If you’re planning to start a company, you’ve got a lot to look forward to. From the pleasure of working for yourself and setting your own hours to the unparalleled thrill of your first (and many consequent) sales.
But while there’s plenty to get excited about, starting a business is no easy feat. It won’t always be plain sailing, and you’ll face challenges along the way. Breaking into any market can be tricky, and success isn’t guaranteed, as around 20% of startups fail within the first year.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, so don’t panic. While you’ll face challenges, plenty of new companies will thrive. They often succeed where others don’t by doing things the right way — or at least getting most things right.
One of those things is marketing.
According to a recent survey by CBInsights, 14% of new businesses fail because of poor marketing efforts. Marketing is an area where small businesses often need help due to budget and personnel constraints and, more often than not, a flimsy marketing plan.
If you’re forming a new company and want to get your marketing spot on from the start, you’re in the right place. We’ve put together everything you need to know about small business marketing so you can get your business off to a flying start.
Ready to get to grips with small business marketing?
Jump to what you want to know:
- The Importance and Benefits of Small Business Marketing
- Step 1: Finding Your Target Audience with Market Research
- Step 2: Creating a Unique Brand Identity
- Step 3: Mastering Digital Marketing Channels
- Step 4: Maximising Offline Marketing Activities
- Step 5: Developing Your Marketing Strategy.
The Importance and Benefits of Small Business Marketing
Marketing is an essential tool for small businesses and can be your secret weapon against more established companies. A well-planned marketing strategy can allow you to claim your portion of the market and grow your business.
But marketing is an area where a lot of small business owners struggle. Good marketing requires a lot of time and effort. But with everything else required to launch a business, it can be tough to dedicate the resources that marketing demands.
This often means that business owners don’t do enough in terms of marketing or that they put energy and budget into the wrong areas.
That’s why it’s important to have a good grasp of all areas of marketing. This guide will give you an overview of what you need to know to put together a marketing strategy that works and allows you to enjoy the following benefits:
Increased Brand Awareness
Effective marketing efforts help you to establish your brand in the minds of potential customers. Brand awareness means people will think of your company when they need a particular product or service.
Attract New Customers
A solid marketing plan lets you reach potential customers who may not to be aware of your business. You can boost brand loyalty and encourage repeat business showcasing your Unique Selling Points (USPs), you can attract more customers and grow your client base.
Retain Existing Customers
Marketing isn’t all about finding new customers, it’s also there to maintain relationships with existing customers. You can boost brand loyalty and encourage repeat business by engaging with them regularly.
Gain a Competitive Edge
A well-executed marketing strategy can give you an edge over your competitors regardless of their size. This helps you to stand out in a crowded market and boost your reputation.
Boost Your Bottom Line
The ultimate goal of marketing is to increase your sales and revenue for your business. Getting your marketing spot-on allows you to reach more customers, make more sales and double down on effective marketing campaigns.
Now that you’re up to speed with just some of the benefits of getting your small business marketing right, let’s dive into how to prepare to market your business.
Step 1: Finding Your Target Audience with Market Research
A common mistake that small businesses make is jumping straight into marketing without doing any preparation first. This is usually done to promote the business and make quick sales. Most new business owners know they need to market their business but often rush into it.
Before you do anything marketing-wise, you need to find out who you are targeting. Diving straight into marketing without understanding your target market, competition, and industry is an easy way to waste time and money. (Plus, it might damage your brand before you’ve even got started.)
Market research is a crucial first step in small business marketing. It gives you all the information you need to understand your customers, their likes and dislikes and what your competitors are doing (or not doing) to meet their needs.
Here’s how to get started with market and customer research:
Identify Your Target Audience
Start by defining the demographic and psychographic profiles of your ideal customers. Try to include the following:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Location
- Interests
- Lifestyle.
Unsurprisingly, you’ll have a range for each of the criteria, so it’s a good idea to create customer personas. Try to create two or three personas that show the different types of customers you’ll be targeting. By creating personas, you can visualise your target audience when making marketing decisions.
Analyse Your Competitors
Look closely at businesses offering similar products or services in your industry and the local area. Try to learn as much about your competitors as possible, but pay close attention to their:
- Marketing
- Pricing
- Customer reviews.
By focusing on those three elements, you’ll be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses and find ways to differentiate your brand from theirs. Being able to offer something unique or better than your competitors can be a game-changer — especially when starting a new business.
