12 Essential Small Business Marketing Strategies Posted on August 4, 2022July 26, 2023 by Jonathan Herrick Let’s face it: there are a million and one small business marketing strategies out there, but if you’re like most business owners, you don’t have the endless budget and time to find the hidden treasures that lead to results. Also, determining which marketing strategy is most effective can take months of testing and evaluation. After growing businesses, testing plenty of marketing campaigns, and helping our small business customers grow, I have come up with the 12 marketing techniques for small businesses that you can use to help your small business flourish. 1. Audience Research Marketing is about sending a relevant message to your target audience to persuade them to buy your product or service. If you don’t know your target audience, you risk focusing your attention too broadly or on the wrong people, which is a catastrophic error in the age of personalization. Successful marketing begins with target audience research — a data-backed process that culminates into elaborate audience persona(s). An audience persona is a profile or visualization of the person you’re trying to reach. It outlines traits such as geographical location, career, gender, motivation, pain points, budget, and more. Audience persona is your “north star” for creating and launching successful marketing strategies, from content marketing to word-of-mouth. It lays the foundation of your marketing strategy and informs the best channels to use for effective marketing. 2. Word of Mouth Advertising Once you’ve laid the foundation, you can get your marketing strategies rolling. One of the most cost-effective small business marketing strategies is to tap into the voice of your customer by getting them to talk about their experience with your business. That means building a great product or service first and then delivering it in an amazing manner to your customers. Encourage customers to talk about your small business on social and professional networks and to share their opinions. This will boost your chances of getting new customers in the door. Typically, people trust their friends and value their opinions. That is why it’s critical to tap into your customers who are willing and able to share your excellent products/services with their tribes. 3. Content Marketing If marketing is the engine that propels your business, content marketing is the gas in the tank. It’s a fantastic way to bring you leads through search engines, but it also works well to educate your customers on best practices. Content marketing is about creating interesting material that your audience is likely to engage with, be it text, video, or audio. It entails the creation of content for publishing on your homepage, blogs, product pages, landing pages, advertising channels, and social media. Content marketing allows you to show that you’re a top expert in your field. This means creating fresh content based on your audience’s biggest challenges and curating content that is relevant to your visitors/readers. Once you have created highly-relevant content, push it out where your audience is engaging, such as Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Your content distribution methods are the only way to harness the full potential of your content marketing strategy. 4. Search Engine Optimization Great content without search engine optimization (SEO) has a low chance of ranking on top of search engine results pages (SERPs). When you create highly-relevant content, you have to optimize it for search engines to increase its visibility when people search for keywords and terms relevant to your products or services. As a small business, it’s tough to compete with the rankings of larger companies when it comes to highly competitive keywords. Start by focusing on keywords with low competition but high commercial intent and search volume. . Once your blog or brand builds authority, throw your hat in the ring for the high-competition keywords. That said, SEO is a multidisciplinary strategy that transcends keyword targeting. Other important SEO aspects you should prioritize include: on-page SEO, local SEO, and site speed optimization. 5. Company Website Every component of your marketing plan is going to come back to your website. Don’t cut corners. It’s where your visitors find out who you are, what you believe in, and what makes you unique. Ultimately, your website exists to convert visitors into leads, and the quality of your leads will improve if you have a great website that attracts the most relevant buyers. Once you get visitors to your website, you’ve got to build a conversion strategy. You’ll want to make sure that your company website has plenty of opportunities for site visitors to provide you with their information. Add sign-up forms to high-traffic pages and landing pages to direct traffic. These pieces will enable you to collect site visitors’ email addresses and add them to your lead nurture campaigns. 