Six small business marketing strategies that work

The top small business marketing strategies to adopt

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

You have so many options when it comes to small business marketing strategies that it’s hard to know where to start. You need some solid and proven plans, from understanding your customers to sharing the benefits of your products and services, and to utilize services such as thebest CRM softwareto manage your plans.

Fortunately, when it comes to getting your message across, there are several reliable strategies that will bring everything into focus. Whether you’re new to marketing and creating your approach for the first time, or you want to refine your messaging and tactics, we’ll share some strategies to optimize your time, energy, and budget.

You’ll probably want to run through these step-by-step, as each marketing strategy builds on the one before it. This will help you to enhance your approach and maximize your return on investment.

The small business marketing strategies that we’ll cover are:

We’ll also cover some of the best marketing software and tools to help you streamline and optimize your marketing efforts.

Marketing strategy 1: Clearly define who your ideal customers are

In small business marketing, this is the foundation of everything else you do. You’ve probably been told that knowing your customer is half the battle when it comes to making sales. But what does knowing your customer really mean?

Your ideal customers are those that are most likely to buy your products and services.  That means developing “ideal customer profiles”, and to do that you’ll need to ask some questions.

Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more.

Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content.

You can start with key demographics. This might include their age, marital status, occupation, geography, financial status, and other factors. Helpful questions include:

Segment your ideal customers into different audiences

You can develop multiple profiles for your ideal customers. You will want to “segment” these ideal customer profiles into different audiences, so that you can develop a customized marketing approach for each one.

For example, you might want to group business customers into:

You might split individual consumers into:

Your segmentation depends on the type of business you run, the products and services you sell, and how your offerings meet customer needs.

The best marketing software and tools to understand and segment your ideal customers

Marketing strategy 2: Outline your product values and benefits

You have to connect with your ideal customers on an emotional level. That means building up a relationship with your business and brand through the products you sell. To do that, you’ll need to know what your product values and benefits are.

A product value is something your product does for people. It’s the problem it solves, the need it meets, or the experience it creates. A benefit is what your customer will gain when they purchase or use your product. It’s the reason why they choose your products over your competitors’ offerings.

To determine what those values and benefits are, ask yourself:

Refer to the ideal customer profiles you created earlier to help answer these questions.

Once you’ve defined your product values, tie each of them back to your ideal customer profiles. Identify the key needs or problems that each profile has, and show how your product can benefit that customer.

These benefits will become the core of your marketing messages. They will let the customer know that “you get it”, and that you’ve designed products and services that can meet their needs.

Marketing strategy 3: Discover the best marketing channels for reaching your customers

You need to reach your customers where they are, and use the right channels and messaging formats to grab attention. We’ve previously explored marketing channels in our Marketing 101 guide to the basics. Here’s a refresher of the mainonline marketingchannels, and how to use them.

Go through your ideal customer profiles and identify the most appropriate channels and types of messages for each one. From there, you can craft specific small business marketing strategies based on each channel, profile, and product benefit.

Marketing strategy 4: Create marketing and content that will resonate with your customers

Once you’ve sorted through your ideal customer profiles, product benefits, and marketing channels, it’s time to create the messaging itself. You may want to focus on:

When you’re done, show your messages to a small group of customers and ask for feedback. You may find that they react better to some messaging than others, which will give you insight into what resonates most with them.

Marketing strategy 5: Execute your marketing campaign

We’ve already completed a lot of the work needed to run a successful campaign:

There are only a few areas left to cover: now, decide how much you want to spend on your small business marketing. You can split this budget between different campaigns and marketing channels. Then, list out:

That’s it, your small business marketing plan is complete. Time to go do!

The best marketing campaign software and tools

Now, you just need to bring it all together with the right marketing software and tools. We recommend:

Each of these tools comes with comprehensive training and user guides, so you can pick the right one for your marketing needs.

Marketing strategy 6: Track what’s working and tweak as necessary

You’ve started executing your small business marketing campaign, but you’re not done yet. Now it’s time to track the results, and make changes where needed.

Make sure you get good marketing metrics in place, for example:

You should split these metrics in various ways—by marketing channel, customer persona, type of message, and other segmentation. See if they can answer questions like:

These metrics will let you know what’s working and what’s not. You can use this insight to make changes. Then, track how those changes impact your revenue and conversions and tweak further as needed. This will let you optimize your marketing strategies, maximizing your ROI.

We hope this has been helpful. In this guide, we’ve covered the small business marketing strategies at the core of a successful campaign. You understand who your customers are through ideal customer profiles; you’ve defined how your products will help; and you know how to reach your customers through the messages and channels that connect with their needs.

Now, it’s time. Start with these small business marketing strategies, and you’ll build the right foundations for business success.

Further reading on marketing

If you want to learn more about marketing, including how you can automate marketing functions between businesses or just in general, make sure to read our explainers answering the questions:what is digital marketing;what is marketing automation; andwhat is B2B marketing automation.

Paul is a professional writer who creates extensively researched, expert, in-depth guides across business, finance, and technology. He loves the challenge of taking complex subjects and breaking them down so they are easy to understand. He can quote ‘The Princess Bride’ in its entirety and believes the secret to good writing is Earl Grey tea.

7 myths about email security everyone should stop believing

Best Usenet client of 2024

Smeg Combi Steam Oven review: a multi-functional countertop oven that looks stunning and cooks well