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4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing



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4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing

Whenever I'm talking to a new business owner they always say something along the lines of "I've always wanted to start my own business, I just didn't know how everything worked and it scared me off for a while" and that's completely understandable.  The only problem is that when they start up their business they focus so much on how everything is going to operate from how they will get orders ready or how they will ship something out, that they forget about how they're going to get customers in.

For this simple reason, you see almost 50% of small businesses fail within the first 3 years.  They don't focus on traffic and lead generation as soon as they should, and they end up falling behind on bills and playing catch up the whole time they're in business.

Many people with business dreams don't even get to this point.  They usually are scared to start up because they don't want to fail, which is inevitable.  You will fail, on some level, and it's unavoidable.  You need to embrace it and see it as a learning experience 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing

In this discussion I'm going to go over 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing.  This discussion should help out those newer business owners, and maybe some old businesses, when it comes to marketing 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing


1. Unique Value Proposition or UVP
First off you will need to figure out what type of void your business will fill in your industry and why people should be using you instead of someone else.  Now you could be doing something another company is doing, but what makes you different and more valuable?

You will most likely have competitors when you start your business, so figure out who the top dogs are and write down what they're all about and see what differentiates you from them.  Know everything you can about your industry, get informed, and stay on top of the news revolving around your niche so you're never caught off guard.  You will be able to see trends developing and this means you can create a service or product to compliment that trend and pull in more clients because of it.

You will need to figure out who your target market is and what exactly they want from you.  This is one of the more important things because you will be able to figure out who you want to advertise to and what to push in terms of products of services.  Never assume that people want something, always do some research before you waste your time advertising something they don't like.

You need to be clear about what your services or products are so there isn't any confusion from you customers.  You will need to define why you're unique and why they should be working with you and not your competitors.

Remember, you're not selling to everyone in the world.  You're just targeting a specific group or groups in order to have the best outcome.  You will define who you're targeting, why they would want your products or services and how you can get it in front of them.  After you figure this out, you will now have to start marketing.


2. Increase Your Presence
Now that you did all of step 1, you know understand what your industry is about and what the people want.  In this step, you're going to be increasing your presence online in order for people to find you, talk about you and even contact you directly.

First:  Make sure your website is in tip top shape and nothing is broken.  You don't want to start marketing and realize that when someone gets to your website, it isn't loading.  Work on all the technical stuff so that your website loads properly, it loads quickly, and everything is working.  You will also need to make it easily navigatible so that people can quickly find what they're looking for.

Usually you'll want to add some sort of newsletter sign up form on your homepage or in your footer so that you can collect emails.  Not every niche will benefit from this, but the majority will.  This will allow you to collect their emails and send out newsletters to them that talk about your business, services, updates, etc. 

You will want to add a blog to your website, this can easily be done using WordPress and adding it to a sub-folder.  If you don't want to spring for a premium theme, you can always use one of the free ones that will show up in your WordPress dashboard.  Your blog will need to be active which means you will need to post at least once a week to it.  I usually recommend a minimum of twice a week, but I guess it really depends on your niche and how active your competitors are.  You can even schedule posts, which means you can write up 8 posts in one day and then schedule them to be published throughout the month.

You will need to go off of your website and begin to build a presence.  This doesn't mean that you should just go to every website you can think of and spam your URL.  You can go to websites like Yelp and Angies List in order to get your listing up and running.  You can also go to BBB.org to get your business listed as well as add it to Google My Business for local listings.  This all will help validate your business in the eyes of the consumer and they may make a purchasing decision before they even get to your website 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing

Be sure to keep it consistent when talking with people online.  This means if you're on your website, blog, chat, email, review platform, social media pages, etc. you will need to have the same voice all over the place in order to be seen in a good light.  Every time you're talking to someone you need to see it as building your brand.


3. Start The Conversation
Social media is a low cost way to start branding your business and help bring in clients because you can get super targeted.

Choose where your clients will likely be: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.

Each platform has a different demographic, so be sure to figure out which one would be best for you to target, before you begin.  When you do begin, be consistent with your posts and the platforms will treat you better over time in terms of traffic, followers and indirect sales 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing  You will likely need to write up a schedule and stick to it.  Write for 30 minutes whenever you start working, answer any questions that come in through your morning posts and then write for another 30 minutes at the end of the day.  This way you will consistently have content going through your social media profiles and you'll be interacting with all your visitors at the same time.

You won't want to just publish posts about what you're selling.  You will want to include updates about what you're doing with your business such as new partnerships, where you're getting seen in the news and even give a sneak peek behind the scenes of your business.  People will come in and comment on your posts, hopefully, and this is positive engagement if you do it right 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing


4. Think About Paid Content
Paid traffic is nothing new, but have you ever through about boosting a social media post on a platform such as Facebook?  This will help you get in front of loads of potential clients and they will likely read what you wrote.  If they read it all, they will likely follow you 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing

The beauty of this is that you can get super targeted and get your ad in front of specific people that will have a higher chance of converting into a sale or sign up.