6. Blogging Just as your website is the guiding light for lead gen for your small business, the same holds true with your blog. And if you’re not already blogging, you should be. Why? Brands with an active blog generate 67% more leads than those without one. To generate leads, add a call-to-action on each of your blog posts asking readers to take a desired action, be it buying a product, subscribing to your newsletter, signing up for an upcoming webinar, or downloading a whitepaper. But your blog is more than just a lead gen tool. It’s a canvas to share your thoughts and perspectives, to truly position yourself as a thought leader while connecting you to your audience. It’s also part of your SEO strategy. Create pillar posts on your blog and set up an internal linking strategy so your readers can easily find and engage with similar content. 7. Email Marketing Email has come from a basic communication channel to a powerful platform to achieve your marketing goals. Its power is undeniable – for every dollar you invest in email marketing, you see an impressive $36 return on investment. Email is also a great way to build your contact list for your small business. A good strategy to build your list is to simply create valuable and relevant content. Offer that content to site visitors in exchange for their contact information. As long as you promise to share high-quality, valuable insights, your site visitors will think the exchange is worthwhile. As a small business owner, you probably wear many hats and have to juggle multiple tasks to keep the business moving smoothly. A marketing automation tool will help you facilitate effective email nurture so you can do more in less time, saving you hours that you can devote to other important tasks. An easy-to-use tool, like BenchmarkONE, lets you automatically capture visitors from your website and send the right message to them at just the right time. Doing so improves the effectiveness of your marketing strategy while helping you make the most of your marketing budget. 8. Social Media If your small business doesn’t have profiles on top social media sites, build them today. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Each one offers a different format, but all allow you to connect and talk to your customers and would-be clients on a channel that they’re already engaged on. Using social media marketing is a must to ensure that your brand and your customer base grow. Most importantly, keep your fingers on the pulse of the tilting social media landscape, which includes joining new platforms. If your brand is yet to lay a mark on TikTok, you need to move swiftly to ride the wave of the highly-creative and playful channel. With over one billion monthly active users globally, TikTok presents an opportunity to build brand awareness, promote your products, and engage potential customers, particularly the younger generation. 9. Event or Trade Shows Trade shows and special promotional events are fantastic strategies for launching a new product or service, driving brand awareness, and getting in front of your target audience. If you are attending a trade show, swap out a sponsorship package for an opportunity to speak on a topic relevant to your audience. It will keep your cost down and elevate your status as a thought leader in your niche. Bonus tip: Don’t forget to capture the full ROI of your event! Be sure to connect with prospects on social media and capture email addresses so you can run pre, during, and post-show campaigns. 10. Online Advertising One of the fastest ways to get in front of potential buyers that are actively searching online is online advertising. With PPC advertising, such as Google Adwords and Bing, you can set your budget for the keywords that your audience is searching for and measure the cost per conversion. Remember to not just set it and forget it. For example, adding negative keywords will eliminate unwanted clicks, keeping your spending down. You should also test new keywords to ensure you are optimizing your spending wisely. Also, if you are looking to increase brand exposure, remarketing is a great way to do it. Remarketing allows you to hyper-target visitors that have been to your site that you would like to bring back, with the goal of converting into a customer or sign-up. 11. Free Promotional Tools Budget constraints could limit the options you can use as far as marketing goes. One way to cut overhead is to use free marketing and promotional tools. Evaluate your strategies and determine which activities require premium tools and which ones you could do with free software. For example, if you’re only just getting started with content marketing, you can use free keyword research tools to guide you through the initial phase. Once you scale and your strategy gather momentum, you can turn to paid keyword research and content optimization tools. Sign up for BenchmarkONE’s free plan today! 12. Networking and Partnership Building Finally, always work on networking to promote your business. This is perhaps one of the most valuable ways to grow your expertise and showcase your skills to would-be partners and customers. Networking is a cost-effective way to drive sales leads and opportunities for strategic partnerships. All of these approaches are effective but don’t forget that In the spirit of cutting overheads, it’s okay to only focus on strategies that you know will bring the best results. Start small with your strategies and experiment with different aspects to determine what works. Channel your resources, effort, and time toward sustainable methods of generating revenue. Good luck incorporating these 12 essential small business marketing strategies into the way you promote and operate your business. Doing so will help you spend less time looking for solutions, so you have more time to devote to what you do best.
