24 Ideas For Small Business Marketing Strategy 2021

24 Ideas For Small Business Marketing Strategy 2021

In 2021 Ideas for beginners about How to build Small business Marketing Strategy? 24 Tips on Digital Marketing Strategies for small businesses to generate sales and increase ROI or return on investment from their marketing activities.

Starting a business is not a big deal. With in the budget you can choose any business. The challenge is to run the business successfully. Entrepreneurs or business owners starts the business but they won’t consider the realities of the business. The reality is how to market the business, product or services. In other words to know how to promote business or find new customers because ultimate goal of the business is to find new customers and sell their products or services.

Before we move to Steps for effective marketing strategy for business. Lets see definition, importance, types plan and benefits of marketing plan for better understanding of business marketing

What is Marketing or Definition or Marketing in Business?

Marketing is to promote business or products to targeted audience and push them towards sales.

Importance Of Marketing

Marketing can bring benefits upto 40x then business spent on marketing. More then 70% of marketer are confident they are getting more revenue by spending budget on Marketing Campaigns. But for that proper planning required. Planning include targeting audience selection of platforms or tools to promote business.

Types of Marketing

To promote business you can use Traditional Marketing or Digital Marketing. Traditional Marketing still works and businesses use it for promotion. But Digital Marketing is more attractive for businesses now a days because of its nature. Digital Marketing benefits in many ways it provide targeted audience, global access, ease to measure the success of marketing campaigns, retarget the audience, increase user engagement and push towards sales, customizable and many other things like that.

Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is the set of different marketing strategies or guidelines related to the promotion of business or products. In simple its a complete plan or layout about how to move forward to promote your business. Include different steps like know your audience, creating buyer persona, set goals, generate web traffic, convert visitors to leads, convert leads to sales and other thing like that.

According to stats marketer who documented their marketing plan get more success then those of who don’t documented their marketing plan. So its beneficial in many ways to plan and document your plan.

Benefits of Marketing Plan

1. Marketing Strategy is available in documented form and easy to consult
2. Gives Better Understanding of Your marketing strategy
3. keeps every team member on the same page. Avoid communication gap
4. Keep you on the track with focus on marketing plan
5. Help in taking right decision for your business or marketing

Small Business Marketing Strategy

These below said ideas or techniques are inter connected with each other. That are used in marketing for small business. You have heard or learn about these but here we will tell how their combination and proper use can bring you to success. Its not only marketing strategy small business can use but also for large companies can use as well. So lets start one by one.

Small Business Marketing Tips 2021

1. Know Your Audience

Base of every marketing technique is to grab the audience. But its better to first identify who is your targeted audience rather then wasting your assets or resources on unidentified audience or useless activities.

Now the question is How to know the audience or how to identify targeted audience for your business. Initially identify the proper niche related to your business. Then search for the problems and issues their are searching for. What are their needs?

What they want from service provider or product seller?

To know all that information you can use search quires, do a keyword research, read the comments social media posts, blog posts, forums, groups or other content available online related to your business. All above gives you better understanding of targeted audience.

2. Create Buyer Persona

Creating buyer persona is to organize the data collected while knowing the audience. Simplify and categories the data for better understanding. Its good to create buyer persona because its make your further marketing activities much easier.

In Buyer Persona data can be categorized on different basis I.e interest and customers needs, age, gender, location, language and other parameters like that. Every business has its own criteria to create buyers persona according to its own business dynamics and customers behavior. That customer behavior and business guides to create targeted and organized marketing campaign for users of same interest and needs.

Stats shows that by using Buyer Persona 56% Companies succeed to get Quality leads for their business. So creating buyer persona has great impact on the performance of marketing campaigns.

3. Set the Goals

Moving forward now its time to set the goals on the basis of buyer persona created on the previous stage. Setting the goal is important because its guides about the path and the destination. Push marketers to put all their efforts to achieve those goals.

