With hundreds of ways to market your business, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed that you simply don’t know where to start.
To guide you in choosing the right marketing strategy for your business, we’ve listed 25 marketing strategies that have been proven to help small businesses achieve success.
But before you dive deep into these strategies, there are two aspects to this article. The first 19 strategies are dedicated to helping you to generate new leads for your business. While the rest are marketing strategies for converting leads into paying customers.
Now that we’ve got that covered, let’s get started!
1. Start & Build a Facebook Group
Although everyone needs to have a Facebook Page, the problem is nowadays FB pages are getting little to no traction unless you pay money for advertising.
What you need to do is create a Facebook Group. It’s free and helps you establish your presence within your specific industry.
A group can be of great help for your business, especially if you want to communicate with your audience in a more authentic and personalized way.
2. Embrace Messenger Marketing
If you love networking, messenger marketing can be a very powerful strategy in generating quality leads for your business without spending a cent.
With Facebook, you’re allowed to have up to 5000 friends. From there, what you can do is fill your friend’s list with your ideal customer. You can do this by joining Facebook groups where your ideal customers hang out. Then use a tool that automatically sends out friend requests to those people in your group.
Once someone accepts your friend request, you can then give them a hand raising offer like free workshops, e-books, free templates or vouchers.
3. Launch Your Own Podcast
To put it simply, podcasting is the new radio. It allows you to share your content via audio files over the internet.
In business, podcasting is a fantastic strategy for sharing valuable content with your existing customers and finding new leads, more than with any other marketing tool. It also provides opportunities to create joint venture partnerships and sponsorships.
If well used, it allows businesses to deepen relationships with existing clients and build trust with potential customers, It also helps businesses find a whole new audience and generate hundreds of leads each and every month.
4. Be an Expert Guest on Other Podcasts
Becoming a podcast guest is one of the smartest and easiest ways to get in front of your ideal customers.
With over 2 million podcast shows across all niches, you can get yourself booked to many shows and start driving new leads over to your list for free.
Additionally, landing a guest podcast interview is a great strategy to establish yourself as an expert in your industry.
To find podcasts looking for guests just like you, there’s a tool called Poddit where podcast hosts post descriptions of their show and ideal guests. Then you can apply to be part of their upcoming episodes.
5. Create Business Partnerships
The old school way of finding more customers is through 1-to-1 selling. This strategy is really slow and time-consuming.
A faster way to market your business is through business partnerships. Rather than working alone, you need to find at least 10 to 20 businesses that serve the same audience as you. Then you need to prepare an irresistible offer for your potential marketing partners.
By applying this strategy, you’ll see it makes lead generation faster, cheaper and more effective for both companies.
6. Set Up & Launch a Referral Program
The best kinds of leads are those that come from existing customers. This is why you need to launch a referral program to tap into your network effectively and leverage the power of word of mouth.
In fact, an effective referral program can help your business to generate higher ROI compared to cold calling and finding new leads from scratch. This is because potential customers have been referred by someone they know, they have a reliable resource telling them that your business is trustworthy and produces a positive customer experience.
For your referral to work, make sure that you have a great product or service as well as a tempting offer for the original customer.
7. Join a Modern Networking Group
Business networking is still one of the fastest ways to grow any business. It’s also a low-cost marketing strategy that will help you create mutually beneficial partnerships.
But with thousands of networking groups out there, you need to find a modern networking group with a collaborative approach to doing business.
With many businesses shifting to remote setup, you’ll also need to find an organization that offers both online and in-person events. This way you can connect with other businesses from all over the world.
To reap the rewards of networking, you’ll need to craft a pitch-perfect intro and attend as many networking events as possible. Just like all networking strategies, the money is made with effective follow-up.
8. Become a Public Speaker
If you need to grow a successful business, you need to include public speaking as a means to market your business.
Developing your public speaking skills gives you an opportunity to build your brand and reputation as an expert in your industry.