Can Snapchat Help You Reach More Customers? Posted on May 3, 2016October 12, 2017 by Jessica Lunk Snapchat is the photo-sharing app that lets users send vanishing content to their friends and followers. These photo or video “snaps” can be viewed for up to 10 seconds before disappearing from the screen – with the caveat that recipients can save snaps or capture a screenshot. Snapchat caught fire with the millennial set, and today nearly 1/3 of all U.S. millennial internet users access Snapchat regularly. In addition, Snapchat boasts 100 million daily active users. With this many eyeballs on the app, marketers are trying to leverage the platform to reach more customers. So is your business missing out on an opportunity to engage with customers and prospects on Snapchat? Well, that depends… Does it fit your audience? Sure, teens and millenials love sharing vanishing photos on Snapchat – but can you find your customers there? Snapchat hit the 100 million user mark, but it may be more conducive to some audiences than others. In fact, 45% of Snapchat users are between the ages of 18 and 24. That makes it a bit of a stretch for B2B companies who would typically target an older demographic. So if you decide you do have a viable audience on Snapchat, the next question to ask is… Do you have the bandwidth? If you’ve built a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you know how difficult it can be to build a network of followers. Do you have the bandwidth to replicate those efforts on Snapchat? Growing your Snapchat following means incorporating Snapchat in all of your marketing efforts – from adding it to your About page, to including it in email signatures and even talking about your Snapchat presence on other social networks. For small businesses with small teams, creating content for a single channel might be a stretch. But maybe you can tap into a pre-built audience… Can you reach influencers? Maybe building a customer following on Snapchat isn’t in the cards. But if influencers in your industry are engaged with the platform, it could be a opportunity to reach them with your message and get them to talk about your brand. Influencers can help you create and share your content with their audience on Snapchat and other channels – giving major lift to your brand. Nick Cicero, CEO & Founder of Delmondo, a Snapchat analytics and influencer marketing company, specializes in matching up brands with Snapchat influencers to tell their story. He highlights the benefits of co-creating content between brands and influencers on Snapchat: So for a brand that may not want to jump right into manning or staffing a channel like Snapchat—or having somebody that has to sit there and take the time to understand the audience and think about it—they can work with influencers who are already named to the platform to really save them a lot of operational costs and get a significantly better outcome. What’s your Snapchat strategy? When a new social network bursts onto the scene, the first instinct of many marketers is to create an account, brand the profile page, and start sharing. The only problem is, all too often the result is a desolate Tumblr feed, crickets chirping on a Google Plus page or a half-empty Pinterest board. While being an early adopter has lots of advantages, without a strategy, the initial excitement and ambition will fizzle. When it comes to your Snapchat strategy, here are a few things to consider: Does my business have timely updates to talk about? For instance, if you’re in real estate, you could send a snap to tease a new listing before it goes on the market. Can we leverage Snapchat for live events? Geofilters make Snapchat content even more relevant and engaging. Geofilters are photo overlays only available to you if you’re in that location. For example, if you’re on the tradeshow circuit, you could use Snapchat Geofilters to create an instant bond with other people at the conference. On the flip-side, sharing behind the scenes travel snaps or action pics of your booth can make a global audience feel like they’re there. Can we get more personal with our audience using the platform? I really like SurePayroll‘s example of introducing new employees to your audience with a snap. If your business is growing and you’re ramping up your team, this could work for you. Do we have a promotion strategy that we could use in tandem with Snapchat? If you’re a software company, for example, you might share a coupon code for a free upgrade to get prospects to sign. Could Snapchat be your secret to building an engaged following of prospects and customers? I think the jury is still out for small businesses, especially B2B. Unless Snapchat starts attracting a more diverse audience to their platform, it’s going to be best left to B2C companies marketing to millennials. Check out this infographic for a thorough overview of the ins & outs of the app and how you can build your own Snapchat following:
What the GIF?! How to Use Visual Content In Your Marketing Campaigns Posted on February 17, 2016June 3, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Today we live in a visual culture – screens are everywhere, ranging from smartphones, tablets, laptops, computer monitors, to gigantic home televisions. Wherever we go, there is an image or video close by to snag our attention. This makes visual content one of the most important marketing techniques for small businesses. The Graphics Interchange Format AKA the GIF was developed in 1987 and in the past couple years, the internet has waged a full on love affair with these animated images. Some say it with a soft G, others a hard G but we’ve all noticed them on social media, emails, blog posts, websites… pretty much everywhere! So why should you bring them into your campaigns? GIFs get noticed Sites with GIFs look better than those without; people stay on your page longer and are more likely to browse your site. A site that is noteworthy impresses potential customers and clients so they are more likely to buy In the past companies in business for long periods of time were seen as safe and trustworthy – today they are seen as antiquated and out of touch – sites with eye-popping images are seen as modern and trendy. And today modern and trendy are seen as more trustworthy, giving you more sales. People love GIFs You don’t need to know how to make a GIF to use them. Sites like Giphy or Reddit provide a platform to search and browse through GIFs from all over the internet. Here are some best practices to consider before you start bringing them into your marketing messages: Use your own voice. GIFs help you connect with your audience. When you get on the phone with them after they see a GIF in your marketing campaign, don’t leave them confused if you come across completely different. Be relevant. Make sure your GIFs match the message. If you have to explain it, it’s not funny. I love telling jokes, but when I miss the mark, I’m delivering a joke to the wrong audience. Knowing your audience is key. Keep copy short and sweet. Let the GIF speak for you, so keep your copy down to one or two short sentences for the most impact. Find inspiration in your favorites. Let your audience know what you are into – your favorite TV shows, movies, music, sports, etc. Or better yet, find out what your audience is into to find inspiration! Giphy has it all. Everybody loves pizza. Everybody. Get noticed, make someone laugh, and create a meaningful connection with the simplicity of a GIF. Showing your authentic personality is what will strengthen the approachability of your brand, no matter what industry you are in.
