A Marketing Cheat Sheet For Small Business Owners

[caption id="attachment_3477" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Secret of Getting Ahead is Getting Started![/caption]

Being smart with marketing ensures the success of your business by attracting more customers, and keeping them coming back. Small business is the backbone of America's local economies — and you know you need to look after your back! Whether you own a bakery, do modeling, own a yoga studio, have a restaurant or a finance businesses, you need no-nonsense marketing strategies to secure a greater share of the market. Empower yourself to apply clever marketing plans and ideas without breaking the bank, or your back. "The Secret of Getting Ahead is Getting Started" 

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Making Marketing Work in Your Small Business

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to be a good marketer. But neither is there a silver bullet or one-size-fits-all solution. Every small business is different — the marketing plan and tactics for a mortgage broker are entirely different from those of a computer reseller. However, the process of building a plan, sticking to it and applying the time and resources it needs is the common secret to success in marketing.

Here are few tips to help you be brilliant at marketing:

• Get the know-how. Knowing what not to do when it comes to marketing is as important as knowing what to do. Let’s face it, the murky world of marketing can be tricky to navigate. So get the full know-how before you go jumping into building that flash website.


• Put your customers first. Understanding who your customers are, what makes them tick and what they really want and value, and of course staying in touch with them long after the sale, puts you ahead of the competition.


• Know your target market. ‘Anyone who is breathing’ is not a target market! Targeting your marketing activities fairly and squarely at the people who need and want your service or product is the secret to creating quality enquiries and getting prospects to open their wallet.


• Understand that marketing is not advertising. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that advertising and websites are the only two ways to attract more business. You can market your small business in literally hundreds of ways, so it pays to know what they are and then eliminate the ones that won’t work, or that you can’t afford, up-front.


• Set sales goals and targets. Marketing really is a numbers game. Marketing efforts that won’t directly or indirectly bring in new business have absolutely no point. Know what your goals are in terms of revenue, expenses, profit, number of enquiries and, of course, number of new sales.


• Get a handle on the four Ps of marketing. Getting your product, pricing, placement strategy (distribution) and promotional strategy humming along and working together is crucial to good marketing.

Essential Tools for Good Business Marketing

If you’re armed with the marketing essentials you can’t help but succeed in attracting new prospects and bringing in more business. Spend some time on getting your marketing toolkit in place and be prepared at all times.

Here are a few items to pack into your marketing toolkit:

• A plan and a budget: Getting a plan that will support you for years to come is essential to keep you on track. It doesn’t need to be as thick as War and Peace, but it does need to be written down, clearly communicated to your team and acted on day by day — even when business is booming.


• A great product or service: Advertising your business has no point if the customers don’t want, value or love what you have to offer. Make sure you do your research and listen to your customers before sending your product out to the market.


• A professional brand: A brand is much more than a logo. It encompasses everything people see, hear, think and feel about your business. Invest up-front in developing a brand that stands out from the crowd. It’ll save you money and heartache in the long run.


• Powerful marketing materials: Your business card, sales brochures, sales letters, website, signage, uniforms and car decal speak volumes about your business. Make sure they look professional and appealing at all times.


• An elevator pitch: In the course of marketing your business you’ll get asked thousands of times ‘What do you do?’ Don’t make the mistake of boring the poor person who asked the question. Make sure you have a fun, interesting and memorable pitch ready at all times — and be able to deliver it in the time it takes to travel a few floors in an elevator.


• A brilliant website: Your website must attract attention and give value to those who visit. Use it as a tool to retain and keep in touch with existing customers as well as for enticing new customers. The online world can be very scary to many small-business owners, but, if you don’t embrace it, you may find yourself out of business.


• A simple database: The backbone of all good marketing is about building a solid database of past, present and future customers (prospects) so you can keep in touch and communicate regularly via e-newsletters, emails and phone.

Clever Ideas to Market Your Small Business

You don’t need to spend buckets of money on marketing. Creativity and a bit of gumption to do something different from everyone else in the market can be the difference between business success and business failure. Here are just a few of hundreds of ideas to market your business:

• Attend networking events. It’s not what you know, but who you know. Get out there and network — meet and greet. You can never have too many friends in life, even if they don’t end up as customers.


• Sponsor a local event or charity. It really does make you feel good to support your community, and everyone benefits — you, your staff, your customers, the people you sponsor and, of course, the community at large.


• Manage your public relations. Getting your name up in lights on TV and radio, and in newspapers and magazines isn’t as hard as you think — if you’ve got a story worth telling!


• Use social media. Using social-networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, producing your own videos for YouTube or writing your own blog are creative methods of letting people know about you and your business. Go on, have a bit of fun.


• Host seminars and events. Hosting your own events and inviting along your best customers and some of their friends is a great way to get to know people, connect at a personal level and build deep relationships.


• Become a public speaker. If speaking isn’t your number-one fear after death, hone your skills and become a great and entertaining speaker. It’s a fabulous way to demonstrate your expertise and generate new business enquiries from the audience.

Top Marketing Tips for Businesses on a Low Budget

Most small-business owners, especially those starting out, don’t have lots of money to spend on marketing. While the old adage — you need to spend money to make money — is true, you can still generate new business without having to dole out big bucks. Try a few of these tactics for a start:

• Focus on relationship-building marketing strategies such as networking, building alliances with other businesses, and calling old customers, friends and people you once worked with.