Carry Out Direct Research
Once you’ve put together your ideas for a target audience and know your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, it’s time to put them to the test. You can do with primary or secondary research:
- Primary research — This involves gathering information directly from your target audience. You can do this through surveys, interviews and focus groups. This helps you to understand their needs and pain points.
- Secondary research — For this type of research, you’ll use existing sources, like industry reports, government data and studies. This allows you to gain insight into market trends, industry growth and potential opportunities.
By combining both types of research, you can see if your idea of a target audience is correct or needs adapting. This stage is vital, and you’ll refer back to your findings regularly, so take your time to get to know your target market.
Step 2: Creating a Unique Brand Identity
One of the biggest mistakes that new businesses make is creating a brand that doesn’t stand out from the competition.
If you’ve decided to start a company, you’ve probably got a vision that makes it different from your competitors. Maybe your products or services are better, or maybe you plan to offer a more personal service. Whatever makes your brand unique, you should emphasise it with your brand identity.
Your brand identity is the visual and verbal representation of your business. It covers everything from your logo, colours, tone of voice and messaging, and it’s what makes your business stand out.
A strong brand identity differentiates you from your competitors, communicates your values and creates an emotional connection with your audience. Think about your favourite brands and why you like them; more often than not their brand identity makes the difference.
A great example of a unique brand identity is Aldi. On the face of it, it’s just another supermarket, but it stands out because of its unique offering, branding and tone of voice. The company emphasises what they do well but in a personable and funny way, and their social media marketing is fantastic.
Here are some tips for creating your own unique brand identity:
- Define your brand values — What does your company stand for? What are your values and mission? This doesn’t need to be world-changing, but there’s a reason you want to start your business, so hone in on that. Your brand identity should reflect what makes your business unique.
- Develop your brand voice — Once you’ve worked out your values, you’ll need to pick the tone of voice your business will use. This can be serious, formal, conversational, witty, or whatever you think will work. Think about your target audience and what will resonate with them. You’ll use your brand voice across all written communications, so pick a tone that comes naturally to you — authenticity is a big selling point.
- Design branding that matches your identity — With your brand voice and values figured out; you must create branding that matches them. You should create a memorable logo and choose your brand colours and fonts. These elements will make your brand instantly recognisable to your customers, so take your time choosing them and test out different options.
Once you know your unique brand identity, it’s a good idea to put it together into a brand guidelines document. Having everything in one place means you can refer to it whenever necessary. Plus, if you hire anybody else, they can get up to speed quickly.
Step 3: Mastering Digital Marketing Channels
In the excitement of starting a new company, many business owners fall into the trap of spending money on traditional marketing methods that aren’t effective. This is often things like paying for full-page adverts in local newspapers or signwriting vehicles straightaway.
While these can be effective marketing methods (more on them in the next section), digital marketing is often the most effective and cost-effective way to promote your business (especially when you’re starting a new business).
In today’s digital age, having a strong online presence is essential for small businesses and should be your priority. Digital marketing is a cost-effective way to reach your audience, and while it can be time-consuming, it’s well worth the effort.
Here’s a rundown of the key areas of digital marketing:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimisation is making your website more visible in search results on search engines like Google and Bing. While some elements of SEO can be quite technical, anyone can do it.
It involves conducting keyword research to identify relevant search terms, optimising on-page elements like meta tags, titles and URLs and creating high-quality, informative content that’s keyword optimised.
Recommended reading: What is SEO?
Content Marketing
There’s a lot of crossover between SEO and content marketing, and they go hand-in-hand. While SEO covers the technical aspects, content marketing covers creating high-quality, engaging and helpful content.
Content marketing aims to attract and retain customers by consistently providing them with valuable information. Good content marketing can convert visitors into paying customers and build your brand as an industry authority.
Recommended reading: What is Content Marketing?
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that involves building an email list of subscribers and sending them regular newsletters and promotional content. When email marketing is done correctly, it can yield incredible results, even for small businesses.
You can use email marketing to inform customers about new products and promotions, introduce them to your brand story and encourage them to engage with your brand. It’s a cost-effective way to nurture leads, build customer loyalty and drive repeat business.
Recommended reading: What is Email Marketing?
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing involves creating and managing social media profiles on various platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can use social media marketing to promote your products, build brand awareness and engage with your potential customers.
It can be an incredibly cost-effective way to promote your business, build customer relationships and drive sales.
Recommended reading: What is Social Media Marketing?
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC is an advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time their advert is clicked. Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads allow businesses to create targeted ads that drive traffic to their websites or specific landing pages.
