10 Essential Marketing Tips for Any Business

These ten marketing tactics can go a long way toward helping small business owners achieve their business goals.

1. 1. Conduct market research. As you launch a new brand, you must understand the current offerings on the market. If you have direct competition, where does it come from? Do customers have pain points that no existing company is addressing? Understand your target market and its needs before you start spending on major marketing campaigns.
2. 2. Create a customer profile or buyer persona. As you identify your target market, go further and describe the exact type of person you see as your core customer. Think about their age, gender, interests, and other demographic traits. When you have this buyer persona in mind, you can better determine the best way to reach them.
3. 3. Conduct price research. Use pricing research and case studies to help your company find an acceptable price point for a new product. Gleaning price information from the current market will help you craft your own business strategy.
4. 4. Provide valuable content. New business owners may equate marketing with pay-per-click ad campaigns or TV commercials, but you can draw organic traffic to your website via content marketing. Brands that commit to blogging, vlogging, or podcasts can build up subscriber bases. Then when the right time comes, a portion of these subscribers may choose to make a purchase.
5. 5. Maintain social media channels. Social media posts can reach customers in a more personal, intimate way that an online banner ad can. When you create content for social media accounts, you may find you can build trust with customers who do not respond to other forms of online marketing.
6. 6. Network whenever possible. In order to get the word out about their new business, startup owners have to make themselves visible. This might mean participating in webinars, cross-promoting with other local businesses, or just showing up at events to talk about yourself and your great new company.
7. 7. Make use of marketing tools. Customer relationship management software can help you track sales metrics, email open rates, and customer service requests, among many other functions. This CRM software allows today's small business owners to expand their marketing efforts.
8. 8. Optimize for smartphones. Entrepreneurs know that much of today's e-commerce takes place on smartphones, both through web browsers and dedicated apps. Make sure your digital marketing strategy accommodates those who mostly access the internet through their phones. In many cases, digital platforms will do this for you. Make sure your own website loads smoothly on a smartphone, especially if that is where you conduct most of your commerce.
9. 9. Promote positive word of mouth. Most customers trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family over any other form of marketing. Prioritize great customer experiences to naturally promote the spread of word-of-mouth testimonials.
10. 10. Audit your results, and keep adjusting. Regularly convene with your marketing team to review sales figures, subscriber growth, and any other relevant metrics. Then, engage in relevant retargeting to reach an even wider span of new customers. This means that launching your marketing campaign is really just the beginning. You will be assessing and refining your marketing for as long as you run your company.

Here are seven popular marketing strategies that companies use to build brand awareness and convert interested people into paying customers.

1. 1. Content marketing: Relevant content marketing efforts can utilize blogs or podcasts to craft long-form discussions and build a customer base through personal connections and shared values.
2. 2. Social media marketing and influencer marketing: A social media marketing strategy can effectively advertise a new product or service to a specific target audience or niche persona. An influencer can endorse your product in their content and broadcast your message to thousands of followers on multiple social media platforms. Your affiliate marketing message will often include a referral code with discount incentives to entice new customers and track the conversion rate. The influencer can earn a commission for turning their loyal followers into your new customers, thus growing your brand community.
3. 3. Email marketing: Small businesses and online retailers can use email marketing newsletters to reach out to current customers on an email list and inform them of the latest and greatest deals and products. Email notifications with concise subject lines can also help your company solve conversion issues like cart abandonment. Abandoned cart emails are call-to-action reminders for customers who have not completed the final buying process on your e-commerce platform.
4. 4. Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing: This e-commerce marketing plan will help your company track the return on investment of all of your online advertisements. Your company bids top search engines to connect your specific product or service with relevant keywords and phrases. When a potential customer clicks on your website link, you pay the search engine company for increased traffic. An important factor of digital marketing in an age of nearly endless options is differentiation. You can leverage your company into an advantageous position when you invest in placing your products and services near the top of relevant searches.
5. 5. Search engine optimization: An essential component of online shopping is researching comparable products on a search engine to find the highest quality product at the best price. However, there is a significant customer interaction drop off after the first results page, since shoppers are less likely to continue scrolling after they find multiple options. If you use SEO keywords on your landing pages, you can gain website visitors without spending on a pay-per-click online ad campaign.
6. 6. Retargeting: Website visitors that arrive at the landing pages or product pages of your e-commerce store will collect an anonymous browser cookie. This cookie tracks visitors to help your company focus marketing energy toward these interested shoppers. Retargeting is an effective template to increase conversions and boost your e-commerce sales.
7. 7. Partnerships: Yet another way to improve your online presence is to partner with similar businesses and cross-promote. You can give your online colleagues referral codes or custom URLs that give them financial incentives if their users make a purchase on your website. If you have a podcast or video feed, you can trade appearances with other small business owners, promoting your products and services.

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