5 Top Best Ways To Market Your Business

For many small to mid-sized business owners, marketing is a mystery. Some have a plan while others have a more “Field Of Dreams” approach (If I build it, they will come). The reality is that once you have a “Wow!” website, your marketing doesn’t end there. You have to work it, but that’s where some folks just shrug and hope for the best.

We’d like to make it simple because there’s elegance in simplicity. We talk about this stuff all the time, so we thought we’d blog about it. The question is, “How do I market my website (which is really marketing your business)?” We’ll give you our top 5 best ways to market your business to bring your target market to your digital front door. (The order of these just depends upon your business and industry):

1.       Search Engine Optimization (SEO):  marketing is all about getting your business in front of as many eyeballs as possible (within your target market). SEO is all about getting your website seen by putting it on page one of the search engines. It’s not an overnight process, but it puts your business where it needs to be seen the most.

2.       Pay Per Click (PPC):  Many people are afraid of PPC because they don’t understand it. It works like this- what is your average customer worth to you? $100? $500? More? Now, how much are you willing to spend to bring in one customer? For example, if your average customer brings in $500, then you only need one new customer a month from PPC to break even if you spend $500/month. With 2 new clients, you’re making money and so on. We recently saw a client double his monthly business through PPC!

3.       Social Media Marketing:  This is using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc to market what you do. We advise people to define their target market and work on establishing a presence on the social media channels where those people spend time. This approach to marketing is more about starting conversations with your people rather than hard selling. There’s a lot to be said about establishing yourself as an industry expert or helpful resource to draw people into what you do.

4.       Email Marketing:  We are still surprised at how many business owners don’t collect customer emails or do collect them and don’t do anything with them. Email marketing is based around this thought, “Would you rather do business with someone you know and already trust or do business with a stranger?” This isn’t about spamming people as much as it is about getting customers to opt in for deals, specials and news about what you do. This drives traffic to your site and through your front door.

5.       Networking:  Yes, this means getting out there and shaking a lot of hands. The more people see you and get to know you, the more they can help you be successful. There are plenty of networking groups and opportunities through the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce and other groups. You can visit most closed networking groups twice before you have to decide on joining, but this gives you a great chance to get to know a lot of helpful people out there. It’s been the key to our success here at Make It Loud.

When you’re a small to mid-sized business owner, you wear a lot of hats. It’s easy to spend so much time working in your business that you don’t leave time to work on your business. Balancing it all often requires some outsourcing. We manage most of these resources for our customers who often pick and choose what resources they want and which ones they can budget for. Most importantly, it’s critical to keep an eye on what resources are available for your success and stay focused on what works. We can help. Call Make It Loud to talk to one of our consultants today!