The business marketing world has changed at such a rapid rate. Marketing strategies that worked in the past no longer work today. That shift can be attributed to a wide range of factors, including changing consumer behavior, technological advancement, and emergence of more effective marketing approaches.
You need to work with a trusted marketing expert such as SEOPAPA to take your marketing efforts in the UK to the next level. SEOPAPA stands out for keeping up with the latest marketing trends, ensuring your business marketing remains in touch with latest developments. Keep reading to learn more about how to market your business online.
Challenges that business owners face with poor marketing strategy
Some business owners normally struggle with poor marketing strategies, which ends up costing them dearly. Here are some of the ways a poorly-executed business marketing strategy can cost you dearly.
- Unclear representation of your product or service
Even though you are an expert in a product, you may not be the right person to sell it. Most of the times you may find yourself under-stating what the product does or using technical jargons that the average user may not understand. In other cases, you fail to determine the right terms that fall within the scope of your business.
Engaging the services of an SEO expert can go a long way in properly representing what your business does. An SEO company such as SEOPAPA takes time to assess your business, its competitors, and the industry in general. That helps yield all the relevant keywords that can define the essence of your business.
- Business invisibility
Almost every business owner understands the importance of marketing their firm. However, the challenge arises when they have to choose a medium and setting aside relevant resources. Please keep in mind that going with the wrong medium normally result in loss of time and money.
An SEO company is not just focused on search engine optimisation. Such a firm has solid grasp of the various marketing strategies and will adopt approaches that best work for you.
- Issues with product pricing
In a poor marketing approach, you may not understand the relevance of pricing to the marketing of your product. However, the reality is that mistakes made in pricing can cost you vital customers. For instance, imagine a business informing you that the can of coke goes for $1,000. You would never give that advertisement a second thought.
Engaging a marketing agency such as SEOPAPA can help portray your business pricing correctly. The expert marketing firm understands your preferred pricing schema and maps the same in the business promotion approach for customers to easily follow along. It is important that you showcase your business pricing in positive manner not to discourage potential purchases.
- Disconnect between the sales and marketing departments
If your marketing approach is poorly executed, you will have the sales and marketing departments operating out of sync. That would mean when sales are supposed to be at peak, the marketing department does not go out there to register vital sales.
As an entrepreneur, you should consult experts to help market your business. They can help coordinate marketing actions with what you sell each period.
Should you care about business promotion? Marketing vs not marketing
| Business with marketing | Business without marketing |
| Has a broader access to the market and ability to reach the target audience | Cannot reach the target audience because it has not even defined who their customers are |
| Can positively portray the business brand, building stronger reputation in the process. | Customers may pick any business image perception since the owner has not invested in brand creation |
| Has a stronger trust with its customers because marketing maintains sustainable presence | Luck of trust between the business and its customers |
| Has a better understanding of what marketing approaches works and which ones to keep off. | The business does not know the right marketing strategies it can adopt because it has not tried any! |
| Better understanding of the market and can adopt effective pricing strategies | Your business does not have a clear picture of the market and its pricing loses touch with reality |
Marketing strategies for your business in the UK
Trying to figure out how to promote your business in the community? The following are some of the most effective strategies you can use to promote your business locally in the UK:
- Search Engine Optimisation
One of the most important marketing tips for small business 2020 is to adopt search engine optimisation.
What is SEO and how can it help market my business today, you may wonder? Well, SEO involves improving your website to give it higher visibility when people look for related products on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other major search engines. A website that has top-notch visibility stands the chance of ranking high on the search engines results pages (SERPs) and attract prospective customers.
There are various reasons why you should care about SEO as a marketing strategy small business. To begin with, it helps drive organic and high-quality traffic to your website. Since the user is already search for what your business provides, the organic visibility plays a central role in easily converting them.
Through SEO, you can rank on the first page of Google for related keywords, something that helps make you an authority website. Doing so also builds credibility and earns the trust of your potential customers.
You can think of SEO as your 24/7 promotion tool. At no point does SEO stop working as your marketing tool. Even if your budget runs out, content remains on the website alongside all the keywords crafted around it. Thus, anyone can reach your business at any time of day or night using these terms.
More importantly, SEO is all about the target audience. The people that you market to using this approach already have an interest in your product offerings. Thus, you can craft your content around specific audience to achieve designated goal.
Sometimes you may not have the technical know-how to handle your SEO needs. In this case, you may choose to pay someone to market my business via search engine optimisation. SEOPAPA stands out as your trusted SEO service provider.
- Develop a social media strategy
Are you wondering how to market your business on social media? For starters, no business can afford to underestimate the power of social media.
Social media empowers marketers to connect and engage customers from different platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. You can achieve exponential results from social media when you create engaging content for your customers.
The number of social media users continues to increase and currently stands at 59% of the world’s population. That means your business can reach the maximum number of potential buyers compared to compared to traditional marketing channels.
Having this online presence can help you connect with customers at a more personal level and tell your story to your followers. Facebook and all the other platforms not only exposes you to your target audience but also helps you better understand them.
Doing so adds more meaning to your brand. Customers and leads also love it when they see realities instead of a faked impression. Take the time to work on your content and you will be amazed by how far the message can spread on social media.
- Get a mobile app
If you thought that mobile apps are a preserve of large corporations, you are wrong. Modern business operations happen on mobile devices as customers regularly check their smartphones.
SMEs have been at the forefront of keeping up with this trend and consider developing mobile apps to be an effective marketing strategy. If you are keen, you may have noticed that most businesses today interact with you via their dedicated apps.
