Marketing for a Small Business – How to Explode Your Growth in 2022
How do you do marketing for a small business? With limited resources it is difficult to do marketing for a small business. Nonetheless, marketing is the most important activity for a small business to succeed.
Small businesses need marketing to differentiate their business from the competition and gain customers. Keep reading to uncover how to market a small business.
Included in this article:
What makes marketing for a small business unique?
Marketing for a small business is different than for big corporations in many ways. Corporations have large marketing budgets, well-known brand names and marketing experts. However, small businesses have none of these.
With limited budget and knowledge it can be hard for small businesses to reach new customers and beat the competition. It is therefore vital to excel in the marketing for a small business.
The marketing for a small business needs to be specific and targeted to a select few to be effective. There are also certain types of marketing channels that are better suited for small businesses.
This article covers all the resources you need when marketing for a small business. Let’s get into it.
Creating a marketing strategy for a small business
Marketing for a small business needs to start at the foundation, the core elements of your business. The core elements are the 4 P’s of your business. If you are not familiar with marketing basics the 4 P’s is a marketing model consisting of product, price, place and promotion.
- Product means the product or service you are offering. You must consider that the product has to satisfy a customer need.
- Price is not only the actual price of your product but the pricing strategy you use. Is your offer low-cost, average or premium?
- Place regards where you sell your products. It is the physical location or online store where the customer buys the product. But it also includes all you communications channels.
- Promotion involves how you sell your product. This is how you are going to communicate your products to your customers.
These four elements lay the foundation of your marketing strategy. We will delve further into promotion and communication channels in this article. But don’t forget that your product and the price are equally important for your marketing strategy.
Create a marketing plan
In your marketing strategy you also need a marketing plan. The marketing plan is about the goals and objectives you set for your business. In addition, it includes how you are going to get there. For a large company the marketing plan is an extensive document with substantial information, both necessary and unnecessary. But as a small business you don’t need to create a corporate document, with expert graphic layout. The most important thing is that you clearly define your goals and how to achieve them.
When creating you marketing plan there are only three questions you need to answer:
- Where are you now?
- Where do you want to be?
- How do you get there?
Analyze your competitors
To succeed with the marketing of a small business, it is also necessary to check out the competition. You need to understand your main competitors’ business to differentiate your business from theirs. It is important that you offer something different from your competitors. Although, that difference doesn’t need to be something substantial like a product feature. It can be that you target other customers and display your brand differently.
If you do not know who your competitors are, put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Do the research you would do, if you were looking for a solution to the need your products aim to satisfy. Identify three to five of the most significant competitors and then answer the following questions:
- What is their Unique Selling Point (i.e. their unique offer)?
- Who is their target audience?
- What are their strengths?
- What are their weaknesses?
- Where are they communicating with the target audience?
Creating your marketing strategy involves more than defining your 4 P’s, creating a marketing plan and analyzing your competitors. But it is a good start to marketing for a small business. To get an edge in your marketing and create a winning marketing strategy read the below article containing 5 essential tips when marketing for a small business.
Define your target audience
Your target audience is the customers you choose to direct your products and marketing to. As a small business it is vital that you choose the right target audience. Large corporations might be able to target ‘everyone’ but even they select specific target audiences. To compete with other businesses, as a small business, you can’t target everyone. You need to choose a specific segment to direct your marketing efforts to. To define your target audience, you first need to perform a target market analysis.
Perform target market analysis
A target market analysis is the process of segmenting the market and selecting a target audience. The process starts with understanding the needs, criteria and characteristics of individual customers. Then you group these customers based on similar criteria and characteristics. After that you choose the segment that is most attractive for your business and adapt your offer.
To compete on a market, small businesses need to select a smaller niche target market. Performing a target market analysis will help you define the segments on your market. And then choose the segment you should target.
Segment the market
Segmenting the market means to divide the market into different groups of customers (segments). The factors you should use to segment the market are:
- Demographics, such as age, gender and location.
- Psychographics, such as lifestyle, personality and values.
- Behavior, such as when and why the customers use your product.
Validate the target market
Based on your segmentation you then choose a segment to target. But before you decide definitely, you need to validate that it is a good business opportunity. A good business opportunity means that there are enough people in the segment and that they have a need for your product. There are three questions you can ask to validate your chosen target audience:
- Can you monetize the target market?
- Can you compete on the market?
- Can you satisfy the target market’s need?
To perform a proper target market analysis follow the steps in the below article.
Create a customer profile
A customer profile helps you understand your target audience better. It will also make it easier to develop marketing tactics to target them. Your customer profile is an embodiment of your target audience, which serves as the roadmap for making marketing decisions in your business.
Your customer profile gives you a clear picture of your target audience. It also helps you keep your target audience in mind when making business decisions. Therefore, you should always tailor your marketing to the customer profile.
To build your customer profile you need to research and define the following characteristics of your target audience:
- Demographics
- Generation
- Gender
- Geographic location
- Type of location
- Region
- Lifecycle & social status
- Lifecycle stage
- Social class
- Psychographics
- Values
- Personality
- Lifestyle
- Interests
- Activities
Learn more about what the different factors above mean in the article below. It will give you a detailed step by step process to create a customer profile that will help with the marketing for a small business.
Build your brand
The third step when marketing for a small business is to build a brand. When you have defined your target audience and embodied it in your customer profile, you can create your brand.