Marketing Goals Can be like this

1. Increase Web Traffic
2. Create Brand Awareness
3. Generate More Sales
4. Targeting New Markets
5. Grow Email List
6. Increase Social Presence
7. Improve Conversion Rates

Set Your Goals On SMART

Specific Set a defined Purpose of your Goals

1. Measurable Set the content whose performance can be measurable or countable
2. Aspirational Set the goals that are achievable
3. Realistic Not set the goals beyond your possibilities
4. Time Bound Goal should have a realistic time frame

Success is achieved by most of the marketers who initially set their goals. So its a good practice to focus on setting the goals and try to achieve those goals.

4. Create Your Online Presence

First and Foremost step is to generate traffic. That means to bring visitors or users to the site or the landing page. The more traffic generation means marketing or business message transferred to the more audience. In simple more audience means more customer reach. As much audience get your message more chances to get more sales or leads. Different methods can be used to generate traffic like content marketing, Paid advertising, Social Media, Q&A Websites, Forums and others like that

5. Content Marketing to educate your Audience

Content is the material provided to audience to create awareness or knowledge about the services or products. It can be any form that include blog post, web pages, pdf files, ebooks or any other written materials. Marketers keep on publishing new content on related topic to generate more traffic. Number of Monthly published posts through wordpress is approx 70+ Million. Blogs help to generate 55% more traffic then the usual websites.

Consider Following while creating content for your business.

1. Content Should Be SEO Optimized
2. Create relevant content considering customers needs
3. Simplified content layout with subheadings,
4. Use bullets for better understanding
5. Relevant images with infographics, additional text or objects attract more visitors
6. Use some humor in images if possible. It help in gaining attention

i) Unique Selling Proposition

To compete with others you need to have your own identity. So that People should recognize your presence and treat you as an identity. For that you must use your own unique Selling Propositions. Which means to show we are offering product or services that other don’t. Guide them how beneficial your products or services for customers then the other products or businesses in the market.

Ii) Develop Business as a Brand

While promoting your business not try an ordinary approach. Try to promote your products or business as a brand. Its doesn’t need too much money or large scale organization to present yourself as a brand. Its an approach that makes you brand.

For developing business as a brand

1. You have to define your brand
2. Define who your customers are
3. What you offering your customers
4. What customers thought about your business
5. What makes you different from your competitors or Use Unique Selling Proposition
6. Create Brand Logo, Website and Tagline
7. Be consistent

Contently says that the companies provide unique content get 61% more buyers and according to Forbes 23% revenue is increased by presenting brand on all platforms

6. Create Visual Content

Adding images, videos, or any other visual element to your content is known as Visual Content or Visual Content Marketing. Viusal content makes your content more attractive and engaging. Visual content include all type of Images, Illustrations, Quotes, Screenshots, GIfs, Inforgraphics, photos. Where as Video Content include Webinars, Intros, Tutorials, Demo and others. Visual Content can be used on any platform means it can be used in blogs, social media, paid ads, email marketing, landing page creation, subscription forms.

1. Deliver information more quickly.
2. Visual content get more attention of viewers.
3. Remain in your minds for long time
4. Highlight stats and easy to read.

IF we talk about the impact of Visual Content with stats. Visual Content is processed faster in our brain then the other content. 94% more views for the visual content. Which means more views, more interaction, more chances for sales and leads.

Now its time to know how to get better performance from our content. Beat competitors and be on the first page of Google for more views.

7. Understand Search Engine Optimization

Content Marketing is Optimized with SEO. Because organic search is a big source of traffic and also free. 48% users use Google search to find products for their needs. But it requires lots of Effort to bring your website or web-page to the first page of search engine. 60–65% of marketers time is consumed by SEO. They spent more time in content creation. Because its produce long lasting effects on success of business. For that you need proper keywords research, meta tags, optimized headlines, url and description, backlinks are also plus for ranking in Google.

I) Perform Keyword Research

Keyword Research is the process to find what people are searching related to a specific topic. Keyword research help marketing process in different ways. First to know your audience, second help to find best keywords for blogs or other webpages content creation to be ranked in Google. In the same way help in creating ad copies, email content and others.

Google Keyword planner is a free tool that provide following data related to any keyword

1. Search Volume
2. Related search
3. Competition
4. CPC Cost

But businesses or marketers use paid tools like SEMRush to get more details. SEMRush is more performance based platform that provide data that help in getting better position in Search Engine.