Feeding the Masses: Build an Empire with Social Media Marketing Posted on February 4, 2016August 5, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Your website is elaborate and beautiful in its functional design. You have a steady list of customers who have signed up for email alerts from your business. Your marketing efforts are pretty set and ready to grow, right? Unfortunately, if you are skipping out on social media marketing, you are potentially walling off a whole sector of consumers and clients that spend most of their internet time on social media. If you really want to build your small business into an income-generating empire that has the ability to reach the masses and feed them enticing information, social media is the way to go. You may think that sticking your foot into the social media marketing door sounds a little too offbeat compared to your usual marketing strategy, but this is actually the key to seeing major changes. If the whole social media marketing idea is lost on you, there are a few facts that you will find interesting. Social Media gets more attention than anything else online. Period. The average person usually has about five social media accounts that they check regularly, accounting for more than 28 percent of the total time spent online. So even if people don’t check their emails, hit up a shopping site to see what’s on sale, or even try to find a quick answer to a weird question their kid asks, they will almost definitely be on social media at some point in the day. The key to consumer marketing is to be visible in the right places, and social media is almost guaranteed to be one of these places where you will at least catch a customer in passing. Social Media isn’t just for young people. When you picture customers fiddling away on social media, scrolling through the feeds and checking in with their friends, you may conjure up an image of a fairly young sector of people. But, about 48 percent of internet users over the age of 65 do have at least a Facebook account, and many have other sites they frequent, such as LinkedIn and Twitter. Therefore, when you market on social media, you are actually marketing to an incredibly diverse crowd of probably every age group. This is good to know if you operate an age-specific business, such as something associated with medical supplies or senior living, but is just as helpful if your business needs to market to all ages. Develop your buyer personas to better reach different age groups on Facebook. Something popular on Social Media will not go unnoticed. As a society, we are social creatures and we all enjoy finding ideas and interests that we have in common with other people. This is why social media marketing is such an effective tool for small business owners looking to grow the size of their brand and reputation. One person sees what you have to offer, they like your page or share it with their 300 friends. These friends then follow the same patterns, and before you know it, one simple post about a specific product or business event has spread like wildfire all over the pages of a site, very hard to ignore and definitely leading to interest in your business. Social Media is not a short term strategy. Social media users are driven by instant validation through likes and comments — the more one can get, the better they feel. However, the same can’t be said for a business page. It’s slow to get your followers engaged and you often need to pay a little to get the ball rolling. Staying consistent in your social media outreach strategy is key. Even if you just like or comment on a potential customer’s post a couple times a day with the intention of starting a conversation is better than just pushing up content. Likes are more valuable than you would think because it’s like a little wink to capture the attention of a potential customer. It’s also helpful for developing a relationship with your customers. Showing a little love goes a long way! Don’t shy away from a strong social media presence. It’s a cost-effective and easy channel to manage. There are many tools, like Buffer and Hootsuite, that can automate your posting strategy, leaving you time to make meaningful connections one-on-one. Get in front of more people and have fun with it! (But mind your manners).
