The Learning Center

In order to grow your small business, you must decide how to best utilize the marketing budget you have set aside. With the many marketing strategies available, you may be wondering which option or combination of marketing activities is the best choice for your small company? From online marketing to traditional tactics, you need to decide which route or strategy is the ideal option for your business and marketing budget.

To help you with your decision, let’s explore your possibilities.

First, we will assume that you already have a well-designed website and an established brand for your small business. In order to best describe your marketing options, we need to set a few objectives.

Objective 1: You want to get the most ‘bang for your buck’. In other words, you want to establish value and stretch your marketing dollar to the fullest.

Objective 2: Reach as much of the target market as possible. You probably have a well-defined target audience for your small business and will use your chosen marketing method to reach them effectively.

Objective 3: To spread awareness and information about your company and brand to your local community. In order for growth to occur, you need customers and sales. If you need more customers, you need to let the world know that you’re open for business.

Your Options

Search Engine Optimization/Search Engine Marketing

One option you have, and I highly suggest you use, is search engine marketing. This activity employs tools and tactics designed to increase your exposure on search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing. These tools range from the tactical optimization of your website, to using Pay-Per-Click ads to appear on search engines. Should you choose to personally optimize your website, you’ll spend very little money, if any. You will have to pay for Pay-Per-Click advertisements on search engines should you choose to pursue that route. However, if executed correctly, these advertisements are also relatively inexpensive. The only ‘con’ to search engine marketing is that if you are not well versed in the subject or technologically savvy, it tends to become confusing and quite overwhelming.

Social Media

Social media is a fantastic tool for engaging your audience with fun and exciting information related to your company, products and services. From running contests to posting intriguing content, social media enables small businesses to establish and grow an online presence. Similar to search engine marketing, social media can either be implemented for free or for a small portion of your budget. With the ability to use advertisements and sponsored posts, you can use a portion of your budget to reach an even larger audience on your social media channels. Social media assists with your brand exposure as well. By implementing a consistent brand image across all of your marketing materials, including social media, your brand image will become stronger and well recognized in your local region.

Social media does have disadvantages. With the many social media channels available, it can become overwhelming. Companies tend to hire an individual solely dedicated to managing the various social media channels, maintaining regular online engagement with customers and exploring new social options for the business. With the rapid rate of industry changes, it also becomes difficult to keep up with the constant updates and technology.

Email Marketing

Did you know that email marketing has one of the highest success rates among online marketing strategies? Email marketing enables you to maintain relationships with your loyal customers and provide them exclusive offers or promotions for being a part of your mailing list. Depending on your specific goal, these messages can either reach a wide audience or target a designated customer segment. In addition, you have access to a variety of statistics and can use these metrics to adjust your next email depending on the success or failure of the previous email. Be careful of seeming ‘spammy’, as many customers do not enjoy receiving a mass amount of email. Remember to strategically schedule and craft your email marketing messages to coincide with your business goals.

Print Marketing

One of our objectives was spread awareness about your company and brand. With print marketing, you can achieve that objective in a variety of ways. Whether you want to purchase 300 flyers or new business cards, your brand and company will be represented on your print piece. Be sure to include information about your online channels, your location and your products/services to provide customers with the tangible connection to your online channels and business.

Video Production

If you’re looking to put all of your budget into one marketing activity and stand out from the crowd, creating a video solely for your business might be a good strategy. A well-crafted video can tell the story of your business, products, services and brand in a way that is pleasing to the eye. With strategic imagery, a solid script, and a video production company that can pull it all together, you’ll have a great piece of video content for your business. Remember to share this online and embed the video on your website as well.

With all of these options, it is ultimately your decision how you would best like to spend your small business marketing budget. Whether you want to utilize the latest online marketing trends or stick with the tried and true traditional print and video, there are several ways you can balance these marketing tactics and your marketing budget. You don’t have to break the bank to promote your business.

Are you looking for assistance with your small business marketing efforts? The team at Titan Web Marketing Solutions in Murfreesboro, TN can help you stretch your marketing dollar to the fullest. We’ll devise the best marketing strategy for you and your small business. Give our office a call at 877-935-3796.