If you do decide to go this route, you will need to manage how much money you're pushing into it and tweaking your campaign for the best performance possible.  You'll likely screw up your first campaign if you don't know what you're doing, and this is why you should start slow.  Don't go all in, in the beginning because you'll likely lose a lot of money that you didn't have to throw away.



It doesn't matter how large your business is, anyone can utilize the 4 things I mentioned above in order to help dominate their industries marketing.  You can be your own chief marketing officer even if you don't have any experience, or a degree, in marketing.  You just need to know your industry and take it slow until you know what works and what doesn't.  After you figure that out, you're good to go all in or simply increase your time invested in this 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing




In Conclusion:
Every business needs to be doing online marketing whether it's them doing it or outsourcing the work to a freelancer or company to do it.  If you're not marketing your own business, you're just falling behind your competitors.  So get out there and start working on your marketing already 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing



Remember to follow me!
https://www.seocheckout.com/user/Razzy


Thanks!

Razzy

Comments

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keen2write
Great advice as always Razzy I will try this out. As at times, I struggle with my online business. The only thing I need to do now is focused on ranking. As mines an online business. there is few keywords am struggling to rank for but am sure I will get there. I do try apply marketing on my sites and I also look on YouTube a lot as there are some good Marketers on there.



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TommyCarey
Start off by targeting your low hanging fruit because that will usually bring in traffic and sales quicker than your main keywords.

Your "low hanging fruit" are your long tailed keywords which get a decent amount of searches, but not nearly as much as your main short tailed keywords. By targeting your long tailed keywords you can usually get ranked higher up within the SERPs in a shorter amount of time.

Whenever I'm working with a new client who has never done any SEO or backlinking for their website, I will always recommend we target the longer tailed keywords that have traffic before we target their main keywords that could take 6-12 months to rank for. By increasing the rankings of the less targeted and less trafficked keywords, we are not fighting with other SEO companies over the same rankings and at the same time we are getting some sales coming in for the client who's expecting sales after hiring us lol 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing

It does take time to make your own foot hold within the rankings and even your niche, but you can do it even if you're fighting against giants. The thing I love about the search engines is that anyone has a fighting chance as long as they are determined and invest enough time into doing what they need to do in order to dominate 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing



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overcast
Good points on low hanging fruit. And the large keywords in general. I think those who target low hanging fruit and then expand the marketing benefit a lot. I have learned that getting targeted traffic is more important. As time goes on they are the one responsible where we can get people to buy services or on the page where we want conversion. Thanks again for the tips Razzy.



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Authord
Nice you really know your onions. the struggle for ranking is a battle that can take anyone off his feet at the slightest lose of the grip. It is not an easy process and it is not also impossible, it just takes time and patient.



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overcast
I think some of the business can dominate from various angles. As you can see marketing takes time for things to properly manage as well. I have learned that business who are more focusing on the recurring revenue are who are going to win for sure. That's something we have to consider for the business management. We have to understand that small business takes time for things to manage as we are going ahead there. That's something I am learning about the business.



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Corzhens
I agree with the focus that if you push all your efforts to your existing clients then you have sure revenue from them. Slowly but surely you have to build up your clientele and referrals by your present clients will be strong in terms of conversion. As they say, big ones come from small ones so the small business can grow if you put your heart to it. But I suggest that you also pray that you get lucky with your business venture.



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overcast
Yes existing clients referring can always help out. And even better the issue with the slow development of the base. It takes time though. But if you are into service industry. Every client matters. So marketing one person at a time can be good idea as well. It can teach you a lot of small things.



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Barida
One thing I liked about this content is the way you took time to make it in steps. One thing that many new small businesses have failed to realize is the case of finding a special problem to solve in the industry they operate on. I always see that as the starting point of every successful business.



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DenisP
All really good advice, as always, but some of them are without a doubt harder in practice than they are on paper. For example, some things came to my mind when reading your first point. Yes it's important to know exactly what you're bringing to the table, but in this day and age it so incredibly difficult to find a void to fill. If you can imagine it, someone else is probably already doing it. This is obviously going to vary depending on region, but concerning online businesses anyway, things can be so saturated that it is really degrading to one's morale. This just emphasizes the importance of finding your niche rather than being overly general about your business endeavor and hoping for the best.



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Heatman
Nice tips on how to make small business dominate at marketing. I do find the option of making your presence to be felt more often. This would make people believe that you are truly serious with what you are doing, since it's always easy to reach you 24/7. It would definitely make them to have faith in you and your services.

Also the power of communication should never be looked down upon. Opening a conversation first would make the prospective customers feel valued and that's how the interest to buy starts to grow.



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Barida
Sure! The power of communication is one many sellers have neglected simply because they are focused on making the money first and that's not a good way to go about it.



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Heatman
I definitely have exploited the benefits of communication, as a degree holder in communication art (mass communication) I have been thought from day one the importance of maintaining a good and healthy communication relationship with my prospective clients. I do have a social networking marketing page on Facebook which I normally use to promote my perfume and body sprays merchandise. I try my best to always initiate a communication report with my visitors and that has yielded me a reasonable number of patronizers.