How I Grew Our Facebook Likes by 6400% Posted on February 3, 2016June 28, 2016 by Jessica Lunk The mysteries of Facebook. Would you believe (assuming you don’t remember) that this powerhouse of global sharing technology which has overrun our very existence has only been around since 2004? Just eleven years into its history, Facebook is ranked as the number two most visited website in the world, with 1.44 billion active users each month. Alexa, an internet ranking website, says that Google is the only web page with more hits. Facebook is a juggernaut of marketing power that anyone can use. What was started as a photo and information sharing site among college friends, has also quickly turned into an important advertising tools for all businesses. It’s the best way for a smaller business to connect with their customers on a daily or weekly basis. As Facebook grows, they find more ways to keep their users active and engaged with the platform. Your job is to get in front of the right people with your Facebook page by providing relevant, quality content. You also want to stand out against everything you are competing with on the Facebook algorithm – it’s not just your competitors you should pay attention to. So how do you figure out how to create the perfect Facebook audience, reach more prospects and attract more customers to your business? When I first started Hatchbuck, we had 174 Page Likes. Now, we have over 11k followers. Here are the steps I took to grow Hatchbuck’s Facebook Likes by 6400%: Target The Right Demographic You find pockets of people everywhere on Facebook that react and respond to content they see in their News Feed. To ensure you find the right audience for the content you are producing, you must start developing your buyer personas. You can find all kinds of people so creating specific buyer personas becomes important in order to increase ROI. You’ll want to effectively engage a small portion of these users instead of trying to reach them all. Start with the demographics of your customer base and the demographics of you best customer. As a business owner, you know the difference between a great customer and one that sucks your resources dry. It’s key to pay attention to your promoters. Then, do some research on them. See what they like and dislike about your product. What features are their favorite? Why did they choose you over your competitors? You may also want to get some psychograpic data on them. What are your customers interested in? Is there a common theme? For instance, if your ideal customer is an HR professional who is a middle-aged woman, maybe there is a strong possibility that she also loves music. This is very useful data to know because that’s how you can connect with your ideal audience. The Strategy As you know, Facebook has cracked the whip on organic reach, making it harder for small businesses to get in front of their Facebook audience. By using some marketing spend effectively each month on Facebook Ads will help you get in front of the right people, so you can grow an engaged audience. Start with your content strategy. You want to be providing relevant, quality content for your ideal audience. You can stand out from your competitors and start to develop your place in your sphere as a thought leader. You may need some freelance help getting started or a marketing partner. A strong, content marketing strategy is a long term investment but it gets the ball rolling for more visitors to your site, increased brand awareness and recall, and higher engagement from your audience. Get those Likes. Pump your Facebook Ad budget into a Likes campaign. Play with their audience builder, A|B test ad copy and creative, and start seeing what works for your business. You can set something up and let it run for a while before making adjustments to your audience. If you find a sweet spot with the right ads and audience, increase your spend to get the most out of that pocket. I’m always adjusting and testing new audiences on Facebook and I tailor the messaging to that audience. Once you start seeing the stream of relevant likes come in, the more excited you will become about your Facebook strategy. Be sure to keep your targeting in the United States or even try your city and community if you are more locally based. The key is to get the most ROI out of your marketing spend and you don’t want to boil the ocean with your online ads. Now Boost! Once you have a decent sized audience built, start pulling back from your Likes campaign and adjust it to the quality content you have started to produce. It’s good to have this buffer time so you can start to develop the right type of content for you and your business. You can start to see how often you need to post on your blog. We try to post once a day on the Hatchbuck blog! While this strategy may be overkill for your audience, still consider challenging yourself with more content. The more quality content you can share, the more reach you will have. Feature a blog post on your Facebook page with a boosted post. The reason you want to have an audience built up is so that you can target these boosted posts directly to your audience. This practice gives you a higher relevancy number on your ads and gets more eyes on your content. You will get more post likes and also comments. See how this system starts to hum? A targeted audience comes in through the Page Likes campaign and then they become engaged when they see your Boosted Content. Boost is a great word for this process because it does help boost your engagement, your reach, and your confidence as a small business thought leader.
