How to market your small business

If you are a business owner of a small business you may not have thousands of punds few every month to spend on marketing. You need to think very carefully about how best to invest your marketing budget to quickly see a decent return on your investment.

You should already know how important your customers are as not only might you rely on their repeat business but also their word of mouth reviews to gain you more customers. Word of mouth marketing is great, but it is not ideal to have to solely rely on it.  You need to explore other marketing avenues that work well for your industry and business. Costs can often be tight in a small business so each pound needs to be spent wisely. There are a few ways in which you can market your small business for little money or sometimes for free but you often do need to be willing to invest some of your time.

Social media is a great marketing platform for business of all sizes. It allows you to connect with people in your local area if your business is aimed locally or nationally. Setting up a profile or account on the social media sites is very easy but you may find that you struggle to manage them. If this is the case then you may wish to either go on a social media marketing training course or outsource the management to a third party.

Using social media to publicise local events

The vast majority of people under the age of sixty have access to social media and even if they do not consistently post on their page, they will be able to be part of groups in the local community and follow posts about local events. Although the idea of using a parish noticeboard situated in a prominent position has been used for years this is becoming a much less effective way of communication largely due to the fact that fewer people are walking to the local shops than in previous times and therefore they are not seeing the notices placed there.

If you want to publicise an event a better way of reaching the community is through a social media community page. Some of the members act as administrators on the page and monitor the posts and comments before allowing them to be uploaded removing any that break the page rules. People can request to join the group and, in some groups, have to wait to be accepted before they can begin posting. This method of communication is useful as it can convey new information quickly for instance in the case of roadworks or a postponed event. If you can offer a service to your local community it can be advertised on the local community page too.

Can Social Media business pages replace a Website?

Promoting your small business is essential to making it a success but you may ask yourself whether the plus points of having a website are cost effective as employing a web designer and developer to build a business website can cost anything from a few hundred pounds upwards. If you are able to set up a business page on a social media platform yourself this is usually free and quite easy to do.

Most social media platforms such as Facebook have good marketing capabilities allowing you to advertise and sell products, receive and comment on reviews and make money from advertising revenue. Tracking of visits to the pages can be scrutinised giving an insight into what is working well and what is not bringing in any business.

Many businesses prefer however to have their own website so that they can control the content and any changes are made by them or their web designer but if you have a web presence on a social media platform, it is possible that they can make changes which may have an impact on your business. For instance, advertising links may be inappropriate for the audience you are targeting, or negative customer reviews may be posted without giving your business the opportunity to resolve issues.

Is email marketing still a good form of marketing?

Over the past few decades there have been so many different forms of marketing

Email marketing has been around for years and for some companies has worked really well. It is not always the cheaper form of marketing but is often more cost effective than sending out postal marketing letters, flyers or brochures and it is easily tracked. This allows you to see if it is working and what sort of revenue it is bringing in. With this information you can then make an informed decision as to whether to continue.

People often get bombarded with emails from companies trying to sell something and these emails often get deleted with no action taken, so it is fair for business owners and decision makers to worry about investing in this form of marketing. Companies such as Wowcher, Amazon and Tescos use email marketing as a huge part of their marketing strategy because it works for them. With many of us picking up emails on our mobile phones, email has become a quick way to get in touch with someone. In the current lick down situation, even more people have the time to read their emails and are more likely to shop online so now may be the best time to try it.

What is the basics of SEO?

As a web programmer you will hopefully have at least a basic knowledge of SEO. Its amazing how many websites are built with limited or no SEO in them.  SEO (search engine optimisation) is a technique that includes a number of different elements that if done correctly will help improve the ranking position of your website on the search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.

All web programmers should be able to do the basic elements of SEO. They site needs to be built in such a way that it is possible to add in the SEO elements. For example H1 (heading one tag) should be found once on every page and above the H2, H3 tags etc. This is basically a title for a page and should be highly relevant to the rest of the content on that particular page. Google often uses this title to find out what the page is about. Other SEO techniques is to include meta date unique for each page and having internal links to the correct pages.

If you find that a website you have designed and programmed is not performing well on the search engines, go back and double check that you have all the relevant SEO in place.