How Will Small Businesses Market Themselves ?
The Internet has leveled the playing field for small businesses in many ways, including allowing them to advertise their wares across a nation and across the world via their websites. As more marketing has gone digital and started taking advantage of technologies that are essentially free (e.g., blogs, social media) small business are finding that they are now more able than ever to compete with the big guns in their field.
Digital marketing strategies are changing quickly, as consumers become more informed and start wanting different things from the brands they follow. Here are four marketing trends that small businesses will use in 2015.
#1. Social Media Advertising
Social media marketing is most effective when it is used as a way to drive traffic to branded content and brand websites. But the success of social media marketing depends on the ability of companies to actually get their message in front of potential customers. Until now, this goal has been accomplished by creating and engaging with user communities and using social media to foster customer relationships, but social media companies themselves are starting to make this more difficult.
For example, Facebook is now charging for companies to get their posts seen by more than a miniscule percentage of their audience, and they are starting to succeed in the mobile ad market as well. Twitter is also using more paid promotion these days, and other social media platforms are likely to follow suit. This is not necessarily bad news for small businesses—while social media marketing may now be moving toward a more traditional advertising model, it is a highly effective way for companies to reach their niche audiences.
#2. Sponsored Content
The popularity of sponsored content has risen, fallen, and is in the process of rising again. Paid advertising on social media sites are just the beginning. Small businesses can also increase their reach by paying for sponsored placement on blogs and popular websites within their niche. The key to a successful sponsored content strategy is to ensure that you are paying for your content to get in front of the right eyes. Before forking over the cash for a sponsored spot, ensure that the site or platform on which you will be publishing is read by the audience you want to reach.
Infographics, YouTube videos, and other visual media will continue to be the most effective types of content, sponsored or otherwise.
#3. Promotion via Industry Experts
Engaging industry experts is an excellent way for small business to make a big splash. This can be done in several ways, such as interviewing experts for an article or a podcast, writing about experts on a blog, or broadcasting expert opinions via social media sites.
Small businesses in particular can benefit from these tactics as they can essentially result in free advertising. When you interview or write about an industry expert, that expert will then promote your content to his or her professional network, which is likely to include a large number of important connections.
#4. Micro-targeting
The shotgun approach to advertising is all but obsolete, and it was never very effective for small businesses, which don’t usually have the budgets to compete on such a large scale. Consumers are increasingly looking for personalized content (and increasingly ignoring non-personalized content), so micro-targeting audience segments and individuals is becoming even more important. Fortunately, business analytics tools are getting better and more affordable all of the time, so even the smallest businesses can implement a micro-targeting approach.
As consumers are changing, so are the marketing techniques that are most effective. By and large, this is good news for small businesses, which can use new technologies just as well as large companies. This list represents just four of the many tools marketing tools small businesses will use.
Continue reading here: 7 Almost-Effortless Ways to Engage with Mobile Marketing Automation
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