One of the most powerful benefits that getting a mobile app delivers revolve around increasing visibility at all times. As mentioned above, customers regularly check their phones. Whereas they may not open each installed app, it does not negate that they need to unlock the device and scroll through the app list. That puts you on the way and subconsciously reminds them of your existence as a business.
Having a mobile app provides you with a direct marketing channel. It can serve as a tool to offer general information, advise on prices, news feed, and much more.
This marketing strategy is powerful because it lets you control how much information you want to place at your customer’s fingertips. And whenever you have new developments taking place in your business, you can quickly inform your customers about them. For instance, you may leverage push notification to update on promotions and special sales.
- Consider email marketing
Email marketing involves sending masses of promotional messages to people who have subscribed to your mailing list. The essence of this marketing strategy is to generate sales and leads.
As you undertake to market via mailing list, it is important to acknowledge that you are a guest in the recipient’s mailbox. There are high chances that they have also received endless pitching and interruptions. Thus, your approach must be unique or you risk becoming part of clutter.
Any business that plans on using email marketing must identify unique elements that will make them stand out. For instance, you could offer an incentive as part of your effort to build a mailing list. For example, you may ask your readers to share their email addresses in exchange for downloading an exciting e-book for free. You could also offer white paper and other downloadable materials.
Keep in mind that email marketing is closely associated with expectations that you’ve set. If you have a strong CTA and consistent follow-up plan, you stand a high chance of succeeding with the email campaign. However, if you only send emails once in a while whenever you feel like, you may not achieve the desired results.
Just like social media marketing, a business that gets it right on email marketing can build strong relationships with its leads, current customers, and other business partners. It is an opportunity to talk directly to them via their inboxes at their most convenient times. With proper messaging, you could use this strategy to revolutionize your marketing.
- Set up a blog
There was a time when blogs were optional. That time has long passed. Today, a business that is serious about its online presence and marketing strategy cannot afford to operate without blogging.
Through consistent blogging, you can build brand awareness and provide useful content to your target audience. The power of having a blog can be seen in the report generated by Inbound Marketing. According to the report, about 80% of businesses that blog report to have acquired customers using this approach. In addition, 82% of the businesses surveyed report that blogging is an integral part of their operations.
When you have a blog, you make it possible to achieve exceptional search engine optimisation. Google and the other search engines love fresh and unique content. The more you post on your blog, the higher your ranking. Eventually, your business starts occurring on the first pages of these search engine results.
Always remember to insert keywords relevant to your business as you go about blogging. Also, mention the services and products that you offer.
FAQs
How can I market my business for free?
Sometimes you may not be able to set aside a budget for your marketing strategy. That does not mean you stop promoting your business. It is possible to market the various products and service that you offer for free.
As a starting point, create a Facebook page and start posting about the business. Everything that you do here is free. Sometimes you may feel tempted to create accounts on every social media platform. However, doing so could easily distract you. Just focus on the platform that is the most suitable for your business.
As you post on Facebook, remember not to keep every post promotional. Sometimes have inspirational and informative content. That creates the impression the business is not just about making sales. It also has a personality that your followers would love to know more about.
Encourage user-generated content (UGC), that is, content created and published by your fans without incurring any expenses. To do so, you will need to deliver an exceptional service or product to the point where someone falls in love with it and shares with their network. Even though UGC occurs naturally, sometimes you may have to ask to get it.
Please note that marketing your business for free mainly involves doing majority of the promotional work on your own. That can prove challenging if you do not have the technical knowledge to get this done correctly. Always consider marketing to be an integral part of your business operations and set aside the required budget for it whenever possible.
How do I market my small business locally?
Marketing your small business locally does not need rocket science. Local marketing can prove beneficial to your business in more ways than imagined. Not only do you stand a chance to get home-based customers but also elevate the business status in the community.
There is no one sure way to effectively market small business locally. Instead, that can be achieved through a combination of different strategies as well as based on the advice of a local SEO expert like SEOPAPA.
Some approaches that we find effective in marketing local businesses include:
- Connecting with local businesses
- Getting involved in community events
- Encouraging feedback from local clients
- Leveraging Google Local
- Organizing charity events
- Offering coupon codes
- Partnering with influencers
It is worth noting that local communities normally search for locally available products and services. Thus, you need to liaise with an SEO expert to understand your local community and business so as to curate keywords that can rank your business locally.
Local SEO optimisation is an integral part of your efforts to market your business locally. If your business serves a specific geographical location or has physical presence in certain areas, local SEO should form part of your marketing.
How do I market my business in 2020?
You have limitless approaches that you can follow to market your business in 2020. Most of these marketing strategies have been discussed to great length in this article. They include search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, blogging, and having a mobile app.
Please note that you can combine all these approaches to your marketing effort or use them individually. Always aim at performing search engine optimization because it helps define the keywords associated with your products or services.
What does it mean to promote your business?
Promoting your business refers to the wide range of activities designed to communicate to customers and leads details regarding your brand, product, or service.
You will typically start promoting your business with various goals:
- Get new customers
- Retain existing customers
- Motivate to buy product
- Create brand image
The overall essence of the activities undertaken often reference sales promotion.
Wrap up
To conclude, you can successfully market your business in the UK provided that you adopt the right strategies. A business that operates without a marketing strategy is bound to fail terribly. That’s because it lacks clarity over what’s going on in the market and also does not make an effort to introduce itself.
SEOPAPA has the knowledge, expertise, and resources to take your business to the next level through strategic marketing. Our approach to marketing any business involves first understanding who you are, your industry, and competitors. We then curate a marketing approach that promises to deliver exceptional results.