If you own a small to medium size business, you are more than likely experiencing multiple challenges when it comes to your marketing. You more than likely don't have a team of experts at your disposal. You may be struggling with the ever-changing beast that is digital marketing and other innovations, or maybe you are feeling overwhelmed by the number of options available and are uncertain about which direction to take.  As a marketing specialist who provides services to a variety of businesses, I’m regularly asked how businesses can overcome certain challenges. I have outlined some of the most common and urgent challenges that are of concern to businesses and some quick solutions to help you on your way.

Finding new customers

If you’re struggling to find new customers you should consider if you truly have a good understanding of who your customers really are. Your ideal customer is a person or business who gets their particular needs met by the product or service you offer. Your customers are not all the same, and not every person who you’re reaching out to is going to be interested in your products or services for the same reason.

Tip: Develop a deeper understanding of who your customers are, learn what their pain points are and how to satisfy them. Your customer service will improve as your team learns how to adapt to the needs of specific customer personas.

While understanding what kind of people buy from you is useful, it’s important to focus less on who they are and focus more on why they are buying from you. Consider their needs and work out how you can go about solving their problem.

Boosting Brand Awareness

A big concern for many businesses is a lack of brand awareness. Do you have a great product or service offering but nobody knows about it? Don’t be alarmed, there are plenty of ways to boost brand awareness for your business, however, you should use the most appropriate strategies based on your ideal client or target audience and where they are spending their time.

Tip: If you have a product-based business consider running an interactive Facebook or Instagram competition, ask people to tag and share your posts in order to win your product, or collaborate with a like-minded and complimentary business and run a brand awareness campaign that will benefit both businesses.  

Tip: If you are service-based consider blogging and posting articles on LinkedIn, the aim is to be seen as athought leader in your industry and by doing so you will create credibly. It doesn’t matter if you’re a product or service-based business, frequency and consistency of posts are essential.

Building an email list

If you’re having difficulties building your customer database you may like to consider offering an op-in newsletter subscription on your website and to your audience on your social media platforms to capture potential customer contact information. Your newsletter and social media offering should include content that delivers value, is simple yet compelling to your ideal customer that will encourage them to sign up.

Tip: Advertise your unique offer on your social channels including a link to your newsletter sign-up form on your website. Your offer could include free industry advice or tips, or a free downloadable document or template that educates and provides value to your audience.

Tip: To increase the success of your campaign it is recommended you use a suitable CRM tool such as Salesforce or HubSpot and an email marketing tool such as Mailchimp. These tools will help you track key customer information as well as important insights about your campaign.  

Increasing lead generation

As a business owner may be find it difficult to generate new business leads from time to time.  An effective way to increase leads is by optimising your website so your customers can easily find you. As a starting point, you’ll need to review your current website to find ways to improve it. The areas of focus for your business should be:

1.      Logging into your Google Analytics account to look at where your traffic is coming from, how much time users spend on your site and page bounce rates

2.      Researching keywords. What are your ideal customers searching for on Google?

3.      Placing keywords and messaging strategically through your content ensuring that you are speaking directly to your ideal customer

4.      Including meta and title tags in your content,make it relevant to your audience and include important key words. Google looks at these to assist them in ranking your website

5.      Keeping up to date with what your competitors are doing, do not copy what they are doing but find inspiration and look to continually improve your content and imagery

Remember, your marketing strategy is something you need to continually test and refine.

If you are experiencing overwhelm or confusion with your marketing, don’t hesitate to reach out to us today. We can help your business find clarity and deliver a clear direction,saving you time and money.

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