarkable brand” or “develop a product people want to buy” – I am presuming you recognize the inherent importance of these things and are trying to do so. I won’t include those sort of soft tips in this list, rather try to provide practical marketing techniques to make your small business marketing succeed.
7 Small Business Marketing Tips
Tip #1 for Small Business Marketing – Leverage Your Network
Talk to everyone you know, who your spouse knows, your family, friends, professional network, etc about your small business and your value proposition.  When growing your small business, you can’t be shy.  But don’t be oppressive or obnoxious about it.
Tip #2 for Small Business Marketing – Develop Your Website
More and more people are online, and as the population ages it’s just going to increase.  This past week, during a recession “Cyber-Monday” posted record sales.  Developing your website includes the following:
Tip #3 for Small Business Marketing – Increase Your Website Traffic
Depending on your business model and the current popularity of your website you may choose a few different approaches.  Some of the more common being SEO, PPC Marketing, Social Media, etc.
Tip #4 for Small Business Marketing – Website Design and Navigation
Your small business’ website should be very intuitive and easy to use for your website’s visitors.  Once you generate traffic, you want to convert them into leads, inquiries, sales, etc – whatever your small business model needs.  Have someone outside of your organization review it, family, friends, customers, vendors, etc. Don’t take negative feedback personally or quickly explain why it’s set up a certain way – listen, think, reevaluate.  What makes sense to you doesn’t always make sense to other’s.
A well designed website can make your small business look like a major player.
Tip #5 for Small Business Marketing – SEO
However, well designed website is unfortunately meaningless without traffic.  And unless you are familiar with SEO – search engine optimization – investing in some professional SEO assistance may well provide your greatest long term marketing ROI.
The web has become the great equalizer – allowing small businesses to compete with large businesses on a scale never imagined 20 years ago.  A quality SEO who focuses on small business marketing can be a great asset.
If you go this route, talk to people first, and do your research.  There are a lot of companies and people who claim to be expert SEO’s.  And while some may provide short term lifts in your rankings, make sure it’s done within the guidelines of ethical SEO.  It can be much more difficult to undo a penalty than to generate rankings through “white hat” seo methods.
Tip #6 for Small Business Marketing – Track Your Marketing ROI
Track marketing ROI for all of your small business marketing efforts.  This is critical to your small business marketing success.  You can track marketing ROI in a number of ways – from labor intensive spreadsheets to (affordable) CRM solutions.  Marketing can be a very expensive endeavor for small businesses, and you must knows what works and what doesn’t/
Tip #7 for Small Business Marketing – Work Hard and Work Smart
Stay focused on your small business.  Understanding what is working and what is not working is critical.  You may need to change your strategy or target market – be open and flexible to this.  Stay focused on your core strengths, keep developing them and hire and retain people that are engaged in your business.  But – be open to new ideas!
Additional Small Business Marketing Resources
115 Marketing Strategies for Small Business
10 Small Business Marketing Strategies