• Find people who are prepared to help you with marketing on a commission basis or a uni student who’s studying marketing and might need some hands-on experience.


• Develop a marketing mastermind group with other small-business owners for the purpose of sharing low-cost marketing ideas and referring each other business.


• Sharpen your own online marketing skills and learn how to use Google AdWords and write blogs, and market yourself on the social media sites.


• Promote your business on free online directories and publish your articles on other websites with links to your site.

Don’t jump straight into low-cost (or no-cost) tactics without getting the basics right first — plan your marketing strategy, understand your target market and polish up your product.

How To Promote My Blog Post - A Must Have Tool [Infographic]

So you have spent hours researching, writing, amending, hopefully optimizing and then publishing your blog post – but it doesn’t end there! Now you have to promote your blog.

You absolutely have to have a strategy to promote your blog as it doesn’t matter how great your content is if nobody can find it! Look at the info-graphic below and use it as a tool after you publish your blog.

[caption id="attachment_3073" align="aligncenter" width="600"] 30 Ways To Promote Your Blog - www.TommySeilheimer.com[/caption]

A few caveats to keep in mind. When it comes to bookmarking sites, submitting your own content to places like Reddit may not be the wisest of ideas. The general guide is that you should take a real part in such communities, honestly sharing your own content along with content from others, if you want to directly be involved.

Similarly, commenting on blogs — even relevant blogs — shouldn’t be just an exercise in dropping a link to your blog. Unless there’s a real reason to leave a link, that’s a tactic you might want to leave off from doing.

Submitting guest posts and joining blogging communities that seem only about exchanging links is a definite no-no if you want to avoid problems with Google (see also articles on our Search Engine Land sister-site about the Google Penguin Update).

Promoting on Twitter makes sense, but running the same tweet 2-3 times per day for 30 days might be overkill and perhaps be downright annoying. The amount will really depend on other content you have and what makes sense for your particular audience.

Have your own favorite tip? Please share below!

20 Data-Backed Ways to Upgrade Your Social Media Marketing

There was a time when you may have had to contract a marketing or public relations firm to help expand your reach, but with the remarkable boom in social media, even the smallest businesses now have access to the same platform blue-chip corporations use to market themselves. Social media offers a cost-effective, user-friendly way to build your brand, expand your Internet presence, and ultimately increase business. You just have to know how to make the most of it. Follow these 20 tips below to help you out.

1) Tell Us Why We Should Follow You

Twitter accounts that used words like "founder," "speaker," "expert," "guru," and "author" in their bios had more followers than the average account. Tweet This

2) Use Contra-Competitive Timing

Posts made to Facebook timelines on Saturdays and Sundays tend to get more Likes than posts made during the business week. Tweet This

3) Use Tall Images on Pinterest

As image height in pixels increased for images posted to Pinterest, so did the average number of times they were repinned. Tweet This

4) Put Links 25% of the Way Through Tweets

Links placed just before the halfway point (in characters) of tweets tended to have higher clickthrough rates than links placed elsewhere. Tweet This

5) Use Questions on Facebook

Simple yes/no questions like "should" and "would," as well as multiple choice questions like "which" tend to get more comments than average Facebook posts. Tweet This

6) Use Links to Get Retweets

While fewer than 25% of all tweets contain a link, more than half of retweets contain a URL.Tweet This

7) Stop Talking About Yourself

As the amount of self-referential content posted by Twitter accounts increases, follower numbers decrease. Tweet This

8) Say Something New

Retweeted tweets tend to contain fewer commonly used words than a random selection of non-retweeted tweets. Tweet This

9) Stay Positive

As the amount of negativity posted by Twitter accounts increases, follower numbers decrease. Tweet This

10) Use Calls-to-Action on Facebook

Facebook posts that included the word "like" tended to get more Likes than the average post. Tweet This

11) Stay Away From Buzzwords

Facebook Pages that used industry buzzwords tended to have fewer Likes than pages that did not. Tweet This

12) Share Links to Interesting Content

Accounts in which between 60% and 80% of tweets contain links tend to get more retweets than accounts that tweet fewer links. Tweet This

13) Use Photos on Facebook

Facebook posts that use photos tend to get more Likes than text, video, or link-based posts.Tweet This

14) Use Hashtags on Instagram

Photos that included hashtags in their descriptions on Instagram tend to get more Likes than photos that do not. Tweet This

15) Talk About Food on Facebook

Facebook Pages that mention food tend to have more Likes than the average Facebook Page. Tweet This

16) Tweet Around 4 p.m.

Tweets posted around 4 p.m. Eastern time tend to get more retweets than those posted at other times. Tweet This

17) Don't Be Neutral on Facebook

Posts with positive sentiment get more Likes than posts with negative sentiment, but both positive and negative perform better than neutral. Tweet This

18) Write Longer Tweets for More Clicks

Clickthrough rate of links in tweets increases as the overall length of those tweets also increases. Tweet This

19) Go Short or Long on Facebook

Posts that either contained very little text (such as photos) or upwards of 700 characters tend to get the most Likes. Tweet This

20) Ask for the Retweet

Tweets that contain the call-to-action (CTA) "please retweet" are four times more likely to get retweeted at least once, compared to those that do not include the CTA. Tweet This

Have you tried any of these social media marketing tactics? Does your own data support their effectiveness?