10 Small Business Growth Marketing Tips to Boost Your Business

We’ve all seen the motivational stories all over the Internet of businesses that seem like they’ve become overnight successes. However, most big things start from humble beginnings, including the giants that tower over us today.

Before you ever hit big business, you start out as a small business, and it’s where most successful people cut their teeth by being patient, persistent, and hard-working. There are no real shortcuts to success, but below are some growth marketing tips to make the journey a bit smoother.

Of course, the hardest is getting started. But if you already are an owner of a small business, then congratulations for getting off the ground. Now as you learn to fly, here are a few things you need to do in order to gradually elevate. There’s nothing more rewarding than painstakingly reaching the point where you have to learn how to soar.

1. Brand Your Business

This is pretty much the genesis of every successful business’ legacy. Getting a brand that’s unique, marketable, and easily recognizable is what separates the mom-and-pop store from the ones that can grow bigger.

A brand is anything associated with your business that sticks in the minds of customers. A logo, design, name, sound, music, reputation, emotion, faces, voices, or so on.

If you wish to make it yourself, then go ahead. If you have the budget, you can hire a graphic designer to come up with a logo that’s right for you. However you go about it, your brand should represent your business well. If you grow, the brand should grow with the business.

2. Understand Your Metrics

You wouldn’t really know if you’re actually becoming successful if you can’t track your own progress. Metrics and analytics are important to your efforts, even if you’re just starting out. It can also save you from ruin as it can warn you of impending danger and help you come up with solutions to problems. Understanding business metrics is virtually as important as knowing how to read and count; they’re the measure of your progress.

In terms of your online efforts, you’re basically looking at different figures in your metrics. Of course, overall site traffic is your main stat here. However, other stats such as bounce rate and time on site are just as important since they show just how interested people are to your content. Then there’s the reach and impressions that show just how many different people are being reached by what you have, or by your online advertisement.

3. Focus Your Time on What’s Working

You wouldn’t want to waste your time and energy on what doesn’t work, right? It’s like what the Pareto Principle states, 80% of success usually comes from 20% of efforts. You need to constantly look for what isn’t working for you and make the decision to scrap it in favor of something that does work for you.

Your metrics can help with detecting what does and what doesn’t work, as well as actually paying attention to what goes on day by day. When you see something that’s under-performing, you do what you can to fix that and then observe it. If it really doesn’t work out, then you’ll have to replace it with something that works better.

4. Build Your Email Database

This is old-school Internet marketing strategy right here, but it still works wonders as long as you know what you’re doing. Having an email database for your marketing efforts can help greatly with growing your business through the Internet.

Email marketing these days seem more personable, so you can incorporate it to give your campaign a bit of an extra boost. Advanced techniques like email autoresponders can send time and action based messages to better engage users.

You can either buy a list, append your current list, or use personalized URLs or other survey techniques to gather additional data. You can also offer a periodic email newsletter that users can register to, which may also help you gather more emails for your list.

5. Experiment with Paid Channels

Once you’ve exhausted your free options, then maybe it’s time to look towards paid channels to augment your inbound marketing efforts. But first, you must ask yourself who your primary buyers are, where those buyers may reside, and what your primary goals are.

You can create campaigns and buy certain keywords in Google Adwords, get targeted engagement with GoChime, spread your content in Taboola and Outbrain, put up sponsored content in LinkedIn, and so on. Do your research and ask around before deciding on giving money to a paid channel and take notes of what results you get.

6. Get Basic SEO Right

SEO is pretty much a standard these days; a fundamental that one must become familiar with in order to harness the power of the Internet as much as possible. There are now plenty of basic SEO guides strewn all over the Internet, waiting for an eager beginner to use that knowledge to propel their early efforts forward.

While SEO is far from the supposed shortcut to search ranking nirvana as it used to be seen as, it’s now an essential part of any online marketing endeavor. Being visible in the Internet is such a big thing nowadays that you need every advantage you can get.

7. Research Competitor Strategies

As the Chinese military leader Sun Tzu said in his magnum opus The Art of War, “You must know your enemy in order to defeat him.” By knowing what your competition is doing, you can either match them or come up with something that can completely trounce them. At the very least, you should know what they’re up to so that you don’t get caught by surprise.

One of the best ways to do this is by using a SWOT analysis. Contrary to popular belief a SWOT is a constantly updates document that help you focus on the important areas of your business and gets and edge over your competitors.

8. Create More Landing Pages

You may think that one landing page is enough, but you’d be wrong. Having more landing pages means being able to reach a wider audience. According to recent studies, you can generate five times more leads by increasing your number of landing pages to 10, so there’s almost no reason why you shouldn’t.

It can also improve your SEO ranking and help you segment more effectively. It turns out that having more landing pages increases your chances of getting what you want for your online efforts rather well.

9. Run a Contest

It’s perhaps one of the most well known marketing strategies in business, but it sure works well as long as you have a big enough audience who gets interested in some sort of a giveaway. When you do come up with one, plan it well, make sure that it’s attainable without being too easy, and hold it within a set period of time.

Also have people spread the word to bring in more participants who’ll also take a look around while partaking in the contest. It’s pretty much the reason why contests and giveaways are always done. They do work when done right.

10. Make Use of FAQ

This is all about being considerate to your audience. Having an FAQ page in your website makes sure that those interested can better understand what you’re all about and what they can get from you, as well as other details in between. It must also evolve over time to include questions and problems that you may encounter over time so that people can better understand in the future.

Any Other Growth Marketing Tips ?

This is not an exhaustive list but if you’re following these growth marketing tips then you’re sure to find some success with your business. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, leave them on the comment section below. Thank you for dropping by.

Vincent Sevilla is a professional graphic and web designer for Websitesetup. He also has a background in online marketing and a big fan of creative design.