Five ways small businesses can create effective marketing campaigns
Today there are more marketing opportunities available to small businesses than ever before. Discover five ways you can plan marketing campaigns to make the most of them.
The big brands always made marketing look easy, with glossy magazine spreads, imaginative TV adverts and eye-catching billboards – traditionally the best (and often only) ways for companies to get their name out.
But while effective, big advertising campaigns come with equally impressively-sized budgets, placing them well out of reach of most small businesses.
Now, thanks to advancements in technology, social media, and the changing habits of consumers, small businesses have more opportunity than ever to directly compete with their larger counterparts when attracting customers.
Five ways to create effective marketing campaigns
So how DO you take advantage of modern marketing channels to reach thousands of potential new customers? PR and creative agency Peppermint Soda outline five of the most effective steps you can take to use what’s available to you.
1) Influence and innovate
For people to know who you are, trust your brand and purchase your products or services, you need to become recognised in the market. And today, the best way to do this is to establish yourself as an expert in your industry.
This means creating strong, authoritative content on subjects you know your audience will be interested in. This can be anything from instructional videos and top 10 blogs to whitepapers and slide shows.
Good content will help you establish your company and attract interested visitors to your site whilst also encouraging audience growth, new leads and improved brand perception and awareness.
2) Repurpose great content
There is no question that it’s a large, time-consuming job for a small marketing team to regularly create authoritative and insightful content pieces. And that’s where repurposing comes in.
Repurposing existing content is a great way to breathe new life into your strongest and most detailed evergreen pieces.
There are many different ways to shake up popular pieces of content:
- Turn blog posts into handy info graphics.
- Turn whitepapers or detailed guides into webinars.
- Turn videos into slideshows.
- Create bite size social posts out of blog pieces.
The possibilities are endless. Plus, the more varied the content you create, the greater the chances of connecting with a greater audience.
3) Integrate your marketing
An integrated marketing campaign combines different channels together in order to deliver your message. There are so many platforms available to small businesses now that there is no single failsafe option that will maximise your marketing reach.
Integrating marketing is all about drawing from all of the different channels available to you. This means using social media to engage with potential customers, connecting both online and offline, keeping all your channels in sync and being aware of new trends.
Yes, an integrated marketing requires spinning a lot of plates at once, but it’s important that you cover all bases to ensure you get your message across.
4) Find out what your competitors are up to
As a small business, it’s beneficial to understand your competitors’ activity, and how effectively their campaigns are performing. This way, you can gain insight into their behaviours, predict what they are likely to do next and understand what your audience reacts well to.
There are some really great tools that can help you make a full competitor analysis. SpyFu, Google Trends and Google Alerts will all help you stay ahead of the competition.
5) Be prepared
You can have the best content in the world, understand your competitors better than themselvesand utilise every different type of marketing. But unless you create a detailed planner that organises all your efforts and sets realistic timeframes and goals, your efforts could fall flat.
A good marketing calendar is such an important tool for any small business to have, because when a team knows exactly what needs to be done and when by, it makes for a calmer, more focused atmosphere. It also helps with the coordination between media relations, content creation and social media, so everyone in your team is on the same page.
Just because your business is smaller, it doesn’t mean that your marketing campaigns have to be. A great idea is a great idea, and with all the avenues available to small businesses now, they have as much of a chance to get their message out there as the big players.
Lonn Landis is a studio manager at the PR and creative agency Peppermint Soda. Download their ready-made integrated marketing Campaign Planner to give you a head start on planning your campaign.
