In order to survive and grow, your business needs customers. To get customers, you need to promote your business. 

Get a Website

Whilst it may not be the first thing you create for your business, a website is an absolute must-have. Your website is the go-to place for prospective customers and is your first chance to really establish yourself and your business as the best possible solution to their problem. Even if they find you on social media or Google, they will want to go to your website to check your business out. No website, will lead to uncertainty about how credible you, your business and your solutions/products are. 

A good business website not only serves as a promotional tool but it allows you to tell the story of your business, what you offer, provides contact information, and reflects your brand’s personality and distinguishing characteristics. It is also the best way of measuring and improving the success of your other marketing activities.

For example, when you run paid advertising campaigns, you need landing pages, which are pages on your website. When you post helpful information on social media, it should link to its home on your website. With all of your marketing channels flowing into your website, you can use analytics tools to see what is working best and see what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t.

Although there are completely free solutions to get a website in place for your business, almost inevitably you will need to move to some form of a paid website if you are serious about promoting your business. Having your own domain name, a professional look and feel, and the ability to scale and add features as needed are all essential for growth.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Whilst you can do your own SEO to an extent, I have included it in this lesson because it is usually done quicker and better by outsourcing to a professional.

Once you have a website, you are going to want it to rank highly on Google and other search engines. I’ll focus on Google as it’s the one that, if done right, will bring you the best results and the most traffic. 

Google’s sole purpose is to provide answers to its users. Put yourself in the users shoes for a minute… If you want to find something, how much time are you prepared to spend looking for it? 

Be honest… It’s not likely to be much.

And that’s why ranking highly on Google for the right things is important. 

Your prospects aren’t going to spend a long time trawling through your competitors, until they find you… Oh no no no… They’re going to buy from one of them. 

SEO isn’t just one thing, but many things that collectively work together to improve your rank.

A few small things you can do to improve your SEO include:

• Adding relevant keywords to the right places on your website. (These should be industry and geographically specific) 
• Producing regular, high-quality and original content regularly. (Usually done via a Blog. A great Blog is educational, it’s not an extension of your personal Facebook or Instagram page)
• Tagging your images which will also help them appear in Google image searches.
• Maintaining high page load speeds and security certificates

Getting this right means that search engines are putting you in front of the right people, at the right time. 

All you have to do now is to demonstrate just how awesome you are and close the sale!

If you already have a website and want to see how it’s performing as well as get some tips for the quickest fixes you can make right now, check out the free DIIB SEO Tool.

Run Google Ads

While SEO is one of the best long term marketing strategies, you’re likely going to be waiting a long time to see the results, I’m talking months, not weeks. 

Google Ads is potentially the best way for you to generate quick leads which providing the ROI is good, can be scaled up and down just like turning the tap on and off to fill the bath. Google Ads Ads are the results that show up at the very top of the Google search results pages, way above organic and local listings. It won’t surprise you that Google is by far the most popular search engine amongst users (people searching) and advertisers (people selling). There are a number of reasons for this which we won’t go into because being the most popular, makes it the one you need to be using.

Mastering Google Ads takes some time as well as plenty of trial and error, an optimized campaign is usually worth the investment. 

Whilst you can run and manage your own campaigns using Google Ads, the best way to advertise on Google is to use a specialist Google Ads agency. A great agency will first get to know you, your customer avatar and will tell you straight if you’re likely to see an ROI based on your budget and the competition in your field for space at the top of a Google search. 

As with sourcing any supplier, do your research!

When it comes to marketing, the only way you will know what is working and what isn’t, is to track your results.

Unfortunately, too many ‘digital marketers’ rely on the fact that small business owners more often than not, don’t track their numbers meaning they have no idea what is and what isn’t working for them. 

Use reviews and if you can, speak with past and present clients of any marketer you are considering working with to see what their honest feedback is.

Facebook Ads

Facebook is the largest online social network and it can be a great way to keep in touch with existing customers and to reach new customers. Promoting your business on Facebook can vary substantially depending upon your industry.

Facebook advertising allows you to hyper target your adverts to your ideal customers and nobody else, meaning you can really control your Ad spend knowing that your message is only being seen by the people that are likely to have a need or a desire for what you do. You can target based on users profile information such as sex, age, marital status, geographic location, occupation, groups and pages they like, and more.

YouTube Advertising 

As with the other paid Advertising strategies (Google, Facebook etc.), YouTube advertising can absolutely generate a great ROI if it’s done right. You can advertise on YouTube by creating video ads that play before videos in relevant categories, or through text ads that appear in search results.

Like with Facebook, it is possible to control who your Ad’s are shown to to an extent. YouTube doesn’t currently enable you to hyper target to the same degree as Facebook but as an advertising platform, it’s still in its infancy meaning if you do it right, your Ad spend may be relatively low. 

