Must-have tips for small business marketing

1. Know your competitors
   It is crucial to your business to know who your competitors are, what they offer and how they market their products. Check what their online presence is like.  Do they have a nice website? Do they offer ecommerce? Do they have social media pages? and if so do they actively and consistently post? Understanding your competition can do a couple things. If they are successful competitors it can help guide you to finding their customers. But it can also help you differentiate yourself. If you know what others are offering you don’t want to offer the same things. If you have the same differentiators then they aren’t differentiators. You want to be one or four steps ahead of them. Think outside of the box for your marketing campaigns and be better than your competitors. If you keep at it, then you will see the increase in sales over time.  Be persistent and know who and what you are up against.
   
2. Start a blog
   You can benefit in many ways from starting a blog. For one, it is good for SEO because search engines like sites that update content frequently. For two, it shows that you know your industry, have in depth knowledge about what you do, and are experienced.  Three… people love free information. They will keep coming back if you offer great content. And four, it builds trust in your brand. Many people claim they don’t have the confidence, topics to write about, or the writing skills to start a blog. But this isn’t true. There are many resources for this. First of all think about your days with your customers and the pain points they experience that require them to need your products or services. Talk about those pain points.  People love “tips” or “lists” of ways they can improve. I even pulled a conversation from LinkedIn that I had with a follower and posted that on my blog. It was a story to tell, and people love stories they can relate to. Quora is a site that gives you ideas about what people are interested in and asking about within certain industries. Answer those questions on your blog and give your posts the title of those questions.  Make sure to add an image or video that relates to your posts. Humans are visual creatures and are more likely to click on something that has a visual paired with it.
   
3.  Promote your blog
   If you already have a blog or just created one, make sure to promote it! Don’t expect people to find your blog without you telling them about it. You can do this by posting teasers on social media and linking to the full content on your blog. Send out newsletters or mass emails to your lead or current customer list and promote your blog content on there. On the signature of your emails that you send out every day to customers, clients, business partners, vendors, leads and others, place a link to your blog near your name. Place the url of your blog on your business cards or marketing material. When presenting at sales meetings tell them about finding additional information on your blog and supply the url. There are several ways to drive traffic to your blog. And when people read your blog and enjoy the content, they will come back and be more curious about you and what you do, and maybe one day will turn into a customer or client.

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