5 Crucial 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 marketing your business for longer than two seconds, you already know that. Marketing your small business is dependent on doing some key marketing activities well. These marketing activiteis can make or break a small business in this dog eat dog world we live in. Competition is fierce and understanding how to make the most from your web pages is tricky.
Here are five necessary actions to keep you ahead of the competition!
- Create a Marketing Plan – Don’t leave anything to chance. Develop a well-thought out, to the point plan that maps out each of your marketing elements and what you need to do to make it work. Make it as detailed as you possibly can. At the very least fill in the broad strokes.
- Social Media Marketing – Not just a time waster! Social media is often an enormous source of website traffic and new business. According to MediaBistro.com, 91 percent of experienced social marketers see improved website traffic due to social media campaigns and 79 percent are generating more quality leads.
- Build a Mailing List – Countless businesses make the mistake of not collecting customer and prospect emails from the very beginning. Email is far from dead. MarketingProfs.com tells us that email averages a return on investment of $40 for every $1 spent, far outstripping banner ads ($2) and keyword ads ($17). If you choose to neglect it, you’re leaving a big part of your potential profits up for grabs!
- Video Marketing – Connect with all the Tulsa traffic that’s out there searching for your business. Video marketing in the local marketplace is a relatively untapped vein, and having a quick video advertising your products or services on page one of Google may result in tons of traffic and authority coming your way! According to the research company Forrester, any given video stands about a 50x better chance of appearing on the first page of Google than any given text page.
- Have a Mobile Presence – Be sure your websites are optimized for mobile, as more than half of all searches now are originating from some sort of mobile device. Microsoft reports that mobile browsing is projected to overtake desktop browsing by 2014. Having your pages mobile optimized can help improve your reach, and also corral impulse buyers.
Don’t Make the Mistake of Going It Alone!
No one is a superhero and you needn’t be. The world of local online marketing is constantly changing and evolving. You need to learn what is working now, learn from the best, and hire the very best local marketing agency you can find.
In the end, it’ll pay off greatly!
