Marketing For The Small Business: How To Get Started | My Venture Pad

I?ve recently spoken to a number of small business owners about how to get started in marketing. Maybe you have?hired a freelancer to?setup?your website or asked?anintern to build a Facebook page. But if you?re wondering where to focus your efforts to get marketing results for your small business such as leads or brand awareness, then this article might be for you.

Short on time and money, entreprenuers?can be?impatient when it comes to?their small business?marketing results.?They must first?understand that marketing can produce results in the short-term when it best seeks to build the business for the long-term. Once they see the benefits of the bigger picture, then I think it makes sense to?offer these tips to get started.

Keywords and SEO

This is like?training camp?for marketing and helps any business to see both the market potential in their category (volume of searches) and the pain points most often searched by their target market. I believe that if you have any background or even a basic understanding in SEO and the importance of keywords, your marketing?can succeed in today?s interactive world.

Maybe more important is the perspective that anything that does not start with SEO is doomed to fail. Your customers?can?t use what they can?t find. SEO traffic and keyword analysis should be part of any company?s business plan. Google?s keyword search tool can help.

Once you know what people are searching for, you can then tailor your business pitch to show how your company can best meet those needs.

Website Design

More than just a pretty page, website design is often much more important than business owners may realize. I have personally been involved in?nearly a dozen?website re-designs at companies both large and small. One observation was clear in the? majority of those projects: the business owner made decisions based on?their opinion of what colors, pictures or layout designs they liked.

Website design should be first about easy navigation and user control. The keyword analysis you?ve done will allow you to identify what people most want to know about your business. These elements should be presented in the easiest manner and based on the latest thinking in website design so visitors can quickly find what they are looking for.

You also want to set the basis for a long, meaningful relationship by allowing your visitors to choose many options to engage deeper with you. Options such as blog and newsletter subscriptions, ?follow? buttons for?the most common social channels and even call or ?chat now? functions are important to start the visitor down the right path toward a longer term relationship.

Content Strategy

Now that you understand your what your audience is searching for and?you?ve created a welcoming website, it?s time to focus on the content you will provide. Again, your keyword and traffic analysis will help you determine what topics you should focus on when creating content.

You should first focus on identifying the different buyer personas within your target market and how their needs are different. You can then create an editorial calendar to deliver that content in different forms across your website and in your outbound promotions.

The Importance Of Blogs

Company websites with a blog get more traffic, convert more of their traffic and spend less than companies that do not have a blog. Still unconvinced, here are 12 reasons to put a blog at the center?of your marketing activities.?

Blogs provide consistent content updates on your website that are relatively easy and inexpensive to produce. They allow you to put a personalized face to your brand and they provide a reason for your target audience to keep coming back to your site for information.

I am a strong believer in getting business owners to author their own blogs. I realize it is not for everybody, but who better can present the unique benefits of your company to the public? And the best way for this message to reach the largest group of people is with blogging and then sharing the blog on your social channels.

Next Steps

As a former small-business marketer, I believe these are the basics and should form the core of your small business marketing efforts.?This is where I started and was able to demonstrate business results for the CEO.

From here you can begin to look at more advanced marketing tactics to drive your business forward. Tactics to look at next include paid search, email, newsletters, webcasts, articles, banner ads and even pay-per-lead programs.

But you tell me if this was this helpful to you? Want to see more content like this? I?d love to hear from you either in the comments below or on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

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