Contrary to common belief, your logo is not your brand, but your logo is part of your brand. A brand is your unique offer in the form of a name, symbol, design or similar, that differentiates you from the competition. This means that everything customers identify with your business – is part of your brand.
Building a brand is vital for you as a small business because it is the only way you can compete with other businesses. Being a small business is something you can use when building a brand. Focus on the strengths of a small business such as uniqueness, being local and familiarity. You can position your brand on the other end of the spectrum from big corporations. As a result you will attract customers that are looking for something different.
Four brand elements
Creating a brand starts with defining four brand elements. These four elements are the values, domain, assets and personality of your brand.
- Your brand values are the core values that your business stands for and its characteristics.
- The brand domain is the target market you want to operate on. You should already have defined this in the previous section.
- Brand assets is what separates your brand from competitors on the market. Assets consists of two main elements. What makes your brand unique and how you position your brand relative to the competitors. You have already performed a competitor analysis and now you need to decide how you are going to differentiate your brand from them.
- Brand personality is the personality traits that you define for your brand. Brands are often associated with characteristics similar to human personality traits. With successful branding the customers see the brand as an extension of themselves. The brand personality can help you create a deeper relationship with your customers.
Create a graphic profile for your brand
After defining your brand through the brand elements you also need to embody your brand with graphic design. Make sure that the below components portray your brand. Because these components are what your target audience will identify your brand through. That is why it is important to consider every one of the components. As well as how they relate to your brand.
- Name is the name of your business and your brand. It is the first thing your target audience will remember you by and associate your brand with.
- The brand palette is 3-5 colors that you use for your business. These colors should be in line with the personality you have created for your brand.
- The logo should use the brand palette colors and envision your brand. Except for your name, your logo is what your customers will identify you with.
- Tone-of-voice is the style in which you communicate with your target audience. Do you communicate in a professional manner or relaxed funny tone?
- You need to create a website based on all the above components. Every small business needs a website that communicates their brand, as well as other important information about your business and its products.
Building a brand requires hard work but is essential in the marketing for a small business. To gain more insight on how to leverage brand building for your small business’s success, read the article below.
Content marketing for a small business
Content marketing for a small business is a vital strategy to compete on any market. It involves creating educational or entertaining communications that your customer wants to consume. Creating marketing your customers want to take part in provides a great opportunity to communicate with your them. When building a brand focus on content marketing over promotional marketing.
There are many different types of content marketing that you can use as a small business. But some examples, and what they are good for, are:
- Blog articles on your website are good for services and informational products.
- Infographics works well for how-to’s, complex products and B2B content.
- Long-form video (over 1 minute) is good for tutorials, teaching a topic, series of content as well as entertainment.
- Short-form video (less than 1 minute) is good for entertainment, in-the-moment videos and quick tutorials.
- Images can also serve as content marketing if used in the correct way. They are good for inspirational, informational or entertaining content.
Understand the difference between promotional and content marketing by reading the below article. You will learn how to best use content marketing for building your brand. And growing your business.
Marketing for a small business on social media
For a small business social media marketing is one of the best marketing tools available. Social media marketing means to use social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook or TikTok in your marketing. Social media platforms are easy to use and do not require advanced design or marketing skills. Plus there are plenty of tools out there to help you. Most importantly social media marketing is free or can cost very little, if you want to use paid ads.
Social media marketing for a small business has an advantage over large corporations. In social media marketing it is important to connect with your customers and build relationships. As a small business it is much easier to do this because the messages come from the person who created the business.
Some of the steps to do social media marketing for a small business includes:
- Choose the right platform for your target audience
- Post your content marketing on social media
- Only post high quality content (high resolution photos or videos)
- Plan the posting of your content consistently
- Grow your audience using hashtags, geolocation, and ads if applicable
Social media marketing involves much more than these. To make the most of your social media marketing as a small business check out the article below.
Engage your target audience on social media
In your social media marketing you also need to ensure that your audience is engaged. Social media gives you the opportunity to create an engaged audience. As a result they will be more likely to buy your product or service. When the consumer is seeking more information of how to fulfill a need, social media is one of the first places they turn. An engaged audience are also interested to learn more about your business. Which results in higher likelihood that they will turn to you, when they are in need of your product.
Engaging the consumer starts with making it about them. Relate your content on social media to the customer. What are their likes and dislikes? Needs and desires? Fears and concerns?
You can also create content about issues or situations your target audience are passionate about. It can be social or political topics. But also general life situations your target audience relates to. Creating content with your customers or using your customers in your content also create engagement.
Delve deeper into what creates engagement amongst your target audience and learn how to leverage that in your content marketing in the below article.
Summary
Marketing for a small business contains some unique challenges due to limited resources and smaller reach. But there are many techniques and strategies you can use to become successful when marketing for a small business.
The steps you need to take when marketing your small business are:
- Create a marketing strategy
- Define your target audience
- Build your brand
- Create content marketing
- Market your small business on social media
- Engage your target audience on social media
I hope you found this article and all its resources useful to succeed with the marketing of your small business. If you liked the article and found the content valuable, please share it with someone else that can benefit from it.
I'm Emma Ellinor
I’m a digital marketer, project manager and retail analyst.
For the past 7 years I have immersed myself into the field of marketing and management. I am on a mission to inspire more women to take their business to the next level. By sharing my journey to escape the 9-5 trap along with useful marketing, time management and small business tips.