While PPC allows you to set a budget, it can quickly become expensive, and the return on investment is not always guaranteed. While it can be cost-effective, you should familiarise yourself with how it works before you start advertising.
Recommended reading: The Ultimate Guide to PPC Marketing
There you have it, the key elements of digital marketing. When you put together your marketing strategy (we’ll get to that shortly), you’ll use some or all of them. While we’ve given you an overview of each, it’s worth taking the time to learn as much about each as possible.
Step 4: Maximising Offline Marketing Activities
As we mentioned, many businesses rush into traditional or offline marketing activities when they start trading. While offline marketing can be a fantastic way to reach your target audience and build brand awareness, you must pick the right methods.
Unlike digital marketing, where measuring the success of your marketing is relatively straightforward, traditional marketing is more difficult to measure. For example, if a customer converts on your website through a paid advert, you can track that. But if you pay for a full-page advert in a newspaper or magazine, it’s tricky to determine if you gain any sales from that advert.
For this reason, it’s a good idea to focus on digital marketing initially and move into more traditional methods later. That said, offline marketing can be effective when done correctly.
Here are some offline marketing methods to consider:
- Networking — Attending industry events, trade shows, and local business gatherings can help you to build relationships with potential customers, partners, and suppliers.
- Direct mail — Sending targeted direct mail to potential customers in your local area or within your target audience can be a great way to generate leads.
- Print advertising — Investing in print advertising in local newspapers, magazines, or industry publications can be an effective way to build brand awareness and reach your target audience.
- Public relations (PR) — Develop a PR strategy to generate media coverage and improve your brand reputation. This could include press releases, media pitches, or community involvement.
- Branded merchandise — Distributing branded merchandise, such as pens, tote bags, or t-shirts, at events or as giveaways is a great way to increase brand recognition.
Step 5: Developing Your Marketing Strategy
Now that you’re up to speed with your marketing options, know your target audience, and have developed your brand identity, you can bring it all together in a marketing strategy.
A well-planned small business marketing strategy is the foundation of all of your marketing, so you should take your time putting it together. It outlines everything from your objectives and the channels you’ll use to how you’ll measure success.
Here are some key elements to include in your marketing plan:
- Set SMART goals — Setting objectives for your marketing is crucial, and using the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) framework helps you create clear, realistic and trackable goals.
- Create a marketing budget — Marketing can quickly become expensive if you don’t allocate a fixed budget for it. Work out how much you’re willing to invest in marketing before you decide which channels to use.
- Pick your marketing channels — Once you’ve got your budget, you can start to allocate it to different channels. Remember that some channels will be more expensive than others. Choose the channels that best fit your target audience, objectives and budget.
- Develop a content plan — One of the best ways to set yourself up for success is to be organised. By creating a content plan in your strategy, you can set time aside to ensure it gets done. Your content plan should outline the topics you’ll cover and the channels you’ll distribute them on.
By creating a comprehensive plan for your marketing, you’ll already be ahead of many of your competitors and can start your company knowing you have a solid plan.
But the fun doesn’t stop there. Monitoring the performance of your marketing plan is crucial to success. As you run different campaigns on different channels, keep an eye on their performance and look for opportunities to improve them.
You can do this by:
- Monitoring website traffic via Google Analytics
- Tracking conversion rates of your desired actions (making a purchase, newsletter sign-ups, etc.)
- Measuring engagement on your social media channels
- Keeping an eye on email open and click-through rates
- Calculating your return on investment (ROI).
As your business grows and evolves, it’s essential to monitor your metrics and adapt your marketing strategy accordingly. It’s also important to stay informed about industry and customer trends and any new marketing channels.
So there you have it, your complete guide to small business marketing. While this guide gives you an overview of everything you need to know, you must stay up to date with marketing trends and developments. It’s also essential to ensure you understand marketing techniques — business owners often make mistakes due to a lack of knowledge, so learn as much as you can.
Remember, marketing is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s better to do things correctly than quickly.
Start Your Business with Mint Formations Today
Now that you’re armed with the marketing knowledge and tools to market your small business like a pro, it’s time to bring your business idea to life and register your company.
At Mint Formations, we’re here to help you get started on your entrepreneurial journey. Our company formation packages are designed to take care of the technical side of registering your company so you can focus on growing your business.
Here’s a quick rundown of how we can help you:
- Fast and simple company formation
- Ongoing support and assistance
- Affordable pricing (formations from as little as £12.99)
- Exceptional additional services
- Expert advice and resources
Explore our company formation packages today and get your new business off the ground. If you have any questions, please get in touch with our team, who are always happy to help.