Fresh ideas for small business marketing that are smart, achievable and don’t blow the budget are like rocket fuel for business owners. Give us a little bit of inspiration and a few quiet hours and we can make magic! The key is knowing what you’re trying to achieve (i.e. your business goals) and having access to smart strategies to help you move closer to those goals.
Hunting for general ideas for small business marketing without knowing what you’re actually trying to do is a waste of time. So, if you’ve worked out which lever you need to pull right now – to improve your website rankings, get automated, grow your followers or produce better videos – this list is a great source of inspiration.
SEO ideas to make your website a click magnet
1) Site speed. Check how fast or slow your website is using an online speed test tool like this one, then have a read of this recent blog of ours to understand better how you gained that score. For ideas on how to speed your site up, try to…
2) Resize or compress your images. If the results of your site speed test suggest your photos are too large, here’s how to fix that. If you have a WordPress site, consider adding a plugin (choose from this list) which compresses your images for you. If you have a Shopify site, there are many apps available which will do this. For other websites (e.g. Squarespace) may have to manually resize your photos and reload them to your site.
3) Write and add optimised blogs blogs to your site regularly. Choose a phrase which is topical for your area – a good place to start is with one of your FAQs – and write 500 clear, concise words on this topic. Add to your site with appropriate metadata (especially ensure your meta description is on point) and correctly sized images.
Social Media ideas to grow followers on your favourite platforms
4) Who do you follow that you admire and respect on social media, preferably in your line of work? Check out their list of followers. If any appeal, follow them yourself, and drop them a message introducing yourself and saying why you followed them.
5) Make friends with the ‘insights’ or ‘analytics’ tab on each platform you use. Learn which of your posts have provoked the most engagement, or scored the most likes or shares. Decipher what these posts have in common, and brainstorm a list of similar posts to share.
6) Ask people. Friends, family, old colleagues, clients – ask them to follow your page (pretty please) via direct message.
Automation tips to make marketing less time-consuming
7) My favourite tools for automating marketing tasks include email marketing automation tools such as Mailchimp and Klaviyo for ‘flow’ email sequences; social media scheduling software like Oneup app and productivity tools like Monday or ClickUp (which we couldn’t live without at Digital Narrative!).
8) Consider an integrated calendar app like Calendly to allow customers and would-be customers to book a free slot in your calendar for a sales call, without interrupting you.
9) If your business activity relies on customers providing you with information before you can begin work, create interactive lists or forms which you can send them upon project commencement. Detailing what you need from them and how you need it. Have an email template with this link or form attached/embedded/hyperlinked and each time you take on a new customer, simply adjust and send this email.
Video tips to improve your content engagement and reach
10) Firstly, bravo! This is one of the best things you can be spending your energy on now. Secondly, it’s not as hard as you think. Here are 3 easy video ideas (yes, a list within a list!) to round out our 10 small business marketing ideas.
a) If the thought of a live Reel or Tik Tok makes you want to cry, don’t do it live! Film yourself using a selfie tripod – this one from Typo is a bargain – and edit it using Inshot (app) or Canva (desktop). You’ll be able to choose your best take, edit out mistakes and correct lighting etc before you even open Instagram or Tik Tok.
b) Every video doesn’t need to contain you. Consider creating slideshow style videos from stock videography or imagery and animated text in Canva.
c) You don’t need to talk. Some really popular videos now feature music and captions, but no talking. They tend to be shorter, and great at communicating one single idea.
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