If you’re a startup, you know your daily war: from cleaning your office desk to supervising your staff to hearing your customers’ complaints and delivering just the right offering to delight your customers – you’re doing everything on your own! And in a situation when you strive to save even the last penny you have, it’s natural to think that there’s no room for spending that extra buck on anything termed as “marketing.”

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Still, you as a small business owner must invest in devising a sound marketing strategy. That’s because 75% of small businesses believe that investing in internet marketing seems realistic and highly effective in terms of attracting potential customers. So even with a limited budget, you can take smart steps to create a marketing strategy that’s worth your effort and time.

Here’s how:

Determine Your Current Business Goal

As entrepreneurs, we all have one common goal: to grow the business. But let’s go beyond the obvious and just be specific with the business goal. Before you think of a new business strategy, list down the answers to the following questions:

  • Who are your customers?
  • What exactly do you aim to achieve? (for instance, increasing your revenue by 25% or increasing your website’s traffic. You can find out more about it here.)
  • How will you strategize your business to achieve these outcomes?

Document Your Goal

Once you have the marketing plan, it’s time to divide it into an organized outline. Depending on your business goal, this outline may comprise of various objectives to be achieved by the team as a whole. Some examples include audience acquisition, product launches, public relations, social media marketing, and online advertising. Share this with your entire team to ensure that there isn’t any miscommunication and to confirm if everybody is on track.

Get Personal

You’ve explained to your team what needs to be done. You should now focus on “how” to implement the marketing strategy. Choose personalized marketing to keep your customers engaged. That’s how they can build an emotional connection with your brand. So even if most of your customers are online, you can observe their buying behavior and give them personalized offers accordingly. For instance, how about offering exclusive discounts to your most loyal online shoppers? Businesses could also use PeopleCloud from Epsilon to learn even more about consumers. This will help businesses to understand more of their customers’ interests. Visit https://us.epsilon.com/epsilon-peoplecloud-overview to learn more about that.

Remember: Content Still Rules Internet Marketing

Small businesses usually face ruthless circumstances while devising and implementing their marketing strategies. That’s because they have less capital and resources to pursue their marketing plans. However, since content marketing is comparatively more affordable and approachable, it’s considered one of the most feasible marketing strategies a small business owner can think of.

Start off with creating a website filled with original content that not only entices your customers to buy your product or service but also provides them valuable information to look forward to every time they visit your website.

The Bottom Line

Stepping into the world of marketing is getting common among small business owners. However, what many of us should realize is that investing in a sound marketing strategy is worth it. So why work harder when you can work smarter?! If equipped with the right marketing strategies, creating an edge in your small business is highly achievable.

George Ryan is a website developer who actually is able to wear many hats within the industry. He writes about SEO and marketing, hosting and design in his articles aimed at small business owners.