Small Business Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide

Introduction

Small Business Marketing plays an important role in promoting the products and services that a Small Business offers. Marketing helps a Small Business build brand awareness, build relationships, increase sales opportunities and helps establish the brand as a strong partner within its local community.

Developing and crafting a marketing strategy that aligns with company goals is crucial for a small business’s growth and success. When marketing efforts are inconsistent, constantly shifting between tactics without a clear strategy in place, it’s like throwing spaghetti against a wall and hoping it sticks. 

While some pieces may adhere temporarily, the majority will simply fall off, leaving you with a messy, ineffective approach.

So what is Small Business Marketing?

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

To simplify this statement, Small Business Marketing is the overall strategy, the guiding principles, that work as a framework, while including the right marketing tactics within the plan that are geared toward a specific business.

Developing a marketing strategy and marketing plan that are for a specific business drive growth and the opportunity to scale a business. Sometimes, Small Business Owners want to jump right into the tactical part of the plan which derails growth, because they often overlook the boundaries that need to be set to grow.

Boundaries are needed in many aspects of life such as relationships, sports, driving a vehicle and even business. When a business establishes its boundaries inside its marketing strategy, it has  its guide; which helps keeps small business owners from chasing the shiny object syndrome.

Shiny object syndrome is when a small business owner chases the latest trends and whats new for a hot minute, and as soon as something else comes a long they drop the first trend for the next.

This gets a business nowhere.

A Small Business Owner that wants to have success in Marketing; must be committed to the marketing strategy for longer period of time than just a couple weeks or month.

Think of it this way… If you are thinking of implementing a new marketing tactic, first ask yourself… will this help me advance to one of the two larger goals I set within the strategy?

All of the tactical marketing effort, should lead to advancing the small businesses overarching goals.

Again that’s why you start with a Marketing Strategy; so that you get very clear on what you’re trying to achieve and to utilize your marketing budget and resources to the best of your ability.

Benefits of Marketing for Small Businesses

There’s multiple benefits to Small Business Marketing, which include increasing brand awareness, acquiring customers, retaining customers, developing a competitive advantage and driving revenue growth.

Did you know that it takes more than eight times for the average human brain to hear or see a message, for it to resonate within the brain?

So if a business is trying increase its brand awareness lets say within a local community or within its industry, it’s messaging has to be consistent and seen by the target market. 

When positioning a business within the market, the marketing strategy must define what is unique about the product, service or experience that a brand offers.

By incorporating these unique factors into the brand messaging, it helps increase that brand awareness through specific copywriting and creative elements that are developed for specific marketing channels.

Acquiring customers and retaining customers require different elements within the marketing strategy.  It’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain a current customer because a new customer isn’t aware of your brand.

They are defined as a cold audience, whereas, a customer you’re trying to retain, is one that’s already made a purchase from your business at some point.

The business has already developed a trust factor with this customer segment, and it will be easier to invite them to make their next purchases; whereas a new customer, a business is trying to build the relationship and develop trust. 

Defining and utilizing the brands competitive advantage is key into differentiating a brand within the market.

For example, lets say there are 5 hair salons within a local community that offer pretty much the same type of services. Hair cuts, styles, colors, and extensions; but why is it that each hair salon attracts a certain customer base? 

Maybe one brand has positioned itself as the expert for extensions where another has positioned itself as the experts in coloring hair, whereas another has positioned itself as the lowest price,  another is a woman only salon, and the last one hasn’t positioned itself. 

The buyer or customer base for each of these examples has a different reason to reason to buy because their needs are different.

A marketing strategy can drive revenue growth when it combines the competitive advantage, clearly defining who the business is aiming to serve, and focuses on building trust.

Steps to Create a Small Business Marketing Plan

For a business to create a marketing plan here are the steps that we recommend before diving into tactics.

Start off by conducting a marketing analysis and researching the industry as a whole, the designated market area, competitors, and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the business.

This gives the business owner the opportunity to be realistic about the economy, the market its trying to serve, its competitors and the strengths and weaknesses its own company.

Take for the example, the economy in 2024 was hard for many small business owners and consumers. As consumers tightened up their wallets and spend, small business owner who forecasted how the economy would impact their company; strategically aligned their marketing efforts on retaining customers.

Those who didn’t probably saw a decrease in overall sales, website visits, foot traffic, and repeat transactions.

Performing a SWOT Analysis is our number one method in conducting market research. It’s beneficial for the business and the best way to set the two main goals that the businesses marketing strategy will focus on for the next six to twelve months.

Defining the ideal client of a small business is an important part of the marketing plan and strategy.

It helps business owners clearly define “the who” their small business serves.

The ideal client of a small business is someone who finds the perfect solution to their problem or needs in the product and services a brand offers.

It’s important because if the brand messaging doesn’t resonate with the ideal client, a small business is going to waste its resources marketing the wrong message to the right customer.

When a business understands exactly who they are trying to serve, they can create content that addresses the pain points of their exact customer resulting in building trust and brand loyalty.

Create a Buyer Persona For Your Small Business

Include information like:

• Key demographic information
• Where do they hang out?
• What are their sources of information?
• What are their social habits?
• Who are their go to influencers?
• What podcasts do they listen to?
• What are their core values?
• List 2-3 challenges they might face and then how your product or service solves those challenges.
• What are their internal fears they battle?
• Why would they object your product/service?
• Are they the decision maker or will they need to take information to their boss?
• Why might she follow you or engage with your content?

