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Is Your Small Business Getting the Most for Your Marketing Dollar?

John McMalcolm

March 20, 2015

In today's fiercely competitive business world, your small business has to be able to stand out from the crowd in order to succeed and grow.

There are hundreds or thousands of other companies selling the same products or services as you, but you can differentiate yourself from your competitors by stepping up your marketing efforts.

Here is a look at several marketing musts for small businesses….

Create a Great Website

In the past, consumers would call up companies or visit their stores or offices if they want to find out about their products or services. Now, they can get information about companies just by visiting their websites.

Your website is the hub of your online presence, and it is the place where consumers learn about your business, interact with you and purchase your products.

Make sure that it is neat, user-friendly and engaging, and use a variety of strategies, including SEO and social media, to increase its traffic. It can be relatively costly to create a good website, but the investment will be worthwhile in the long run.

Blog

Blogging is a great way to gain visibility, boost website traffic, engage with consumers and increase credibility.

By providing solutions and showing your subject matter expertise to your target consumers, you will be able to gain their trust and increase your chances of converting them into buying customers.

You can start a blog on your website or a different website, or become a guest blogger on other people's blogs. If you are starting your own blog, it is a good idea to invite niche experts to submit guest posts occasionally.

To get the most out of blogging, you should post content that is well-written, helpful and SEO-friendly, and share it regularly via social media, email and other marketing channels.

Use Social Media

Both large and small businesses around the world are rapidly adopting social media marketing, because it makes it possible for them to reach out to potentially millions of consumers.

Other than helping you increase your brand visibility, social media also enables you to interact with your target consumers on a more personal level and monitor consumer habits and preferences.

As the following article looks at, if you want to know more about a consumer named Bob Bratt, you can easily access the Bob Bratt profile in a social media website and find out important information such as his age, occupation, education level and the brands he regularly engages with.

With such information, you can implement personalized marketing strategies to achieve better results.

Invest in Text Message Marketing

According to Business2Community.com, text messages have an open rate of 98 percent, which is higher than that of most other communication channels.

If you use SMS to send your marketing messages, you can rest assured that almost every one of them will be read. Text message marketing is becoming an increasingly popular form of marketing because it is cost-effective, quick and easy, engaging, interactive, non-intrusive and flexible.

Effective marketing is the key to achieving and maintaining competitive advantage.

You can take your business to greater heights by implementing the abovementioned marketing methods.

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