As a small business or entrepreneur you can't always afford to outsource your marketing or hire someone full time to work on it in-house. That's okay, it's all a working process and your business is a work in progress. I have compiled this list of 5 self-marketing tips for effective marketing as a small business.
1. Optimize Your Website
In most cases, your customers/clients will seek more information on your website pertaining to your products and/or services. The look and "feel" of your website plays a big role in how long visitors stay on the website, which plays a big role in whether or not they book with or buy from you. Optimize your website to ensure that it corresponds with your brand image and designed in a manner that gives your visitors what they're looking for as quickly as possibly. This will also serve to improve your website's performance across various areas to increase web traffic, conversion rates, and usability.
2. Create Social Media Presence
think about all the people you know (and even the people they know), then think about how many of them are on one social platform or another. Seemingly everyone you know is on social media; Facebook alone averaged 266 million users per month last quarter, which is 2 million users up from the 264 million users per month it averaged in the second quarter. User numbers that high present a huge opportunity for market exposure, and increased awareness creates familiarity, trust, and loyalty. You are guaranteed to find your ideal market somewhere among 266 million monthly users. Create social media profiles to engage with your audience and increase your brand awareness, then ensure you are consistently uploading content to keep your followers knowledgeable, involved, and engaged.
3. Improve SEO for Local Listings
Search engine optimization (SEO) is essentially the technical configuration of your website and its content to increase relevance and make it easier to find using user search queries, therefore having them ranked better and displayed higher by search engines (such as Google, Bing, etc.). Improving your SEO makes your website more visible, which means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers/clients. Some ways to conduct your own SEO include updating published content regularly, targeting accurate keywords, track website traffic, build links, set up a Google my business profile, and more.
4. Build a Referral Network
Word of mouth is the best advertisement, so they say. So build a network of likeminded individuals and professionals. Working with other industry professionals or just simply meeting up at networking events is a great way to get your business or hustle out there. It's also a great way to gather of list of people you could potential work with in team-based project, and once you begin including your network into your hustle they will begin including you in theirs as a mean so network expansion. The more people know of what you offer, the more chances of people to book with or buy from you.
5.Create More Content
This is an imperative part of marketing: content. This is anything from behind-the-scenes video reel, blog posts that educate readers about industry norms, memes, quotes, infographic posts, and more. The more content you create in relation to your business or hustle, the more you have to display of it. When people are in need of a product or service, they want information on it before they even proceed to contact you, so create more content to display your industry expertise and engage your audience.
At MGE Marketing Co. we specialize in scaling up businesses to meet their success goals. We work with startup business to establish brand identity and consistency, and we work with established business to rebrand, run ad campaigns, or conduct full marketing management. Our business is your success and we take it seriously. Contact us today!