Hysterical Ideas That Are Actually Marketing Techniques for Small Businesses Posted on January 21, 2016June 3, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Risk-taking is best embraced in the ever-changing digital marketing landscape. Daring marketing initiatives often pay off, as they capture the attention of otherwise uninterested individuals — and make them see small businesses in a new light. If your marketing strategy could use a boost, consider drawing inspiration from these small business marketing techniques that push the envelope: Made-Up Holidays Companies requiring an extra push during the slow season can benefit greatly from made-up holidays, which if given the appropriate hype, can greatly increase consumer interest. At Hatchbuck, we talked like a pirate for a day in September. Another excellent international example involves the made-up Japanese holiday of Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii, in which residents skip out on Christmas altogether and instead eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken. When this influential marketing effort first launched in 1974, it seemed crazy, but it was just out-there enough to attract attention — and now it’s one of Japan’s most notable holiday traditions. Cat Craze It’s no secret that the internet loves cats, but some clever businesses have harnessed this feline adoration and used it to drive up business. The best example of this is Uber, which celebrated National Cat Day 2013 by delivering kittens and cupcakes to people living in San Francisco, New York City, and Seattle. Although the recipients were only allowed to keep the cupcakes, they had the opportunity to spend 15 minutes cuddling with kittens. Cat delivery is not an option for most companies, but any marketing efforts involving cats can foster excitement among new and existing customers. A simple way for small businesses low on funding to accomplish this is to post a picture of a cat with a branded product on Instagram and ask followers for caption ideas. Flash Mobs Although no longer as big of a craze as they were in the early days of YouTube, flash mobs still attract attention while putting smiles on the faces of both participants and observers. Often organized for marriage proposals or just for fun, flash mobs can also be used to garner greater brand awareness. T-Mobile has certainly discovered this, as its flash mob “Life’s for Sharing” advertisement won Ad of the Year at the 2010 British Television Advertising Awards. Viral Marketing Pranks Consumers love being pranked, but only if pranks come across as fun, as opposed to malicious. Although there is a lot of gray area between acceptable and unacceptable marketing pranks, those done correctly can quickly go viral, thereby creating a new and exciting social media presence for previously unknown businesses. Marketing gurus proved the efficacy of pranks while drumming up excitement for the 2013 Carrie reboot. A group of unsuspecting coffee shop visitors were freaked out by remote-controlled tables and a stunt man seemingly thrown up against a wall by a young woman with telekinesis power gone wild. If your current marketing approach is beginning to grow stale, now is the time to mix it up with a little guerrilla marketing. Take inspiration from the aforementioned marketing efforts and don’t be afraid to get silly!
Simple Tips to Make the Most of Inbound Marketing Posted on January 19, 2016May 27, 2016 by Nicci Troiani In the fast-paced and competitive small business environment, every second counts. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs spend way too much time worrying about ineffective marketing schemes instead of focusing on day-to-day business concerns. With an effective inbound marketing strategy, you can let prospective clients and customers come to you, instead of spending all of your time attempting to attract the attention of uninterested parties. If implemented incorrectly, inbound marketing can be every bit as inefficient as other marketing approaches; however, with a carefully-crafted strategy, it is possible to expedite the process and significantly grow your customer base — all with minimal effort. The following simple inbound marketing tips will make business generation easier than you ever imagined. Optimize Your Site Inbound marketing is all about search engine optimization, which is used to improve a site’s ranking on Google and other prominent search engines. The higher your site lands on Google’s front page, the more visitors it will attract. Carefully-researched keywords should be used in your site’s URL, in any content featured on the page, and in image names. Avoid the temptation to stuff your page with keywords; this could actually harm your search engine ranking. Instead, create relevant content that solves a problem for your ideal customer. Help Prospects Convert Your website is more than just an attractive brochure – it’s a handshake with new visitors that helps you to begin the sales conversation. As SEO drives traffic to your site, you should be able to capture qualified prospects with forms. Helpful resources can connect you with top-of-the-funnel leads, while a sales form can capture prospects who are interested now. Small businesses don’t need a super fancy website. Instead, focus on building a clean website that is simple to navigate and has a main objective of connecting with your ideal customer. Harness the Power of Social Media Inbound marketing efforts should not end with your company’s website. In today’s connected world, businesses can benefit from a presence on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Depending on where your ideal customer hangs out online,, your business could also benefit from maintaining an active Instagram or Pinterest account; however, the pursuit of a social media presence need not hog all of your time and resources. A strong presence on a select group of networks will allow you to better connect with existing clients and customers while also attracting the attention of new consumers. Publish Testimonials and Reviews If you’ve managed to build up a small, but very enthusiastic customer base, consider asking these satisfied individuals for feedback. They will be all too happy to have their input featured on your website or social media pages. A few favorable testimonials can go a long way toward establishing confidence among those unfamiliar with your brand. Nurture New Leads As you connect with visitors coming to your website through SEO, social media and other channels, you can keep the conversation going through email nurturing. Not everyone is ready to enter thesales process today, but they will be down the road. With email campaigns, you can automatically stay in touch with prospects to become a trusted resource, and eventually their first choice when they are ready to buy. Track Metrics Inbound marketing often involves some element of trial and error, as it is impossible to know exactly what works until you test it. Once these initial steps have been achieved, it is important to keep an eye on website analytics, which will tell you how visitors find your website, how long they stay there, and whether their browsing sessions result in conversions. You can also track lead source in your CRM to report on which channels are actually converting into customers. The best inbound marketing strategy is simple and straightforward. A good website and strong social media presence will help you to attract new leads. Email nurturing continues the conversation, turning more of your leads into customers, and tracking metrics ensures you’re focusing on the right inbound strategies for your business. When customers come to you through inbound marketing, you can avoid time-consuming marketing initiatives and instead focus on the activities that matter most to you.
