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As a small business owner, you know how important it is to stay ahead of the competition. Running a successful business means continuously trying to improve in order to serve your customers better and maximize sales.
Likewise, your marketing shouldn’t remain on autopilot. Every year, you should re-evaluate your marketing strategies to see if they're producing the desired results for your business. Along with this constant evaluation, it would be smart to try some new ideas. The world is continually changing, and your marketing often needs to adapt to unique customer needs and priorities.
Below, we will cover three of the top marketing strategies that are working right now for small businesses. Check them out and see if they will work for your business.
Digital reputation management
Digital reputation management is the process of monitoring and taking a proactive role in improving your brand's online image. The easiest way to address your reputation is by managing your reviews online.
In our interconnected digital world, collecting and monitoring online reviews needs to be a regular part of your marketing strategy. A recent study found that 79% of individuals aged 18-34 trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation from friends or family members. For a customer that has never interacted with your brand before, online reviews verify that you're a legitimate and trustworthy business.
If you don't have a plan already in place to collect more reviews, it's time to start one.
Actions you can take to garner more reviews:
- Send out an email to your customer list asking for reviews
- Include a call-to-action to leave a review with every order confirmation email
- Ask customers in person for a review
- Include a request for a review at the bottom of paper receipts
Once you have a good collection of reviews, don't forget to display your reviews - or link to them - on your website. Your BBB Business Profile is a great place to send customers.
Lastly, check all of your review sites every couple of days. Make sure to respond to all reviews — good and bad. Thank the people who took the time to leave you a positive review. For the negative reviews, publicly thank them for their feedback, apologize for their experience, and privately reach out to rectify the situation.
Another way to help your reputation is to ask your happy customers for referrals. For some ideas on getting a good referral program going, check out our article: 5 referral ideas that will boost small business sales.
Use social as a selling platform
It's more than likely that you're using social media to increase brand awareness. Social media serves as another touchpoint to connect with your customers. Now, small businesses have started to take it a step further by taking advantage of social commerce.
In the first half of 2020, Instagram and Facebook released "Shops" on their platforms. This new update allows businesses to sell products directly to consumers via these social media apps.
Now, social media users don't have to navigate away from your social post to your website to complete a purchase. Social commerce reduces another barrier in the shopping experience, allowing your customers to purchase an item in their social app quickly.
Not sure if it’s worth navigating these social selling platforms? The potential is there — in fact, 83% of Instagram users use the platform to discover new products or services. Small businesses can now easily use social media to increase sales and reach a new audience. Make sure to take advantage of using social platforms as another channel to drive sales.
Think mobile
If you've been running a small business for the last couple of years, you probably understand just how important mobile is. In fact, 61% of users are more likely to contact a business if they have a mobile-friendly website.
Optimization
If it's not already part of your marketing strategy, mobile optimization should be a top priority. Consumers now shop more and more on their smartphones, and there is an expectation that the mobile site experience is just as user-friendly as the desktop experience.
Voice Search
However, there's a lot more you can do for mobile than just optimizing your website. More specifically, it's now time to consider voice search in your SEO and PPC plans. Between mobile phones, smart speakers, and wearable technology, 90% of people reported knowing about voice-enabled products, and 72% of them reported using voice search on these products.
When it comes to voice search, it's important to rank for more conversational keywords and long-tail phrases. For example, while someone might type out "hair salon near me," a voice search might be, "What is the best hair salon for women in Seattle?" It's essential to be aware of this trend and proactively change your SEO and PPC efforts to capitalize on this new customer behavior.
SMS
The other new trend in mobile is incorporating SMS campaigns. You likely have your customers' phone numbers, so why not make use of this communication channel? You can text your customers to ask for a review, share a promotion, or announce a new product or service. Text messages can have open rates as high as 98% — compared to email open rates of 18% — so more businesses are starting to incorporate SMS into their campaigns and marketing efforts.
Moving forward
One of the most important factors in building a successful business is the ability to change and evolve. Marketing tactics are quite fluid, as they need to adapt to the changing consumer world. Your marketing strategies should align with this way of thinking. Be innovative and forward-looking, and don’t be afraid to try new things. Consider the above marketing strategies and see if they will work for your business to get more customers through the door.
Visit BBB.org/get-accredited to learn more about BBB Accreditation and how it can help your business.