How to market your small business

The core component of any marketing strategy is market research. This broad term encompasses the collection of information of all kinds that provides an insight into your customers’ thinking, buying patterns, demographics, location and more. Market research has so many different benefits. It allows you to make sales forecasts, discover and monitor market trends, find out what consumers want, what your competitors are doing and what strategies are working for other companies.

The first thing that you need to do is profile your target customer

It is useless to try and sell your product to everyone. Your product will not be a perfect fit for every consumer. In fact, you don’t want it to be. Low-cost, mass produced items like Coca-Cola and toothbrushes generally have a mass market appeal. As a small business owner, you will not be selling products like this. You need to figure out and define who your target customer and target market is by segmenting your new clients based on their demographics and behaviours. Once you know who you are selling to, you can construct an effective brand strategy.

Demographics and behaviours that you can use to segment your market include:

• Geography
• Age
• Income and socio-economic status
• Brand loyalty
• Usage patterns
• Personal values

You need to run a cost analysis and determine if enough of your target audience is prepared to consistently spend enough money for your business to be profitable.

USP – or why customers should choose your product

Your USP is your unique selling point. It’s the feature or benefit of your product that sets it aside from the competition. There’s no use having a great USP if your customers don’t know about it. You need to clearly and effectively communicate your USP to your target market and make sure your USP is communicated in your marketing strategy.

Your USP doesn’t have to be a feature or a benefit of your product. It can be an aspect of your customer service model. To develop a USP you should brainstorm:

What is your favourite aspect of your product/ service?

What skills and talents set you apart from other people in your field?

What is currently bringing customers into your business?

What utilities are you currently offering your customers?

Which parts of your product or service do you emphasise when describing your business to others?

 What’s your business’s unique brand?

In this day and age, you cannot afford to simply be a business. You have to be a brand as well. Your brand is the vibe created by your company. It encapsulates your values, what you mean and what you can deliver to your customers. It gives customers an idea and a lifestyle to identify with or buy into.

Where to market?

Traditionally, marketing was limited to word of mouth, TV, radio, print, cold calling and posters.

These options are still available today, but so are many more. These include social media, blog posts, websites, emails and more. You need to figure out which channels your target market is most likely to access and then do the majority of your marketing on those channels.

What are your marketing goals and what is your budget?

Every marketing campaign needs goals. You can determine how effective your campaign has been by seeing how well it has met its goals. The acronym SMART is a great way to construct effective goals for a marketing campaign. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-based.

It goes without saying that marketing is not free. You will need to budget for marketing. Expenses can include:

• Building and maintaining a website
• Engaging in SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation
• Creating visual branding content
• Printing advertising material such as pamphlets
• Paying to run external advertisements
• Making donations and sponsorships
• Payroll for marketing staff

Customers are key

Without customers your business would not be able to generate revenue. Customers can be other businesses or members of the public. Ideally you want pre-existing customers to keep on returning to your business to purchase your product or service. You also want to convert new customers. In an increasingly cluttered marketplace, your customer service can be a USP or unique selling point. Many customers will choose your business if they have a great experience there.

So how can you foster customer loyalty? You can:

• Communicate regularly with your customers on social media or using emails
• Follow up after a sale via email or phone
• Make sure that you deliver on your claims
• Do that little bit extra to exceed your customer’s expectations
• Use negative feedback as an opportunity to improve
• Listen to what your customers like and want
• Thoroughly train your staff on customer service and procedural protocols

Monitor and review

It’s not enough to simply create and implement a great marketing strategy. You should constantly monitor its efficacy against your goals to determine your ROI or return on investment. You can look at metrics such sales volume, value or number of customers.

It may be useful to download free or paid software to help you do this. You will also need to review your marketing plan. Initially, you should look at it once every three months. A year or two down the track you can start reviewing it every 6 months or every time you change your product or service offering or business structure.

You should also look at it if you get a new competitor or your industry undergoes significant changes or challenges.

One last thing to consider for your business is insurance. It’s important to have the right business insurance cover, so you can focus on other aspects of the business. Find out more about business insurance here.