1. Search Volume
2. Bidding Cost
3. Competition
4. Competitor Analysis
5. Keyword Difficulty Number
6. Search Ranking
7. Suggested Keywords

Its most renowned and trusted platform used by 6,000,000 users worldwide for their business success. With SEMRush you can easy get the analysis of Competitor Keywords and other data. That help to plan your content marketing strategy, keyword research and backlinking.

II)Focus on Creating Backlinks

Links of websites or webpages in your content are know as backlinks. Backlinks are also the factor of getting high rank in search engines. More quality backlinks or backlinks with more authority bring you higher rank in the search results. Backlinks Improve authority of webpage or website. Numbers show due to no backlinks 90% pages don’t get much traffic and ranking in search engines.

III) Analyzes Your Activities

To measure the performance the performance of our free or paid campaigns, we use analytics reports. That leads to plan future marketing strategy. Analysis provide complete insights or picture of your campaigns. How well marketing platforms are performing. Google Analytics provide data that include web traffic or visitors, unique visitors, bounce rate, conversion and other related data.

To get better analytics moved towards SEMRush which provide details of your marketing performance as well provide competitor how they succeed. Get the details of Keywords they are targeting, backlinks they get from, amount spending on paid ads and other stuff like that.

8. Use Paid Advertising Option

To get quick results business moves towards paid option. Paid Advertising brings you the traffic as you start paying for view or ads. The best you plan or customize your campaign the better results you get from the campaign. That the reason businesses keep on testing new things on the base off past results to get most out of money they paying for paid campaign.

To get better results in Paid Advertising follow these tips said below

1. Be relevant to your services or products
2. Use Exact Match or Phrase match keywords most of the time
3. Use ad Extensions to get more engagement or interaction
4. Improve Quality Score of campaign
5. Segment Campaign in proper ad groups
6. Create Multiple Ad Copies A/B Testing and better targeting
7. Use Retargeting option in proper way.
8. Time Scheduling can enhance your campaign performance
9. Location targeting can get better results
10. Use of Negative keywords can save your cost
11. Focus on bid Strategy

9. Promote Yourself on Social Media

Number of Social Media Users increasing day by day. Most them open their accounts at least once a day to check social activities are updates. So social media is a big source of traffic that include organic and paid traffic. Posting images, videos on company pages or groups or ads can bring number of traffic for any type of business.

According to Statista Social Media is used 50% of the total world population. That’s approx over 3 billion users. Which represents a huge number of audience is their that can be targeted to grow business or for marketing purposes.

More audience can be targeted by

1. Using Hash tags in the posts,
2. Use more visual content along with text
3. Create Company or Brand Pages and grow its audience
4. Share your content in related Groups
5. Grab users attention with catchy thumbnails
6. Create Polls or Surveys on topic related to your business niche
7. Encourage comment on your posts
8. Interact with audience through Live Sessions on Social Media

10. Use Forums & QA Websites For Promotion

Forum or QA Websites are the platform for discussions. Where people come to get solution of their problems from intermediates or experts. These can also be used to promote your business or products. Join the forums related to your niche. Find the specific topic related to your business. Answer the questions asked by the audience at the same time suggest your products or services for further assistance.

Convert Visitors To Buyers

Above said methods are to bring traffic to landing pages. Most of the businesses succeed to generate traffic by choosing these methods. But they don’t focus on how to convert their audience or visitors in to potential customers. That’s the key point because their goal is not only to generate visitors. They are looking for buyers. So to convert visitors into customers you need more effort, planning and user engagement. To get success in conversion process we use email marketing. Because its most effective way to communicate with visitors.

11. Use Email Marketing Sequences

Email Marketing is to send emails to users or potential customers to enhance user engagement for business promotion. Its a fact that Email Marketing is still a most effective way to boost your digital marketing strategy. According to the data analysis its claimed by the experts that it generate 40X ROI or return on investment. That is more then any other platform to produce these type of results.

Secondly Email Marketing produce 174% more conversions then social media. That’s the reason marketers like to spend more on Email Marketing then any other platform.

