10 Practical Marketing Tips for SMEs
If you’re like most business owners, you want to know how to get more website traffic, good quality leads and sales. And if you’re in the B2B space, that can be especially challenging, especially if you’re just starting out or trying to grow your business.
But don’t despair! There are plenty of things you can do ranging from driving awareness of your brand online to increasing traffic to your website, making the right connections with your customers and developing long term relationships with your audience.
Here are 10 practical SME marketing tips for your online business and how to get the most from your brand:
1. Create a Targeted Customer Persona
Knowing your target audience is essential for creating effective B2B marketing campaigns. By understanding the motivations and needs of your target customer you can create content and outreach that is personal and relevant, leading to targeted communication.
Speak with existing customers to better understand how they use your product and services, find out their pain points, and what you can do to help.
2. Establish Brand Positioning
Determining your brand positioning can be a key factor in successful B2B marketing. By creating a unique value proposition, your business will stand out from the competition and attract your target audience.
It's important to define what you are offering, whether it’s a product, service, or a combination of both.
3. Have a Clear Brand Identity
Yes, a logo, colour pallet and photography style are important factors for consistency and should be clear in your brand guidelines. But have you considered how you want your brand to show up in the world, it’s personality and how you want your customers, or clients to perceive your brand and remember it?
It’s important to develop a consistent visual image and ideas across all platforms such as your logo, website, social media, and more.
When was the last time you really defined your brand personality, tone of voice and characteristics? This is what makes brands unique and memorable.
4. Develop a Content Strategy
Developing a content strategy for your brand is essential to reach and engage with customers. Content that’s useful, and of high quality, can help establish strong brand affinity and provide customers with the information they need to make an informed purchase decision.
Using focussed and consistent content through storytelling, helps customers understand your product, or service, and how it could potentially benefit them.
5. Customer Journey & Marketing Channels
Your brand should explore a variety of marketing channels to create a comprehensive B2B marketing strategy across different customer touchpoints. Nurturing your audience from driving awareness, to purchase, or retention, requires careful consideration each step of the way.
Different channels play a role in driving key messages with your customer from social media, email, SEO and blogging, to influencer marketing and paid media advertising, linking this back to each stage of the customer journey.
6. Use Social Media to Build Relationships
Social media is a powerful tool for your business and brand to build relationships with customers. Pick a platform your customer is present on (refer back to your persona). It provides an effective way to engage with your audience to drive awareness, create trust and meaningful relationships.
Social media is a good way to connect with your customers, and build relationships. This can be done by responding to customer comments, answering questions, and providing useful content. By engaging with customers, your brand can build ongoing trust and long term relationships.
7. Invest in Search Engine Optimisation
Investing in search engine optimisation (SEO) can be an effective way to boost your B2B marketing efforts. SEO helps optimise your website to rank higher in search results, which can result in more website visitors, more potential customers, and ultimately more revenue.
It's an affordable way to get your prospects' attention through organic search and reach the top of the rankings without having to pay for it with pay-per-click ads. By using on-page, and off-page SEO tactics, you can get the most out of your inbound marketing strategy.
8. Create a 6 Month Plan
Creating a 6-month plan can help your business achieve its goals and stay ahead of competitors by providing a roadmap to set goals and develop strategies.
The plan contains all elements of the above points 4 to 7 which includes a content strategy, marketing channels, social media and SEO. It can help you stay organised and efficient, leading to increased productivity and effectiveness. It is recommended to ensure the different channels complement one another with communication to your audience and ensures the alignment of communication.
This should be reviewed regularly, as things do change which may influence the delivery of the plan. Also aligning this back to your metrics and KPIs is a useful way of assessing what has and hasn’t worked.
9. Gain Trust
Gaining trust is key for B2B marketers. Offer incentives for referrals, join professional networks, and share customer success stories. Leverage reviews, testimonials, and case studies from existing customers to build credibility and show potential customers how your product or service can solve their problems. Providing case studies can give customers the confidence to make an informed decision.
10. Check Your Analytics
Checking your analytics is a great way to keep track of the success of your online presence. By checking your analytics you can see what is working, such as which posts are getting the most engagement, and what is not working, such as which posts are not receiving enough views or engagement. Don’t forget to always track your website analytics also, across acquisition, engagement, conversion and retention. This data can help you identify potential areas of improvement and better target your audience.
If your brand is hoping to engage with new customers, or establish a powerful presence online. Utilise these 10 actionable marketing tactics to get off on the right foot.
If you need assistance, The Brand Map can help!
With everything from creating a unique brand and marketing plan to recognising your customer base.
We are here to help you!