One of the biggest challenges confronting small business owners is deciding what the most effective way to market online is for your particular type of business. In today's digital landscape, being ahead of the pack on marketing strategies is crucial to your success. To help you as a small business owner to stay relevant and be successful online, the Rules of Thumb blog from MoneyThumb would like to offer you the following helpful tips:
Staying Relevant in Today's Small Business Marketing Landscape
1. Discover Where Potential Customers Spend Their Time Online
It is a given that there are dozens of social media platforms that small business owners should take advantage of when it comes to online marketing. Instead of spreading your resources thin by maintaining accounts on every conceivable site, consider condensing your effort into only the most relevant channels to reach your client base. But how do you figure out which social media platform is most relevant to what you are selling? One idea is to run low-risk marketing tests to determine what performs well. You can then invest more heavily in what works. Another option is to create surveys to determine what websites your regular customers spend time on. This will help you reach your target audience.
2. Solve Your Customers' Problems
Another way to create a loyal customer base is by solving complaints before they become major problems. Current customers are the lifeblood of your business, and your goal is to be adaptive and responsive to their needs. If you can address complaints while they're still in infancy, you will retain more customers and avoid dissatisfaction down the line. Another great spinoff that occurs if you take good care of your customers is that word gets around, especially on social media. If you read reviews of successful businesses online, you will notice one factor that is consistent when they are praised, and that is that they take good care of their customers. Word of mouth is still the best advertising.
Even if your business is very small, if you have any employees they should be learning about social media marketing. Maybe they will balk at first, thinking that isn't their job, but the truth is your business needs this marketing. Make learning it fun for them, and of course, throw in some little incentives along the way for good performance. Your employees know that in today's world we must be online to be successful and we also must be adaptable. Most of them are probably on social media anyway.
If you have the money to hire a separate marketing team, that's awesome. Go for it. But if not, train your current employees to be resilient, adaptable and out-of-the-box thinkers. This can help them be ready to respond to surprises and challenges they encounter. One way to build this type of team is to hire from a variety of skillsets. If one of your employees is stronger in data and statistical analysis, let that person learn Google Analytics and other data gathering tools that will help you see where you are the strongest and weakest when it comes to online marketing.
Marketing is a crucial component of any modern day small business. How adaptable your company is to the times will dictate your future success online. By creating marketing strategies and techniques like the ones listed above, your small business can stay on the cutting edge and remain relevant.
Another way to remain relevant is to use the PDF Financial File Converters from MoneyThumb. We have converters especially designed just for small business owners.
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