So importance of Email Marketing can’t be denied but proper planning need to get these numbers. Some of those factors that can boost your email campaign we will discuss below.

Effective Email Marketing Tips 2021

Benefits of Email Marketing

Email Marketing can help your business in various form. It can be used in different ways

1. Better way to communicate with customers
2. For creating Brand Awareness Email Marketing is helpful
3. May Used for Create user Engagement
4. Generate leads with Email Marketing
5. Direct sales can be produced

How Email Marketing Work

Email Marketing is a complete procedure to convert visitors to customers that include different steps. Each step has its own dynamics and importance. Lets see those steps

12. Built email List

Email Marketing based on the email list we have. Further we move on the basis of email list we collected from our landing page.

Landing Pages

Landing Pages are the pages design to collect user data. Landing Pages mostly consist of different elements that include

1. A catchy Title of Headline
2. Along with with Subheadings or tags lines
3. Enlisted Features or Benefits of product or business
4. A form with different fields and a call to action or submission button
5. Addition text that may include testimonials or performance proof or stuff like that

In exchange of filling landing page form marketers offer them free stuff. Offering free stuff as a result of form submission known as Lead Magnet. Lead Magnet are to offer users free Ebooks, Videos, Webinars or Events for filling a short form or just submitting email address for subscription.

While Offering Lead magnet keep following things in mind it Should be

1. Relevant to Your Business or Products.
2. Must be short and to the point otherwise it has adverse effect.
3. Provide quality content that push user to the next step on purchase process.
4. Add Proper call to action that working well

To make your email campaign more effective its better to use email verification tools to clean up your email list from errors. Want to know more about email verification see this article.

13. Properly Segment Email List

After data collection its time to segment the data. Because the data segmentation help to plan or launch email campaign in an effective way. Segmentation is to group different users on the basis of their interest, location, gender or other categories like that. Better you segment the data, better you get the results from your email campaign. Send targeted and relevant emails according to users group.

According to the reports Segmented, Triggered and Targeted Email Campaigns brings 77% of ROI. So properly segment and trigger email campaigns and send to targeted audience.

14. Increase Email Open Rate

Email Open Rate is the ratio of Subscribers or Users who open emails sent by the businesses or marketing team. Its one of the factor that shows the performance of your email campaign. To get better open rate follow these points

1. To improve Open Rate remove inactive or Invalid emails through email verification
2. Highlight Users Issues or Query in title.
3. Select the better timing for sending marketing emails.
4. Headline should be attractive
5. Not try to sell present solution for their problems
6. Use some humor with information
7. To improve open rate use email personlization

15. Use Personalized Email Content

Email Personalization is suggested by the marketers in Subject line because its noticed that the subject line with personalization has 26% more open rate then other. Email with personalization generate 5 times more revenue then others.

Personalization also play a vital role in the user engagement. Personalization is to send emails with the subscriber data we have. That include first name, or last name.

Adding data in the email subject line and Email beginning. Because personaliztion makes it more trustworthy for users or subscribers. Email personalization impact positively on Email Open Rate, Click Through rate and possibility of generating lead or sale.

16. Enhance User Engagement

After getting success in email open rate next is to enhance user engagement. User engagement is the interaction with user through emails. Means does he read the email and considered it useful for himself. Does he clicks the links provided in the email or not. Links are mostly call to actions that push user or visitors towards sales or any further action. User engagement is measured with click through rate. Better click through rate shows the effective email content. To increase CTR or Click through rate consider certain things to be followed

1. Catchy Headline because its the first impression of an email
2. Be relevant and avoid long content to get more attraction
3. Content should focus the users needs.
4. Add some imagery because it create more impact then text or long content
5. Proper placement of links or call of action.
6. Links should be visible and clickable.

17. Automate Your Email Campaigns

Sending Emails to large number of subscribers or users is not possible. Mostly Marketing teams needs to send sequence of emails to turn visitors into potential customers. So the best option or procedure is to automate your email marketing. Automation is preset sequence of emails send to subscriber who hit the trigger an automated email would be send to the user according to the trigger he hit. Its an effective and quick way to communicate with users rather then sending manual emails. Stats show that 320% more revenue is produce by automated email campaign then non-automated emails. That’s the reason automation is used by 55% companies for their email marketing campaigns. These automated emails can be used for different purposes.