TikTok Advertising

If you are semi confident either with or ideally on camera, TikTok is a hugely mis understood and underestimated marketing tool for business, pretty much regardless of your industry or product. 

TikTok IS NOT a social media platform. 

I’m going to say that again because mastering TikTok hinges on you understanding what it really is…

TikTok IS NOT A SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM.

TikTok is an entertainment platform.

It’s users go there to be entertained, not to socialise or to be sold to… Well, not knowingly sold to anyway…

If you’re going to use TikTok, you absolutely need to know your ideal customer inside and out. That way you can tailor your content to really grab their attention. Your adverts and any content you create for business purposes, has to speak to your ideal customer.

Generic content will simply not cut it and they will scroll on by. 

Networking

The single most intimidating word for most business owners…

But find the right group and the right format and it can easily become the highlight of your work calendar. 

Attending local networking events is a great way to increase your profile in your local community. 

The main benefits of networking for small business owners are:

Raise your profile amongst the local business community

Forge strong referral relationships with business owners in other industries who also work with your ideal clients

Share and receive advice, ideas and inspiration with other business owners

And it’s a fantastic way to remind yourself you’re not alone…

You can be dealing with people all day every day and still feel incredibly alone and isolated as a small business owner…. Guess what, we all feel like that and networking with the right people really helps with that loneliness. 

Don’t give up if the first 2 or 3 events don’t get you excited… simply look for other groups and other formats. It’s usually the format that dictates your enjoyment levels and the relevance of the group to you and your business.

A great place to start is Business BUZZ due to its no fuss, no membership and completely informal format. Check out the website to see if there's a Buzz happening near to you

Try Out Direct Mail

Due to the digital age we now live in, direct mail is in fact more impactful now than it has ever been before. 

We now receive far less physical mail than we used to, so now when we do, it’s a novelty… we get excited when we hear the thud of envelopes hit the floor. 

‘Lumpy mail’ is incredibly effective because the gatekeepers are less likely to intercept and shred it before it gets to the decision maker… Lumpy mail is usually assumed to be something personal so makes it all the way to the desk of the person you really want to open it. Take it to the next level and make whatever you use for your ‘lumpy mail’ campaigns creative, relevant and funny, and you’re almost guaranteed to get a meeting or at least an opportunity to speak with your prospect on the phone. 

With direct mail campaigns, there are 2 main approaches… 

1) You can go for a generic mail shot which is sent out to a very broad audience in the hope that it reaches enough of your ideal prospects that they buy. I call this the scatter gun approach. Spread your message as far and wide as you can in the hope enough of it hits the right people at the right time. (These work best if you are aiming to sell a high volume of low value items)

Or;

2) You tailor your campaign specifically to your ideal client, make it a lumpy mail campaign, do your research, and send it directly to named individuals at specific companies so you can then follow the campaign up with a phone call and perhaps further lumpy mail campaigns in the future. This I call the sniper approach, a specific message, for a specific individual that is highly likely to convert. (By far the most effective way to gain new customers through direct mail if you are offering a high value product or service and are only looking for a smaller number of high-quality new clients).

Despite the dominance of digital media today, sending physical mail in the form of postcards, flyers, letters, or lumpy mail can still be a very effective way to promote your business to potential customers. 

Sending your loyal customers little gift packages either after spending money with you or based around seasonal events such as Christmas, Easter or Valentine's Day is also another great way to build loyalty and keep them coming back. They will also more than likely promote your business to friends, family and even across social media platforms giving you more bang for your buck.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has been around for almost as long as the internet, it is still a highly effective means of marketing. In fact, over 75% of people prefer to get marketing communication via email (providing they have agreed to it of course). Email is a popular media for consumers and businesses alike:

People are always diving into their inbox to check out what’s there. They like to stay informed.

Email marketing provides you with detailed reporting meaning you can segment your lists for highly targeted, personalized emails based on the actions of the recipients.

Email marketing platforms offer flexibility, creativity, and most importantly, ease of use and one of the highest ROI’s of all marketing options.

So there you have it. 

My summary of some of the best ways to market your business via paid advertising & marketing. 

EXERCISE:

Go back to your customer Avatar and use it to identify the 3 or 4 best marketing channels for you and your business.

You should already know how much you can or are prepared to spend to get a new customer so you can start to apportion your budget between your chosen marketing channels. 

Make sure you are testing and measuring every marketing channel you are using so you can avoid wasting money on channels that don't work or are less effective for you.

Ultimately the choice is yours, but without the information in your tracker, your simply guessing what does and doesn’t work and throwing money down the drain. 

Want to learn more or speed up your business growth through effective marketing? Reach out and let's talk!