From establishing trust with potential customers to making website navigation straightforward, here are 15 answers to the question, “What are the best marketing strategies for small businesses and how did a specific strategy help you?”

• Yield Success With Tailor-Made Emails 
• Double Down on What Works
• Collaborate With Micro-Influencers
• Publish Blog Content
• Use the Power of Social Proof
• Survey Your Customers
• Invest in Search Engine Optimization
• Build Relationships With Valuable Content
• Target Lower-Funnel Keywords With High Conversion Intent
• Take the Time to Drive Organic Traffic
• Leverage Cold LinkedIn Outreach
• Provide Exceptional Customer Service
• Focus On Your Social Media Marketing
• Grow Your Customer Base With Email Marketing
• Increase Your Visibility

Yield Success With Tailor-Made Emails 

Using the example of a personalized email outreach campaign, I have found outstanding success with this strategy for small businesses. By running targeted campaigns through platforms such as Mailchimp or HubSpot and sending emails tailored to prospects’ interests or needs, I could capture their attention quickly and stand out from competitors. 

Compared to generic mass emails sent out using automated bulk actions, my efforts resulted in higher open rates and more conversions. Through the effective use of data analysis and segmentation, I found a better way to get people interested in the services that our small business offered. Using a tailor-made approach rather than just blindly pushing out large batches of emails proved beneficial for us.

Michael Alexis, CEO, swag.org

Double Down on What Works

Our greatest success has come from doubling down or focusing on what works for us; this strategy has been one of the best marketing strategies for small businesses that I have discovered. 

By understanding my customer base and adapting according to their needs, I have been able to craft engaging content that resonates with them, leading to higher sales. An engaged user base definitely helps us stand out from competitors in our industry, adding value and giving people an experience they can’t find elsewhere. 

This focused marketing strategy has helped grow relationships with customers and open up opportunities for business growth.

Antreas Koutis, Administrative Manager, Financer

Collaborate With Micro-Influencers

One of the best ways to connect with your audience and put your message out there on a small budget is through micro-influencers. Connect with influencers in your niche who have a fair amount of expertise in your area. This makes the collaboration more seamless, and you will reach an audience that is likely to be interested in what you offer and become your customers in the long run.

Harry Morton, Founder, Lower Street

Publish Blog Content

We mainly focused our strategy on publishing blog content. It’s quite a specific way, but very tailored to our target audience. Indeed, we provide a solution for people who want to take photos for documents—a biometric photo app. 

The publications on the blog are mainly content that answers the most common questions and doubts related to travel and its requirements. Whether it’s a visa or a passport, you’ll find the answer to everything on our site. 

It’s a successful strategy for three reasons: boosting SEO (often, our content gets linked to external portals as well), building the image of a niche expert, and attracting traffic to the site. Thanks to this procedure, we display high in search engines and constantly gain new customers.

Leszek Dudkiewicz, Head of Marketing, US Passport Photo

Use the Power of Social Proof

Leveraging the power of social proof helps to establish trust with potential customers. By showcasing positive reviews and testimonials from satisfied customers, you can provide credible proof that your product or service is high quality and reliable.

This strategy has helped me personally at the beginning of my marketing journey. Since I started featuring customer reviews and testimonials on my website, I have observed an increase in interested users. Some customers themselves admitted it was the reviews of other users that convinced them to try our service.

This example proves that social proof is a powerful psychological principle that can influence people’s buying decisions. It’s especially important for small businesses that are trying to compete with larger, more established companies. By following this plan, you can make it fair for everyone and build trust in your brand.

Natalia Brzezinska, Marketing and Outreach Manager, ePassportPhoto

Survey Your Customers

One of the best marketing strategies for small businesses is to follow up with customers through questionnaires or surveys. 

This technique not only helps in getting feedback on the customer’s experience with the business but also shows that the business cares about its customers and will provide them with the best products or services. It provides insight into what customers like and dislike about the products or services being offered by the business. 

Using this information, a small business can make improvements to its offerings and enhance the customer experience, which leads to customer satisfaction and loyalty. One of the most significant advantages of this marketing strategy is that it is relatively inexpensive and easy to implement. 

All you need is to create a questionnaire or survey to gather feedback from customers. There are many online tools available, such as Google Forms, that you can use to create a survey for free.

Brenton Thomas, CEO, Twibi Digital Marketing Agency

Invest in Search Engine Optimization

I have seen SEO be one of the most effective marketing strategies for small businesses. So, how has SEO helped my agency? In the early stages of my entrepreneurial journey, I swiftly discerned the imperative need to distinguish myself from the myriad of contenders in the cutthroat business realm. 

Considering this realization, I concentrated my efforts on SEO, the enchanting mechanism that holds the power to either elevate an online enterprise to the heights of success or plunge it into oblivion.