Of course, if you’re like most people, you don’t relish the idea of speaking in front of a large crowd. How can you get over your nerves?
As with any skill, the more work one puts in, the better the delivery and outcome. If you want to become a successful speaker, you’ll need to practice how to deliver engaging content, connect with your audience and promote your business in a subtle way.
9. Set Up a Gift With Purchase Relationship
A gift with purchase relationship means collaborating with another business that has your customers before you.
Once you’ve found them, you’ll then need to come up with a free gift that compliments their existing product and that they can give to their customers. This can either be a free voucher, discount, or a sample product.
And if those customers become interested in your product, they can easily contact you and become your customers as well.
10. Create Content for Search Engines (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimizing your site to influence organic search results so your website pages rank well for your chosen keyword.
The benefit of spending the time to learn and implement an effective SEO strategy is that you will start to generate free traffic to your website. Then, the more likely you are to attract more prospective customers to your business.
It’s worth noting that SEO requires some basic training and then ongoing maintenance for the best results.
11. Create & Build a YouTube Channel
With more than 1 billion active users, YouTube has now become an essential marketing channel for any type of business. YouTube allows you to get in front of your ideal customers, both by posting video content and advertising on other people’s videos.
If you’re worried about limitations of resources and budget, starting a YouTube channel is easier than you think.
Once you’ve created your channel, all you need is a quality smartphone camera and a free video editor. Just make sure that you’re sharing quality content with your audience.
Also, with the rise of YouTube marketing, make sure to learn how to optimise your videos. This way your videos show up in the suggested videos sidebar and double your views in no time.
12. Use Direct Mail (Simple or Sophisticated)
Direct Mail is a form of marketing where you’ll send prospects or customers promotional materials by hand, mail or courier service.
Now, you may be wondering if direct mail still works in the digital age.
The short answer is yes.
With fewer companies using direct mail, this means you can capture the undivided attention of your customers.
You can send your customers flyers, postcards, newsletters, catalogs and sales letters. Or they can be what is known as ‘lumpy mail’ and include magalogs, books, promotional items or even video brochures. Whatever your approach, just make sure your Direct Mail speaks directly to your target market and has a clear next step.
13. Set Up a Facebook Lead Ads Campaign
Facebook Lead Ads are a type of Facebook Ad you can run for your business. It allows you to capture details from customers while offering opportunities to connect, such as free workshops, templates, ebooks or demo requests.
What is unique about this type of Ads is you keep people within Facebook and you don’t need a landing page or a dedicated opt-in form. All you need is a great offer to attract new customers.
Once their details are in your email database, you can then send follow-up emails, which is vital for closing a sale. Plus, generally, these Ads are cheaper than other forms of advertising.
14. Write a Press Release to Get Free Media
As a business owner, you have a special story to tell and you can use this story to gain the media’s attention. Great press coverage helps build traction, exposure and grow the influence of your brand.
But you need to remember that gaining the media’s attention involves many steps. This includes creating a media plan, press release and having a great pitch. If you nail all these elements, you can stand to generate hundreds or even thousands of new leads.
15. Partner with Influencers or an Association
Building a successful partnership with associations helps both parties increase revenue, secure new leads, and add more value to existing customers.
When choosing a partner, it’s important to look for organizations that share your mission and values. Once you find an organization, your next step is figuring out what’s most important to gain from that partnership. Create a list of objectives and goals that works best for both parties.
16. Create & Launch an Industry Survey
Industry survey is a valuable tool for any business. They can help you gain insight into your field, hone your product to meet customer needs, and generate hundreds or even thousands of new leads for your business.
Once you have the result you can even create different types of content like blog posts and infographics. Or, you can contact a media outlet to get them to publish an article about your survey.
17. Create & Launch an Industry Award
If you enjoy organizing events for your clients, you should also consider starting your own industry award program.
Although the main purpose of award shows is to recognise the achievements of specific individuals or businesses, they can also be used as a great PR tool to promote your business.
