If you own a small business, SME marketing is a strategy you should consider using to expand your audience and raise brand awareness. The creation and distribution of online content that increases the number of visitors to your website is called content marketing. Blogs, infographics, and whitepapers are examples of content marketing specifically focused on generating interest in your products or services.
What are the benefits of SME Marketing? Your firm can establish itself as a thought leader in your sector by delivering relevant, current information, strengthening brand awareness, and building consumer trust, respect, and loyalty. You may also use SME marketing to identify your customers’ pain points and explain how your products can help them, therefore, eventually leading to a sale.
SME Marketing: 6 Steps for Success
1. Start a blog
There has never been a better time for businesses to incorporate blogging into their SME marketing plan than now, with nearly 4 billion individuals worldwide connected to the internet. Blogging not only helps attract traffic to your website and promote your products and services, but it also helps create trust with potential clients.
Many people wonder if blogging is still worthwhile in 2021 after starting a business. Short answer: Yes! Here are some reasons for it:
Benefits of Blogging for SMEs:
- Grow online traffic.
- Nurture and convert customers.
- Keep current customers engaged.
- Differentiate you from other similar businesses.
- Increase demand and interest in your products or services.
2. Create a social media presence on the social media platforms that your target audience uses
If you’re in the business of selling products or services, you almost certainly have a social media presence. Being present is just not enough, unfortunately. You need to participate on platforms that your target audience uses.
How can you pick the best social media outlets for your business from the plethora of options? You must first determine your target audience before posting anywhere. You’re not communicating to everyone on social media; you’re speaking to a specialised group of consumers with specific interests. After you’ve determined who you’ll be communicating with, you’ll need to figure out how to contact them.
Identifying your audience’s active areas can be done in many ways. Let’s have a look at them.
- Aggregate all existing consumer data to find out how your audience spends their time online.
- See where your competitors have the most active users on their social profiles.
- Analyse consumer online behaviour using tools such as Google Analytics.
By taking the following three steps, you can identify where and how to deliver content to your target audience.
3. Start an email Newsletter
Nowadays, you’ll hear the same advice from every marketer: you need an email list, and you need to work hard to acquire one. Delivering regular email newsletters is an important part of growing a successful list. The objective of an email newsletter is to keep your subscribers up to date about your company, goods, and services. It’s not, however, something that’s commonly employed in a hard sale. Rather than a pushy salesperson, an email newsletter should feel like an update from a helpful friend.
That isn’t to claim that these newsletters are just for keeping in touch. They can be used to entice clients to take action, such as purchasing something or reading your most recent blog post. Your SME marketing campaign’s newsletters are frequently its lifeblood. Moreover, email marketing has been shown to be far more effective than social media marketing over the last decade.
4. Build a content calendar
In SME marketing, while it’s critical to put in the effort to define your customer personas and supply the content they require at each stage of the buyer’s journey, it’s also critical to keep producing relevant material on a regular basis.
Build monthly plans that contain social postings, blog entries, emails, and whatever other material you want to publish that month instead of scurrying to create content on the spur of the moment. This method not only keeps you organised but also allows your readers to get used to a content schedule and develop trust and familiarity with your brand.
5. Create a variety of content types
It’s critical to stand out in a crowded market in any way you can. Your SME marketing plan is one approach to accomplish this for your small business.
Examine your present material as well as that of your competitors. Examine what is and is not resonating with audiences. It’s time to strive to repeat your efficacy with your upcoming material now that you’ve demonstrated efficacy.
Then it’s time to let your imagination run. Don’t be constrained by what’s currently there. Make an infographic out of your most recent blog post, then transform your infographic into a whitepaper and make a series of quote-centric social tiles out of your white paper. The possibilities for content development are endless.
6. Mine customer reviews and testimonials
Local consumers use online media, including reviews, to find local providers in 97% of cases. If you’re a tiny, local business, this implies that your reviews are the lifeblood of your operation. Bring those reviews to life with social media postings and testimonials on your website and blog to make them work as hard as you do. You make that review much more personal by sourcing the greatest statements and putting a face to the name, resulting in a consumer-generated ad that speaks for itself.
Conclusion
Even if your SME marketing budget is limited, you can still implement most, if not all, of the above six tactics. You’re well on your way to building a winning SME marketing plan that can grow your audience and enhance overall sales after correctly identifying your customer personas.