1. They may be welcome emails for the subscribers to join the list.
2. Can be used to push users to the next step of marketing funnel.
3. Directly used to convert leads into potential customers
4. Send abandoned emails to remind users to complete sales
5. Send delight emails for the users after completing purchase process.
6. Automated emails answering to users queries.

18. Create Sales Funnel For Campaigns

The process customers go through while making the purchase. Sales funnel is combination of different steps that lead user to become a potential buyer. Better you customize or design your sales funnel more sales would be generated. Keep Sales funnel simple, ease to understand, to the point, address customers needs, focus customers psyche and behavior.

Different Stages of Sales Funnel are

1. Awareness that provide little information about your business
2. Interest develop a thought to search more about product or services
3. Decision force visitor to go for that product or how beneficial is to buy that product
4. Action lastly made a purchase or complete buying process

19. Perform A/B Testing

To get better performance from email marketing campaign create multiple variants of same campaign. These variations or A/B testing gives better understanding of customers behavior. Study highlighted that 400% conversion rate can be increased with A/B testing. In A/B Testing you can use

1. Make changes in the design or layout
2. Use Unique content for each variant
3. Separate images or offers can be made

20. Optimize Campaigns For Mobile

While creating email marketing campaign not forget to consider mobile users. Optimize your campaign according to mobile devices. Because number of mobile users increasing rapidly. There are more then 2 Billion Mobile Email Users. 55% of the total email users open email from their mobile devices. Email design should be responsive so that it can easily be read through mobile or even tablets as well.

To make it mobile responsive keep these tips in mind

1. Focus on the font of email not too small to read
2. Optimize image size according to mobile device
3. Call of action should be visible not too small or placed incorrectly
4. Easy to scroll up and down

21. Offer Coupon to Users

Many companies offering coupon are discount to encourage visitors to buy or fill subscription forms. They offer products or services on discount price rather the regular to make it attractive for customer. Initial discount may be useful for full sale next time. They also used to grow social media audience or email subscriber list

Data shows that number of consumers use coupons is 80–90%. Secondly Revenue Per Email is increased 48% with email having coupons

1. So create Digital Coupons for your customers
2. In coupons convey clear message
3. Plan coupons for upcoming events
4. Track performance of coupon campaign to analyse data

22. Encourage Customer Feed Back

Customer Feedback is the communication of customer with company and sharing their experience with products or services company offering. Feedback can be positive or negative as customers feels about services. But in both cases it help businesses to improve their business or marketing strategy. Businesses come to know what people actually thinking or experience about their services. So companies should always welcome customers feedback and try to resolve issues highlighted in the feedback.

1. Facilitate customers to send feedback
2. Encourage Users to Share Experience
3. To get Customer Feedback different methods can be used
4. Conduct Surveys on Social Media or on own site
5. Create Polls on own website or social media
6. Create a feedback form on Website
7. Read the comment on Social Media Sites
8. Social Media Inbox Messages
9. Different Review Websites available

23. Enhance Your Customer Service

Customer Services is the assistance or the reply by the company upon the queries or the feedback of the customers. Customer Service is the platform to interact with customer to guide about your services and help users who are facing issues or problems while using services or products.

Tips for best customers Service are

1. Respond timely to the customer queries
2. Be polite with users
3. Be informative share details related to issue they asking for

According to report 147% more spend by customer who get better customer service or customers experience

24. Send Abandonment Carts Emails

In online shopping it happens buyers or visitors leave the purchase process incomplete or make an incomplete. These incomplete sales are said to abandonment. Means they are near to buy for what ever reason they left. According to the numbers more then 65% of users made these abandonment sales. So to encourage those people to complete those sales marketers or sales team send a sequence of emails.

Reason For Abandonment may be

1. Users not ready to buy
2. Limited payment option
3. Cart technical issues
4. Just to compare price
5. Limited shipping option
6. Budget constrained
7. Need more product research

Most Tools Used For Digital Marketing

Above said details may confused you how to do all this. It needs to much time and effort. Here we will tell you about two marketing tools that can makes your work much easier and quicker. These tools are not only suggest by us but also recommended, tested and used by many marketing experts with proven results.