It also serves as a great opportunity to generate a ton of new contacts, create high-quality engagements, and increase brand awareness.
18. Wiza + MailShake Campaign
Cold email marketing is one of the most affordable, scalable, and effective marketing strategies for building relationships with prospects.
For this strategy to work, you’ll need two software called Wiza and MailShake.
Wiza is a tech tool designed specifically for lead generation on LinkedIn. Wiza can generate searches and put the results into a user-friendly CSV file that your team can then use on its own or upload into your preferred CRM.
Once you’ve built your email list, use a software called Mailshake to send personalized cold emails and set tasks to engage with prospects via phone and social media, all in one sequence, on one dashboard.
When done well, cold email can help you to grow your business without spending hundreds and thousands of dollars in marketing.
19. Launch a Digital Magazine for Your Niche
If you want to sell more of your products or services, you need to get your marketing messages seen and read by a larger audience.
Today, the vast majority of people are consuming content using their mobile phones. If you’re worried that your documents might look terrible on mobile devices, there’s no need to worry.
Thanks to a brand new publishing software called Mobimag, you can now publish content that looks amazing on mobile. This tool is perfect for publishing digital magazines, newsletters, brochures, and so much more.
20. Create a Follow Up Campaign
After marketing your lead magnet and collecting email addresses, you’ll need to set up a follow-up campaign. Sending follow up emails is really the key to converting leads into paying customers.
The follow-up campaign should be designed to explain to people what happens next after they’ve downloaded your lead magnet.
Then, you’ll need to write 6-10 emails and send them over the next 30 days. This way you’ll convert more of your leads into customers for your product or service.
21. Use Videos to Help You Convert
Videos should play a big role in your ongoing marketing strategy. Videos make it easier for people to consume your content. They’re more entertaining, visual, and easier to understand compared to text, static imagery and audio.
By simply adding videos on websites, landing pages or social media posts, it also helps increase your conversion rate by over 80%.
Be sure to add videos in your emails, website, sales process and social media posts. The more videos you create, the more you will convert.
22. Create a Magalog For Your Business
One of the best ways to dramatically boost your conversion rate and sales is by creating a Magalog. A Magalog is a cross between a magazine and a catalogue.
It’s designed to help business owners speed up the sales process significantly. By creating a Magalog,
If you have tons of incoming leads, an average price point of more than $500, and around $2000 to invest, then this is a fantastic tool to help significantly grow your business.
23. Share Helpful Content Every Week
When you share content regularly, it helps build your credibility and get people to trust your brand more.
Not only does posting regular content increase brand awareness but it also helps you attract new customers. Whether you’re posting content on your website or social media, you’ll get a higher engagement rate when your content gets shared by your audience and reaches a new audience.
To help you brainstorm new content ideas, you can use a keyword research tool called AnswerThePublic. You can post blogs, video content or podcasts. The more value you can add, the more businesses you will get.
24. Run a Value Add Event Every Month
Running Value-Add Events provides a number of opportunities for businesses to connect and engage with prospective customers and generate new leads.
It doesn’t have to be a big production. You can start with something as simple as webinars, online training and or a masterclass series.
Then you can promote these events on your social media pages or send out an email to your database inviting them to participate.
25. Implement the 9 Word Email Strategy
The 9-Word Email is a proactive approach to finding missed opportunities in your business.
Once understood, the approach should be used every 90 days to bring to the surface the people still looking for a solution to their problem.
From there, you can re-engage with your lead and hopefully turn them into a paying customer.
Conclusion
So there you have it, the 25 powerful marketing strategies for small businesses. The key though is to discover what the best marketing strategy is for your business. This might take some experimenting, but when you uncover what they are, you are on your way to massive and lasting business success.
If you want to learn more about Marketing, grab a copy of ‘The Ultimate Marketing Checklist’. This breakthrough document contains 149 steps to marketing perfection. To download your free copy, go to businessblueprint.com/marketing-checklist