Refer to the buyer persona when you are working on anything that involves content, copywriting or creative for the business.

As discussed, its important to identify the unique selling proposition and what differentiate your business from competitors in market.

For example, if you’re a coffee company; and there are five competitors in the DMA, what is your unique selling proposition?

Is it speed? Quality? Low Prices? Customer service? The menu? What is it, that your business is know for? If you’re already an established business, check out customer reviews and see what customers love you for.

Then incorporate that messaging throughout your brand messaging.

Developing your business brand involves multiple components from the logo, typography, colors, messaging and overall vibe.

Can you think of two or three of your favorite brands? What is it that sticks out to you?

Highly skilled graphic designers are able to bring the brand vision to reality. By using creative concepts that incorporate the look, the feel, colors, texture and tag lines, professional graphic designer can be a game change with marketing assets.

The brand identity is an important part of the marketing strategy and plan, its also one area where we see business owners try to take shortcuts.

If a logo isn’t designed correctly in the right files, a business won’t be able to use it on say a billboard, magazine or when they go to order promotional items. It’ll show up pixelated and less than impressive.

If the logo is a piece of clipart or made on trend; the business will probably need to consider a rebrand five years in. Or there could be a direct disconnect between the logo, the unique selling proposition, and the experience a business offers, which ultimately creates customer confusion and detracts customers.

Remember when we suggested defining the social habits of the ideal client? Well that will play an important role into determining the marketing channels your business uses.

Selecting the right channels for your business is extremely important because if there is a disconnect in where you’re advertising and where the ideal client hangs out, then unneeded marketing dollars will be wasted.

There are many marketing channels available for Small Business Owners and we typically suggest intermixing traditional and digital marketing channels; that way a consumer is more likely to see it and your brand will reach that eight time threshold.

Traditional Marketing Channels include:

• TV/Radio
• Print
• Outdoor
• Gorilla
• Direct Mail 
• Press Releases
• Events

Digital Marketing Channels include:

• Website
• Search Engines (Google & Google My Business, Yelp, Duck duck go)
• Social Media ( Meta, Youtube, LinkedIn)
• Email 
• Blogs

Now that you have an understanding as to whats available for you as a Small Business,  as apart of your Marketing Strategy and plan its critically important to establish your marketing goals and budget.

Are you trying to drive visits to your website to shop your products, or trying to drive traffic to visit your brick and mortar locations? These examples are completely different marketing goals and will each require a marketing budget to do either.

Driving website visits will require ad spend and labor hours spent engaging online. Whereas driving traffic to your physical location requires a mixture of business listings online and physical signage so they customer can find your location.

If a budget isn’t allocated for either of your goals, then how can your business move from where you are today and to where you want to be? 

Set clear, measurable goals and allocate a budget for each goal. IF… your marketing budget is small, then you might need to decide what is the most important goal, and use your marketing budget solely on that goal.

Example, if you serve a local area, then you invest where your customer is, vs online.

One of the major components of a Marketing plan is creating the action plan, steps and timeline. 

Example: the business has now its two large goals for the next six months; one is to execute marketing campaigns on time, so the business can improve its return on investment.

That would require being clear on what is needed to better execute the campaigns, who is all involved, what the deadlines are for each area of the campaign. It’s also important to establish what KPI’s will be tracked.

If a business doesn’t define responsibilities, team members work together and be accountable in reaching deadlines, then it will be nearly impossible to reach the goal of better executing marketing campaigns.

We’ve talked a lot about the establishing your strategy and plan before diving into the tactics. 

There’s a plethora of marketing tactics to use in small business marketing; but they can be broken down into the follow categories. 

How can your small business leverage promotions, and create memorable interactions using these categories?

Online Marketing Tactics

• Professional Website: A business website should work as a hub; it’s where you want to direct visitors to. So it needs to incorporate your branding, copywriting, product or services and be user friendly.
• Social Media Marketing: create a content strategy utilizing your buyer persona. Define which tools you will use to to create the content.
• Email Marketing: Make it easy for website viewers to sign up for your newsletter. Be consistent with sending valuable information to your subscribers. Its not always about the sale but building relationships.
• Paid Advertisings: using pay per click or social media ads 

Traditional Marketing Tactics

• TV/Radio: create a script with a call to action where your unique selling proposition and call to action. Script for either should be delivered in no more than 30 or 60 seconds.
• Print: Include your business branding, a quality image, headline, subheadline and call to action.
• Outdoor: develop a slogan or tag line in less than 7 words. Include logo and call to action ( which might be just your website).
• Direct Mail: write a sales letter to your specific customer. Then include three key main benefits and include a call to action.

Experiential Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses

• Workshops, Pop-ups
• Mixers, meet-ups
• Customer appreciation type events

In conclusion, there is a method to the madness when creating a Small Business Marketing Strategy and Plan.

Start conducting  Market Research, Identifying your Target Market, Refining your Brand Unique Selling Proposition, Develop Your Business Brand, Choose Your Marketing Channels, Set Your Marketing Goals and Budget and Create an Action Plan. Then move into the Marketing Tactics.

We invite you to download our free marketing plan template here, which will walk you all of these components step by step.

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