Mind Your Social Media Manners Posted on January 18, 2016October 14, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Social media is one of the most powerful inbound marketing tools that small businesses have at their fingertips. You can conduct business with, market to, or gather information from anyone no matter where they are in the world! Demographics that were once unreachable are now right there, a click away. Getting your employees involved in your social media marketing efforts is a great way to expand your reach. Your employees, who are passionate about your business, can become your best advocates and sales tool online. However, to ensure that you have strong branding, it’s important to set social media guidelines. Leverage Key Employees Don’t try to force your whole team to be active online because some just aren’t. Find the employees who are already active online and start nurturing their social media involvement for your brand. Leverage those key, customer-facing employees to help carry the conversation about your business and build your network of connections. Be Professional To create a strong, professional brand, first create business pages on each platform you want to target with your strategy. This creates an easy platform your employees can repost blog posts, resources, and other useful brand information. This is a simple way to ensure that your employees remain professional when mentioning your business online. One of the more popular marketing buzzwords of the past few years has been personal branding. Just like your business, each person in business can control their online brand and presence. It’s pertinent to allow your employees who are active on social media to develop their own personal brand. However, have them add a statement to their profiles that state that their opinions are their own to avoid potential issues. Watch Your Language Act like you are speaking to your mom, not your old college roommate. No cursing, derogatory language, questionable subjects, or improper contexts should be found where you are promoting your business. All of that is too informal and sometimes offensive to be professional. Too much familiarity on a business page will make potential customers or contacts shy away. Be Authentic, Ethical, and Honest Make sure you are always putting your best foot forward. Be forthcoming and open about your product and services. Approach social media as a marketing platforms (because it is) and not just a chatting space. Being your authentic self is also important. Use Common Sense Social media is a very relaxed and active environment but it’s important to remember that it is also a powerful branding tool. While it’s good to be in healthy conversations, don’t get involved in heated arguments. Be the moderate — it’s not an easy job but someone has to do it. And please, don’t send game requests to potential customers! Be Strategic Having an open social media policy will encourage your employees to jump in the conversation about your brand. They engage with prospective customers online and build their own audiences and connections. With them, you can reach a wider audience and different pockets based on their own interests and views. This is why it’s key to hire the right employees. Work with your team to create a social media strategy and set goals. This will allow them to take ownership and stay accountable. Keep your employees in the loop on what content you are promoting on your brand profiles. You can also gauge how valuable your content is… If your employees aren’t excited or keen to share your content, then your audience probably also doesn’t want to read or share. Great social media boils down to being a leader online. The most important advice I’ve received for social media is to share and comment on valuable content to become that information leader. Instilling good social media habits will lead to more engagement from your audience. People on social media want to engage in meaningful conversations. If you are only in that sell, sell, sell mode, you will push people away. If your employees are active online for your brand, you will start seeing more engagement and mentions about your brand online. Social media is a key component to a successful inbound marketing campaign. Engagement from your team and audience will stretch your reach further than you imagined and improve your social media ROI.