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DarthHazard
Having your website ready and working is one of the most important things. There is just no point focusing on marketing or other aspects of promotion if when your users decide to visit your site, they are shown a broken site or nothing at all because of some hosting problems. You will end up losing a lot of users and you may even end up losing them forever because they don't want to waste time trying to see if your site is back up.



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kgord
As usual you make some excellent points! People are not going to flock to your business or website if they don't know who and where you are. I like that you made that your first point to address because in order to have people know our business they have to know where we are!



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wiseagent
In my opinion, this option (1. Unique Value Proposition or UVP) is the most important aspect for those who are starting their own business (whether something big or something small).

However trying to discover something "unprecedented" is almost an impossible mission. what I think is more likely to get an idea that already exists (but that has been less explored so far) and from there, develop something different and that obviously meets the needs of customers.



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Authord
Exactly, and that seems to be the hardest part of business. Because at some point in time, you will discover a business idea or a niche idea,, and when you pop into google search, you will discover that there is someone out there doing almost the same thing as you taught you could be the first to do.



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wiseagent
I think creating something 100% original these days is something impossible, what can be done is to create a new concept from what I already exsite. But even so, this is still a very big challenge and something very difficult to achieve... But you know, you have to try. 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing



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Authord
Yeah, you will always have to try, but what happens when you keep on trying and trying, but nothing happens, and everything seems static. Well, it can really be frustrating at times. It's really a very big challenge.



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wiseagent
Sometimes it's like deciding to play a betting game... You have to be very inspired so things appear and become real to you. So, people who have the luck in their favor tend to do better in these situations.

It's the law of life, right? Haha! 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing



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ColdFlameChris
I'm sure that a lot of people will have an idea on how to dominate at marketing now. It's a good thing that you share this. Thank you for this wonderful post of yours. Keep up the good work. Have a good one. 4 ways a small business can dominate at marketing



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wiseagent
With the amount of information that is available to us every day (the options are as diverse as possible), I think this is no longer a work so difficult as it was decades ago. But still... Without creativity and discipline, I think you can't get very far.



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cmoneyspinner
It's like the business historians usually indicate: 99.9% of the large multinational corporation started out as a small business. But the business owners were visionaries. They had plans for going further. Whatever your aims are, whether you want to stay a "mom and pop local business" or expand into an international or multinational corporation, you need to be mindful of your marketing strategy.



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reymond2861
Wow! This must be one of the great advice that you could provide especially with somebody who is starting a small business. Choosing the right market to start up with, familiarity about the ins and outs, keeping in touch with all possible prospects, using the social media to get noticed, and reaping what you sow is very simple yet straight to the point.



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wiseagent
But how to choose the right market?

I think before we considered that question, we have to be aware of our own abilities because when we choose to work with what we like and know how to do it, everything is easier than starting to learn something from scratch (not that it is bad, but it's I need to have more willpower to "shoot in the dark").



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potentialwriter
Before going into any business, it's very good to consider whether success is feasible or not as touching the marketing strategies that would be applied. As a local businessman, you must study the environment first to figure out what the environment really needs. The business must be situated in a very good location where it will easily be accessed by the people. The business owner must find a way or medium through which conversation will be going on between him and the people. Familiarity must never be encouraged with the people because they tend to abuse it.



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Authord
Nice tips.
The presence is where I really want to emphasis much on. the important of social media presence can not be over emphasized, and it is not only alien to social media, but anywhere you can find people that has a common interest with your niche or business or anything related as such, then your presence needs to be there. Because everyone is a potential customer.



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Corzhens
I agree with the social media promotion. For me, social media is the most potent way of promoting your business. What’s best in social media is that it’s free. All you need is a little creativity and that’s it. You can create a page (also called fan page) or a even a group with members who have interest in your niche. The page can contain the details of your business and posting on your timeline the link would be enough although you have to make sure that your posts are not annoying.



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Pixie06
Before starting a business you must screen the market. This will help you to get information about the customers, the products, the prices and the competitors. You can then formulate your strategy once you get this information. If your products are sold at competitive prices then you have more chances of selling them. Advertising is directly related to your sales revenue. You need to develop the right marketing strategies.



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TimothyAlex
Many small businesses, especially those that are local, just don't understand the value of having a large online presence or engaging in conversations. It is just a simple fact that consumers are using a business' online footprint to evaluate them. The longer a company goes without working on their online marketing, the harder it will become to attract new customers.



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vinaya
One of the ways to reach the client base is by hiring a social media influence. I know a person who is currently pursuing PhD. He was a teacher in a school college and the university. He has almost 5000 friends on his facecebook. He has such a great influence that if he post a status, there will be 100-200 likes within 20-30 minutes and 50-60 comments in the first few hours. What if I pay him to promote my business. If he writes about my business, he take the message to the hundreds of people in a short time.



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