5 Essential Steps to Help Keep Your Small Business Ahead of the Competition
Small business marketing is not for the faint of heart, but if you’ve been in marketing for longer than two seconds, you already know that. Marketing your small business is dependent on doing some key factors well and these things will make or break a small business in this dog eat dog world we live in. Competition is fierce and learning how to get the most from your web pages is tricky.
Here are five important steps to keep you ahead of the competition!
- Create a Marketing Plan – Don’t leave anything to chance. Develop a well-thought out, concise plan that maps out every one of your marketing elements and what you need to do to make it happen. Make it as detailed as possible. At the very least fill in the broad strokes.
- Social Media Marketing – 91 percent of experiences social marketers generate improved website traffic and 79 percent generate more quality leads according to MediaBistro.com. Just how do they do this? They do not waste time with their social media marketing. Map out a plan for social media an stick to it.
- Build a Mailing List – MarketingProfs.com reported emails averages a ROI (return on investment) of $40 for every $1 spent. This far exceeds keyword ads ($17) and banner ads ($2). Don’t be misled into thinking collecting and building an email list is dead. If you fail to build a list, you are failing to build your business! You just cannot afford to leave such a large source of potential profits to your competition.
- Video Marketing – Research has shown a video is 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google than any other text page! This really is too good to pass up. Small businesses can take advantage of this by video marketing. The video market is still relatively untapped and having a simple video advertising your wares can gain you loads of Google traffic in addition to authority.
- Gain a Mobile Presence – Microsoft reports that by 2014 mobile browsing will overtake desktop browsing. If your company doesn’t have a mobile presence, then you will become invisible. This means your small business’s website better start optimizing for mobile users and it should do it fast. Right now, the numbers are encroaching on the 50 percent mark. Are you prepared?
Don’t Be a Superhero and Do It Alone!
No one is a superhero and you needn’t be. The realm of online marketing is always changing and evolving. You need to learn what is working now, learn from the best, and hire the very best outsourcing you can find. In the end, it’ll pay off substantially!