7 Smart Marketing Hacks Small Businesses Can Start Today

No matter how terrific your product or service is — business success often hinges on your marketing strategy. If you feel you are getting left behind, we have some simple solutions to help you gain traction on your competition. Below are seven marketing hacks you can implement to better reach your target audience today.

Unfortunately, not every business is able to hire someone that specializes in marketing. However, that’s not the end for you. It’s only the beginning. Below, you will find tips that can take virtually no time at all in the grand scheme of things, along with some actions that may take a little longer depending on how much time you are willing to dedicate to your growing business and your community. Let’s start simple.

1. Plan Ahead for Everything

While this can be a little overwhelming at first, creating a game plan on what your daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly marketing actions will look like will save you time and money in the long-run. This can be as big as outlining who you need to contact to host or sponsor events at county, state, or school fairs and even as small and meticulous as choosing what social media posts to send out down to the specific second on your social media outlets. Regardless of the size of the event, being able to outline what you want to achieve will save you time, money, and sanity. You will thank yourself for it later.

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QUICK TIP: A great way to do this is to utilize calendars/reminders, the many tools via Google Drive and/or Microsoft Office, and by searching for online tools such as HootSuite, Buffer, and TweetDeck to help post status updates at specific times during the day.

2. Invest in a Well-Designed Business Website

When it takes as little as 50 milliseconds (or 0.05 seconds) for a user to form an opinion about your website that will keep them there or send them away, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn how essential it is to have a great-looking and well-operating website. So, while this may not be the quickest action to take when beginning or improving your marketing, taking time to design and develop a quick-loading, responsive, informative website before launching it live will save time in the long run.

QUICK TIPS: (1) Go to your favorite websites, perhaps even your competitors, and take note of what gets your attention and what turns you away. (2) Be sure that your website operates smoothly on both desktops and mobile devices. (3) Consider using exit-intent coupons — small offers that pop up on the screen as a user hovers their mouse pointer away from the website have been found to convert upwards of 35% of consumers exiting the webpage. Resources such as Beeketing and OptinMonster can help you create them today.

3. Get Comfortable Using Major Social Media

It can be confusing, controversial, and convoluted — but, social media remains as one of the best tools for small business to market towards potential consumers. Consider these quick facts:

• There are more people in your community that use the internet to compare product and services prices, quality, and ease of use than those who don’t. Powerhouses like eBay and Amazon use data-mining to learn more about your customers, then create tailored advertisements to reach those same dollars you are competing for. You have to be prepared to go to the same battlefield your competitors are on.
• Whether they are actively posting, commenting, following, or messaging, consumers are using social media significantly more than than any other medium. TV and radio ads can cost a pretty penny, but posting business updates and advertisements on social media is easier and cheaper than ever. Meet your customers where they are spending most of their time.
• Customers have many questions and concerns, so don’t give them any time where they can’t reach out to you. Having a presence on social media creates that greatly-needed relationship between you and the customer.

QUICK TIPS: (1) Use social media to get to know your customers so that you can tailor your products and services to their unique desires and needs; (2) Save time and hassle by using only the social media outlets that your target audience uses. If you have no current or potential customers on Twitter or Snapchat, for example, it may not be worth creating an account and being active on those platforms.

4. Create Facebook Ads

As alluded to in the above subsection, one of the best and cheapest ways to promote your businesses in general and with specific promotions is to create targeted ad campaigns on social media platforms. These can be video ads, blog posts, or special offers. One of the most popular marketing tactics is to create a promotion that gives away a free item or service to someone who follows the business on that social media outlet, as well as likes and shares the small business’ original post. Not only will this get consumers excited about your services, but it increases your consumer base with little cost.

5. Post Videos

Live videos on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube can seem tricky, but they by no means have to be flashy and extravagant (though they certainly can be if you have the time and technical know-how). In fact, they can be done with the ease of a smartphone. Live videos allow streamers to show off products and services, respond to viewers, and explain promotions all in real-time. “What if I go live during a time that some of my target audience can’t view it?” That’s no problem; Live videos on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can be automatically saved to your page so that others can view the video later at their convenience.

QUICK TIP: Do NOT let your live videos appear to be randomly planned or recorded. Let your consumers know when you are going to go live. Further, reward your consumers who watch your videos live by offering a free or reduced promotion to a lucky viewer who tunes in at the right time!

6. Incentivize Reviews

Tuning in to live videos isn’t the only thing you can incentivize. In addition to encouraging consumers and potential consumers to like, share, and subscribe to your page, be willing to encourage authentic reviews of your products and services. This helps in two ways:

• This can help create consumers who want to keep coming back to you because you are willing to help them out with good products AND good deals.
• This will encourage you to provide the best products and services as possible, lest you let a consumer leave a less-than-flattering online review for all to see. Offer a weekly, monthly, or quarterly deal for consumers to purchase and/or review your services.

7. Offer Free Content

Companies who are willing to give away some of their best stuff quickly build loyal followers. Providing “premium access” to consumers who are willing to exchange their contact information goes a long way towards fostering community, establishing your business as an expert in the field, and building your list of qualified leads. Time well spent!