Small Business Advertising: Simple Ways To Market Your Brand
Running a small business may seem like a breeze compared to operating an entire corporation, but small businesses come with their fair share of difficulties. Every business has started out small, and as a small business owner, the main challenge you face is establishing a decent client base to support your day-to-day operations.
Small business owners are constantly on the lookout for potential customers as well as opportunities for them to implement their marketing strategies. However, the financial limitations of a small business makes it difficult for them to reach the advertising ideas of large, established corporations.
Fortunately, there are still numerous ways for business owners to increase brand awareness using small business advertising ideas and strategies that are both effective, and inexpensive.
Here are some simple strategies you can use to market your local business and drive in more customers.
10 SIMPLE WAYS TO MARKET YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
1. USE ONLINE TOOLS LIKE GOOGLE ADS
Google Ads is an effective digital marketing tool to use across all types of businesses. Creating an account is free - simply follow the steps to set up your business account, and you can start advertising on Google’s search engine results. The fees are relatively inexpensive compared to most advertisement spaces, and are effective for when consumers search keywords.
The most common form of advertising on Google Ads is the PPC, or Pay-Per-Click advertising model, which ensures that you only pay for each time a potential customer clicks on your ad. The PPC offers you immediate engagement with potential customers, and is a great gauge for how well your business stands out from the competition.
2. GO FOR SPONSORED ADS ON SOCIAL MEDIA SITES
While scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, you may have noticed that ads litter every other post or so. While some ads may be repetitive and annoying for the social media user, they are helpful for brands to create awareness for their business by showing potential customers that they exist, and are offering these helpful products or services.
Most sponsored ads are inexpensive, and are tailored to the user’s data history for the best chance that the viewer of an ad will click on the link. Facebook, too, encourages users to put out sponsored ads by providing businesses with complimentary ad credits. Sponsored ads are great for local businesses looking to connect with their target audience.
3. MAINTAIN A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
More than just sponsored Facebook ads, small businesses will benefit from establishing and maintaining a social media presence in the forms of constant updates, relevant posts, and consumer engagement. Social media marketing strategy is at the height of digital marketing, and businesses can bank on the fact that creating an online page for their business is typically free.
4. PARTNER WITH LOCAL INFLUENCERS AND ARTISTS
Influencer marketing is a controversial marketing strategy, especially with news going around about so-called ‘influencers’ attempting to gain freebies from brands and businesses. However, partnering with local influencers and artists that have (1) a good amount of followers, and (2) are relevant to the nature of your business can drive more customers your way when done properly.
Japanese businesses, for example, love partnering with local artists to create more consumer traffic to their brand. One example is Snow, a Japanese app that provides digital filters and stickers, partnered with Mofu Sand, a local artist who specializes in cute cat illustrations in their Snow JPxMofu Sand collaboration.
5. PARTNER WITH LOCAL BRANDS
Besides local personalities, partnering with local brands and businesses is another great way to mutually benefit from a collaboration is to create small business advertising ideas and campaigns with another local brand to harmoniously complement each other’s business, and bring in more customers to each brand.
6. CREATE BRANDED CONTENT
YouTube and Tiktok host some of the world’s most varied content and by now we’ve all seen a branded video or two mixed in with our favorite YouTubers and TikTok personalities. The alternative to collaborations would be to create content yourself, featuring your expertise and the products or services that your business offers.
An example would be the Vat19 YouTube channel, which has over 8 Million subscribers. Their channel presents as fun, marketable content, but are subliminally made as advertisements for the products they sell geared towards kids and teens. Their videos show how the products are used, and make the viewer feel like they can relate to the personalities in the channel.
7. PRINT CUSTOMIZED ITEMS WITH YOUR BRAND LOGO, CONTACT, AND NAME
Lastly, customized items bring a flair of luxury to your business. While many people think customized packaging, freebies, and merchandise are expensive, they can be cost-effective and gain a substantial return on investment (ROI) with the right supplier.
Here at My Own Water, we supply businesses with plastic and aluminum bottled water that are customizable to your brand’s design, aesthetic, and logo. Bring in awareness to your brand in an unconventional, but effective way with walking billboards on these portable water bottles.
8. HOST PHYSICAL AND ONLINE EVENTS
Nowadays, online events are the popular forms of branded events, but both physical and online events are great for bringing more awareness to your business, as well as driving more businesses to purchase your products or avail of your services. Online events are great for all sizes of businesses across different industries.
The key to creating a successful online event is to get the word out about your event as early as possible. The more people you reach, the more people can attend your event. Having freebies and giveaways will surely get your business some forms of engagement, and increase your likes and shares for your content.
9. GET FEATURED IN LOCAL REVIEW SITES AND BUSINESS FEATURES
Many local news sites typically have segments that feature local shops and businesses, with interviews from the manager or business owner on the nature of the business, the products or services offered, and the importance of these offerings to the consumers at home.
These segments are done in hopes to boost the local economy by getting locals to purchase from small, locally-owned businesses in the area. To get featured in a news segment or feature article, the business owner, social media manager, or marketing team would usually receive an email from the feature page asking if they would like to be featured in a segment.
10. SEND OUT BROCHURES AND PRINT ADVERTISING TO GET THE WORD OUT
Small business advertising also means to set aside some budget for print advertising. More often than not, business owners think that social media is enough to get the word out about their businesses. However, the effect of digital marketing is dependent on the demographics of their target market.
Businesses that target older age groups would typically do better with print advertising, as these brochures are offline, and can be viewed in person. Hand out brochures with a pleasing design and information about your business to attract more customers to your shop.
