Small Business Marketing Ideas

Small Business
Marketing Ideas &

Tips for SMB
Business Owners
Taylor Landis
December 4, 2019
It’s always a good time for business owners to think about

the most effective small business marketing ideas. Maybe
your messages don’t seem to be landing as they have in
the past. Or it could be that business seems to be
stagnant. Whether you’ve been in business for 3 months
or 30 years, there is always room for improvement. Here is
a list of small business marketing ideas and tips to give
you a competitive edge.
1. Make Data Cleaning a

Routine
Data cleaning shouldn’t be a once-a-year task. If you’ve
been neglecting your database, your entire marketing
strategy could be off-kilter. In fact, 72 percent of
companies feel that data quality issues impact consumer
trust and perception.
Why? Because successful marketing relies on data-driven
decision making. If your data is inaccurate, your decisions
won’t be much better. In the same study, less than half of
organizations globally (44%) trust their data to make
important business decisions. Talk about opportunity lost!
Ensure your marketing strategy is as targeted and on-
point as possible. Make data cleaning a recurring monthly
routine and you’ll be on your way to more trustworthy
data.
2. Know Your Audience

When considering small business marketing ideas, think
about your audience.
Ask yourself these questions:
• Who are they?
• What do they do?
• How can you help them do it better?
Buyer personas are a great way to define your audience in
terms of demographics, responsibilities, and interests. A
buyer persona done well will give you a target and
direction. Plus, these personas can be used to segment
your list and better personalize your sales and marketing
messages.
Furthermore, don’t forget to take a funnel position into
account when creating buyer personas. For example, a
customer that needs nurturing requires a different
message than someone ready to buy. You should be
having conversations at the right time to be sure you
aren’t too late or too soon.
3. Keep Content on
Target
When you know your audience, it’s much easier to create
targeted, relevant and (above all) valuable content.
Clickbait and countless sales pitches aren’t the way to
gain trust from your network. Instead, make it your goal to
reach your audience on a more personal level. Show them
you understand them and care about their wants and
needs.
How? Instead of pushing your product, focus on providing
insight, information, and maybe even entertainment.
Believe it or not, this approach is a much more effective
means of guiding prospects along the buyer’s journey.
This is also the main concept behind content marketing.
Learn more about how content marketing helps small
businesses here.
4. Optimize Your Emails

Most people feel like they get a lot of emails. Some may
say too many, yet 86% of consumers prefer email when
communicating for business purposes. Long story short:
email shows no signs of slowing down because of how
effective it is.
Email marketing for small business owners is an important
but tricky business. Great content doesn’t guarantee that
recipients will open your email. There are, however, ways
to improve audience engagement, open rates, and
conversions.
Check over this list:
1. Sender address. Make sure your emails are coming
from a recognizable sender name, preferably a business
address.
2. Subject line. Does it tell the reader what’s next? Is
what’s next worth clicking? If not, you’d better head back
to the drawing board.
3. Design. Is your content optimized for mobile viewing?
Does it deliver on the promise of your subject line? Is it
visually appealing and easy to read?
4. Call to action. What is your call-to-action (CTA)? Do
the recipients know what you want them to do? Is it easy
for them to do it?
Check out our post “Understanding the Anatomy of an
Email Newsletter” for more on proper email optimization.
5. Boost Your Social

Media Content
Social media algorithms are constantly evolving.
Oftentimes, these changes mean it’s harder to gain
traction organically. That’s where paid advertisements and
boosted posts can help level the playing field.
In fact, paid ads are expected to generate over $18 billion
in revenue in 2019. 76 percent of B2C content marketers
in North America used promoted posts in 2016, with 61
percent reporting these posts were effective. Social ads
ranked slightly lower, with 74 percent of B2C marketers
using them and 59 percent reporting them effective.
If you need a quick guide to the world of “play to play”
social advertising, these links are a great place to start:
• Facebook ads
• Twitter ads
• LinkedIn ads
• Instagram ads
6. Show Instead of Only

Telling
Visual content continues to grow in popularity as we move
into the future. After all, the human brain processes
images 60 times faster than words. When you’re
brainstorming small business marketing ideas, consider
video.
Video content (think Snapchat, Instagram Stories,
Instagram Live, Facebook Stories, and Facebook Live) is
continuing to grow. If you want to be on the cutting edge of
visual content, try moving out from behind your keyboard
and step in front of the camera.
A great idea for your first video is recording a quick
introduction about yourself. Keep it under 2 minutes and
make it informative and engaging.
Pro tip: For even higher engagement and impact, add
captions to your video instead of solely relying on your
audio. As much as 85% of videos are watched without
sound. Makes sense when you think about all the people
scrolling through social media while at work, at the
doctor’s office, or on public transportation.
Video is also an easy and effective way to engage your
audience. Hubspot found 72% of people prefer video to
learn about a product or service. More and more
consumers are using their smartphones in place of a
computer, and visual apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and
YouTube make posting and viewing and sharing content
like pictures and videos super easy.
7. Keep an Eye on
Reviews
Consumers have a lot of power with online reviews,
making them more important than ever. This can feel
overwhelming for businesses, but online reviews are also
an excellent source of referrals.
We’ve written a lot in the past about how referrals are the
best-kept secrets for your business, but if you don’t have a
review monitoring process in place, it’s time to do that.
Yelp, Facebook, Google, Angie’s List, and more are all
places customers and buyers go to do their research
before committing to a business or product.
If you see a negative review, there’s no need to panic.
Respond the best you can without provoking an already
unhappy customer. Often this means asking to speak
offline so you can work with them one-on-one instead of in
the public online arena. Remember, you can’t please
everyone all of the time, so focus on building loyalty. If
you’re doing good work, eventually that negative review
will be just a blip on your positive review radar.
Finally, be sure you’re not only monitoring online reviews
but asking for them as well.
Learn more about how to automate your marketing and
generate referral business here.
8. Embrace Marketing
Automation
No matter how hard we all try, we can’t do it all. Many of
us feel bogged down and overwhelmed by responsibilities
that could easily be delegated and automated for
efficiency. As a result, you may start dropping the ball
because you’re trying to do too much at once. When your
business starts to suffer, it’s time to reassess your plan.
You aren’t alone in looking to automation for support. In
fact, more people use marketing automation than not. A
Salesforce study found that 67% of marketing leaders use
marketing automation. That number is anticipated to grow
by 30% by 2019.
If you’re looking for small business marketing ideas that
will save time and money, keep you top-of-mind with your
network, and maximize referral leads and customer
retention, it’s hard to do better than marketing automation.
Marketing automation can help you make the most of
every customer interaction. This means identifying warm
leads, putting sales-ready leads on the fast track to
conversion, follow up with unprecedented efficiency and
do it all automatically. (PS marketing automation is what
OutboundEngine does.)
Keep Moving Forward
We hope these seven small business marketing ideas and
tips help keep your business running in tip-top shape. This
list is a great guide, but don’t limit yourself to only these
ideas. Keep thinking about your business and customers
as both of them change, grow, and evolve. You’ll find new
ways to improve customer experience and your bottom
line if you keep your eyes open.
If you want to focus on one of the best small marketing

ideas of all to engage with your network, email marketing
is it. Download our free Email Marketing Roadmap below
to help you find your way as you navigate your email
marketing strategy.

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Small Business

Marketing Ideas &

It’s always a good time for business owners to think about

1. Make Data Cleaning a

2. Know Your Audience

4. Optimize Your Emails

5. Boost Your Social

6. Show Instead of Only

If you want to focus on one of the best small marketing

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