Reclaiming Thought Leadership Posted on January 14, 2016May 27, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick Great leaders constantly look ahead to the future, driving innovation in their respective fields. True disruptors like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Steve Jobs-the pioneer of Apple, and marketing guru Seth Godin have revolutionized the way we market and consume some of the most important products and services in our daily lives. Over the years as leaders have made their mark, the term-“Thought Leadership” has emerged as a label assigned to these individuals and others for their ability to see future trends and share their knowledge and experiences with others. For most people, the concept of becoming a thought leader used to be out of reach, only reserved for the elite. But with the rise of content, professional and social networking platforms such as WordPress, Linkedin and Twitter, it has become easier than ever to pole vault yourself into the desired position of knowledge kingpin. In fact nearly 2 million blog posts are published on the WordPress platform daily and over 200 billion tweets were sent in 2015. This is both good and bad. While the opportunity exists to brand yourself as a thought leader within your industry, it has also has created a lot of noise in content land-watering down what it truly means to be a thought leader. In other words- to truly reach your audience and make an impact it takes more than re-tweeting a bunch of tweets all day, recycling random content on Linked in, and hearing yourself talk on periscope. The real definition of a thought leader is someone that prospects, clients, followers, competitors and industry leaders acknowledge as go source for vision, information and knowledge in a specific area of expertise. So whether you are an accounting firm looking to grow your influence or an inbound marketing expert wanting to help small businesses grow, there are a few simple truths to becoming the Jedi master in your field or domain: True Thought Leadership Begins Within Thought leaders set themselves apart not only through innovation but also with the passion that drives innovation. As Denise Brosseau of the Thought Leadership Lab points out: ”Thought leadership is not about being known, it is about being known for making a difference.” Thus, the first step on the long road to becoming a true thought leader involves identifying your passion, then using it to fuel an overarching mission. Ideally, this mission will be narrow in scope, yet ambitious enough to attract a tribe or following. Focusing in on the appropriate mission may take some time as thought leaders are often struck with inspiration when they least expect it. So as you search for a calling, continue to learn anything and everything you can about your area of passion, while also consulting with team members and other fellow professionals to pinpoint problems that need solving. Solve a Problem The greatest leaders aren’t great just because they are entrepreneurs, CEO’s and social philanthropists. They become thought leaders because they wake up every day looking to solve a problem aligned to their purpose. A great example is Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Twitter, Square and now LaunchCode. Square, for example, was born out of the inability for small businesses to grow without an easy to use tool to process payments: Jim has now started LaunchCode, an idea born out of a challenge when he was at Square, where he had a hard time finding enough development talent. Jim, in developing LaunchCode, found a way to look at a challenge from a different angle, changing the landscape of the human capital market in the tech arena. The result: An apprentice program that connects talent to corporations and shrinks the talent gap in the US. Over the years Jim has been on CNN, CNBC, in Forbes, you name it. Why? Because he is a problem solver first and then looks for ways to share what he knows with those around him. Find your Platform Once you develop your mission and have a clear solution to the challenges you have overcome, the next step to growing as a thought leader is to find a platform to share your thoughts and experiences. A solid social media presence can quickly improve your reach, connecting you to both your ideal audience and to other influencers within your industry. The ideal social media post will prove that, in addition to knowing what you’re talking about, you are willing to take calculated risks. Both qualities are essential in a thought leader. However, stay clear of trap of pushing out run of the mill content. Try asking a pressing question or sharing your experience of how you overcame a roadblock in your life. Don’t be afraid to push the envelope, after all no one follows leaders that are ordinary. Another platform to consider is blogging. If you don’t have a blog you are missing out on one of the greatest tools in your arsenal to share your wisdom and experiences with your target audience and monetize on your success. Whether you share your stories and content on your own blog or on tools such as Medium, LinkedIn, and Quora, the key is to turn your readers into fans by creating an authentic relationship with them. A great example of this is Chris Brogan’s blog. Forbes listed Chris as one of the must-follow marketing minds of 2014, plus listed his website as one of the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs. Chris does a masterful job of using his blog as a vehicle to connect, engage and inform his target audience with insightful content and resources to help businesses grow. From one-on-one discussions to broad social media updates, a variety of approaches can be used to establish authority and catapult yourself into the echelon of thought leadership. The phrase “thought leader” is starting to become an overused, buzzword in business today. With the explosion of online pretenders it is important to separate yourself from the herd by identifying your purpose, solving problems for your target audience, and finding a platform to reach your followers and influencers. It’s time to reclaim what it really means to be a thought leader: disrupting your space with innovative solutions, not watered-down, recycled ideas and content.