SEMRsuh

SEMRush is a multi tasking tools that provide information related to multiple marketing activities beneficial for your business. Also provide analysis of competitors marketing strategy. It best tools that can help in generating traffic whether its from SEO, Paid Advertising Or Social Media. It help in different ways. That include

Keyword Research

Keyword Research is the thing that you need every where in you digital marketing strategy. Whether writing content for your site, blog, email marketing, ads or other stuff. Because it guides what people are searching for.

SEMRush is a great tool for keyword research where you can data almost exact number of search volume, its keyword difficulty means how difficult this keyword is to be on the first page of Google. Find the related searches, Know the search volume according to location

Competitor analysis

To generate more traffic its good to see what marketing strategy your competitors are following. Competitor Analysis gives better understanding of the market and steps to follow to get success. SEMRush Competitor Analysis Tool include

Keywords Analysis

Find the keywords your competitors are targeting in their marketing content. That can help your marketing campaign to perform better. Analysis and use of competitor keywords can also bring you better position in search engine.

Backlink Analysis

List of Websites from where your competitors are getting backlinks for higher rank in Search Engine. Target those websites or blogs to get better ranking in Search Engine Results. SEMRush will show

Paid Campaigns analysis.

Know the strategy of your paid Campaign competitors. That include ad copies, keywords, bid strategy and others information about your competitors.

Getresponse

For success in the email marketing Getreponse is the best tool that help in running effective email marketing campaigns. Its helps in different ways

List Building

Grow your email list with Getreponse where subscription form and landing pages help to collect email addresses or to generate leads. Create landing pages with easy drag and drop builder.

Segmentation

Manage your list or segment data with Getresponse. Assign tags and scores on customer behavior of your subscriber or leads generated from subscription. Add custom fields in Sign Up forms

Automation

To save your time and effort Getresponse help to automate your email campaign. Getresponse autoresponder send preset automated emails immediately or according to your schedule time. Send personalized and relevant automated emails with recommended Products, Recover Lost Sales and Use Behavioral Targeting.

Mobile Responsive

Create responsive landing pages and emails with Getresposne. Compatible with all devices that include mobiles or tablets or any other device.

A/B Testing

Perform A/B Testing with Getresponse easily. Where you can customize the design that include color, forms, buttons, layouts, headlines and content, elements and others within minutes

Ad Creators

Get help from Getreponse to target your subscribers or users with Facebook or other social ads. Help in finding new audience and retargeting existing. That boost sales and leads generation.

Webinars

Visual Content marketing getting more attraction. Visitors want more visual content rather then reading text. To make your marketing campaign effective Getresponse introduced Webinar feature. That help to present visual content and engage audience with video content.

Abandonment Carts

Most of the users don’t complete their purchase process. Those users can be retargeted by sending abandonment emails through Getresponse. Set your campaign or configure work flow to send abandonment emails.

Personalized Emails

As we mentioned earlier email personalization has great impact on sales process and email marketing campaigns for business. Set Predefined Text in the your emails or personalize email subject line to increase email open rate with Getresponse Email Personalization.

Summary

Ideas For Small Business Marketing Strategy

1. Know Your Audience
2. Create Buyers Persona
3. Set The Goals
4. Create Your Online Presence
5. Content Marketing to educate your Audience
6. Create Visual Content
7. Understand Search Engine Optimization
8. Use Paid Advertising Option
9. Promote Yourself on Social Media
10. Use Forums & QA Websites For Promotion
11. Use Email Marketing Sequences
12. Built email List
13. Properly Segment Email List
14. Increase Email Open Rate
15. Use Personalized Email Content
16. Enhance User Engagement
17. Automate Your Email Campaigns
18. Create Sales Funnel For Campaigns
19. Perform A/B Testing
20. Optimize Campaigns For Mobile
21. Offer Coupon to Users
22. Encourage Customer Feed Back
23. Enhance Your Customer Service
24. Send Abandonment Carts Emails

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