I honed my website by spending countless hours optimizing for the keywords my potential clients might search for, like “e-commerce SEO services.” Plus, I went the extra mile and created valuable content that genuinely served my audience and showcased my expertise. 

Thus, I firmly attest that incorporating SEO into the marketing blueprint is an indispensable tactic for small enterprises to level up and challenge the supremacy of industry giants with greater financial resources.

Maria Harutyunyan, Co-founder, Loopex Digital

Build Relationships With Valuable Content

Focus on building relationships with your customers through content marketing. Content marketing involves creating valuable and informative content, such as blog posts, social media posts, videos, and podcasts, that engages and educates your target audience. 

Content marketing is a powerful strategy that can help small businesses build strong relationships with their customers and establish their brand as a trusted authority in their industry. By providing valuable content that resonates with your target audience, you can attract and keep loyal customers who appreciate the value you provide.

Dan Johnson, Business Development and Sales Manager, Scanning Hub

Target Lower-Funnel Keywords With High Conversion Intent

As a small business, you likely don’t have bags of dollar wads stacked in your garage for marketing. This implies you likely can’t get into the paid ads war with your bigger rivals.

Your best option? Building your SEO strategy around lower-funnel keywords with minimal competition but greater conversion intent.

Take, for example, you are a small video production company. Targeting keywords like “video production” with a likely low-domain-authority website could be as dreamful as wishing Christmas would be on December 26th.

Instead, you can target longer keywords down the funnel (closer to conversion), like “video production contract tips”. People searching for these keywords are likely to consider hiring a video production company.

Producing a comprehensive resource on such keywords, with minimal link building (and domain authority) can get you on search engine result pages for such keywords in a short time.

Lotus Felix, CEO, Lotus Brains Studio

Take the Time to Drive Organic Traffic

Search engine optimization (SEO) is still a very high-reward marketing practice for small businesses. With 54.4% of all Google searches resulting in clicks on the top three results, it certainly pays to take the time to execute a strategy that works to rank your website higher on search engines within your particular business niche.

When potential customers arrive at your website organically, based on the things they are already searching for, it can be much easier to turn them into paying customers, as opposed to potentially invasive paid advertising. Focus on creating high-value content to attract potential customers!

Gabe Roy, Founder and Creative Director, Zest Media Productions

Leverage Cold LinkedIn Outreach

One of the best marketing strategies for small businesses is cold LinkedIn outreach. By leveraging LinkedIn’s powerful search capabilities, small businesses can target specific individuals and groups in their niche, such as potential customers, partners, and influencers. 

This strategy allows small businesses to build relationships with key decision-makers, generate leads, and increase brand awareness, all at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. 

It provides an effective way for small businesses to connect with their target audience, allowing them to engage in meaningful conversations that might lead to increased sales.

Jaya Iyer, Marketing Assistant, Teranga Digital Marketing

Provide Exceptional Customer Service

Small businesses often have an advantage over larger competitors with customer service. By providing prompt, friendly, and helpful support to your customers, you can create a positive reputation and build long-term relationships.

Jason Moss, President and Co-founder, Moss Technologies

Focus On Your Social Media Marketing

One of the best marketing strategies for small businesses is to leverage the power of social media marketing. This involves creating a strong online presence through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and using them to engage with potential customers and build brand awareness.

As a small business owner, I have seen the benefits of social media marketing. By creating engaging and shareable content on social media, I could reach a wider audience, attract new customers, and drive more sales. 

Social media allowed me to build personal relationships with my customers, which helped to increase their loyalty and encourage repeat business. Overall, social media marketing can be a cost-effective and highly effective way for small businesses to reach their target audience and grow their brand.

Himanshu Sharma, CEO and Founder, Academy of Digital Marketing

Grow Your Customer Base With Email Marketing

As a small business, email marketing offers you a unique opportunity to build relationships with your customers as you look to grow your business. Here at ParcelPanel, email marketing has been the marketing strategy that has yielded the best results for us while we are in the growth phase. 

Through email marketing, we’ve started newsletters that we regularly send out to keep our customer base engaged and informed about new features of our service to help them grow their businesses. This approach ensures that we can monitor engagement rates and think of better ways to reach out to those with low engagement rates.

Liam Liu, Co-founder and CMO, ParcelPanel

Increase Your Visibility

One of the best strategies for small businesses is to focus on SEO tactics. SEO involves quality content creation, strategic keyword usage, user experience improvements, as well as link-building activities that help encourage other sites to post links back to yours.

Key success factors here are creating a good outline for my content strategy based on industry-specific keywords and focusing on making website navigation straightforward. This approach allowed me to rank organically quickly because people searching online found precisely what they needed right away.

Considering the cost-efficiency aspect of SEO—it’s hard to argue against this marketing strategy. Its relatively cheap investments, combined with fast results, make it a winning tool for small businesses time and time again.

Stewart Dunlop, Founder and Chief Strategist, LinkBuilder.io

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