As a small business owner, there’s certainly no doubt that you’ve seen overly-complex explanations in the search to become more competitive. It can certainly be frustrating when you don’t have a lot of spare time and just want some clear answers.
Luckily, at Reform Digital, we have a whole host of marketing pros who love to share their experiences from over the years. So here are our tips and techniques to keep your small business competitive that have a proven track record.
How Can My Small Business Compete With Bigger Ones?
It can seem daunting at first, especially if your business is relatively new, to step into the world of marketing with competitors who have been around for decades. You have a product or service with lots to offer, but no multi-million dollar advertising budget, or high rise office somewhere in New York.
But the truth is there are many ways you can stay competitive if you are willing to learn and put the time in. Even with a small budget, there are plenty of ways to promote your brand and grow as a business as long as you have the right marketing support.
Here are a few of our favourite methods:
Cost-Effective Paid Marketing
These techniques are designed for businesses with small budgets. With a bit of tweaking and a clever paid advert targeting, you can keep the costs low with huge returns on your investment.
Google Ads
When it comes to your website, it’s a good bet that most of your users will come from Google. After all, it is the world’s most-used search engine, handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day.
A Google Ads campaign allows businesses to target specific consumers based on their age , gender, location, shopping habits and other demographics. The best part for small businesses is that you only need to pay when someone clicks on your ad. That’s why it’s known as ‘PPC’ or ‘Pay-per-Click’ advertising. It’s a great way to keep a handle on your budget.
Bing Ads
Google’s weird distant relative, it may not be as popular, but makes it an excellent platform for small businesses, as a Bing Ads campaign can focus on a much smaller audience with less competition.
A PPC campaign on Bing will usually provide a more affordable entry point than its Google counterpart. This comes with the fact that Bing still has around 1.1 billion people using it for searches every month.
A combination of paid advertising with content and social marketing can lead to huge results.
One of our clients in the stationary industry experienced huge results after 1 year our marketing efforts, experiencing a 73% increase in total sales compared to the same sime last year.
Low Cost Marketing
SEO Copywriting
For an SEO Copywriter, content just isn’t content unless it has been thoroughly optimised for the platform it is going to run on. In most cases, this will be Google (it does take up 94% of the search engine market after all).
There are some techniques that professional copywriting services use to attract user traffic to a website that you can use for yourself. And the best thing is (with a bit of practice) it’s a very cost-effective approach.
The Power of Keywords
Keywords refer to the particular words or phrases people use when searching on platforms like Google and Bing.
If, for example, a potential customer was looking for birthday party balloons, some of the keywords may be: ‘Birthday party’, ‘happy birthday balloons’ or ‘how many birthday balloons should I buy?’
Software such as Semrush and Ahrefs can help you find the perfect keywords to attract these kinds of customers.
Ranking On Google
‘EEAT’ stands for ‘Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness’. These principles are the bread and butter of any good SEO Copywriter, and they are what Google’s crawler bots love to eat up (as stated by Google themselves).
By creating content that follows these guidelines, your website can rank higher on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and be seen by more customers who want to buy from you.
Social Media Marketing
Many small business owners shrivel at the thought of using social media. Yes, the rules it follows change almost daily, and yes, it can seem difficult to connect with users in a place with so much noise going on. But as Reform Digital is also a social media agency, our team of SMM (Social Media Marketing) wizards know all the ins and outs of social media advertising.
Here are the basics for each social media platform to help you decide which ones are best for you:
Pinterest Advertising
If you have a photogenic product or service, Pinterest advertising has massive potential to reach millions of users sharing and ‘pinning’ their favourite pics. 76% of users on Pinterest are female, so creating beautiful visuals is the best way to build an audience here.
Facebook Advertising
With such a massive user base, the most useful thing about Facebook advertising is that the results are endlessly measurable. You can really focus on attracting the right customers and refining based on how the last one performed.
With new powerful customer targeting systems that use AI such as Meta’s new Advantage+, the return on ad spend becomes much greater. This means your money goes further.
TikTok Advertising
With over 1 billion active users from around the world, TikTok isn’t just the new kid on the block – it is the block! If you have a slightly younger audience, then TikTok advertising is the perfect way to promote short video content that celebrates your brand. Millennials also use it a lot as well, so there is a lot of purchasing power here.
YouTube Advertising
The great thing about advertising on YouTube is that the content is super organic, meaning the return on investment can be huge. With the right visuals and tone, anyone has the chance to make it big. If you don’t have the resources to make your own video content, running a small ad campaign is a great way to target viewers who might be interested in your business. It can also be built into your Google ads campaign.
Instagram Advertising
Just like Pinterest, Instagram is a place to share photos with a huge array of people. However, Instagram marketing focuses on connecting with potential customers in a fun and engaging way. It’s also super-easy to set up your own store page so customers can buy directly on your Instagram posts without having to go to a brick-and-mortar store or even a website. Convenience is still king.
LinkedIn Advertising
LinkedIn is the place to be for B2B communication. But it’s also a great place to establish your brand and build those relationships that can generate exciting new leads. If you are working with a smaller budget, creating content for LinkedIn posts is a great way to get interested eyeballs to your webpage. We have found that LinkedIn advertising can be a truly efficient way to compete with the big dogs.
Email Marketing
Unlike a blog writing service, an email marketing campaign gives you direct access to customers who want to see what you have to offer. It is also easily customisable, and you can narrow down your focus by creating segments for your campaign.
When used correctly, working with an email marketing agency is a powerful tool that:
- Organically attract traffic to your website
- Boost sales
- Complete surveys
- Win back old customers
Email is a game changer if it’s done right, and our email marketing experts are here to help if you need support.
For all your marketing needs, contact us or call 0385 648 509. We do things differently and work with you side-by-side.
