Thu 10th Jun 2021
Blog / Marketing quick wins for small businesses
Running a business is never easy and you can spend a lot of time and money marketing and getting nothing in return. Maybe you do not have a dedicated marketing team and want to learn how you and your team can improve your marketing. Fortunately, there are so many ways to automate and maximise your marketing even with limited time, money and staff skill
As experts in providing software, web design and branding for businesses. We can help you bring in those much needed leads, improve your email marketing and excel online.
We’re all familiar with newsletters as a form of email marketing, but there’s so much more out there than just sending a monthly bulletin. Email marketing can be a really powerful tool, and it’s quick to get to grips with thanks to new, easy to use (and free) software.
We Recommend: Mailchimp If you’re not already using Mailchimp to manage your email marketing, this is one of the best tools to add to your arsenal to get great email marketing results. Mailchimp allows you to build contact lists and produce beautiful looking emails without any design knowledge. The template engine is built for ease of use. Not only is Mailchimp FREE but they also offer a paid service if you feel you want extra features which could excel your email marketing.
Not only can you design professional looking emails, you can analyse open rates, click rates and see a full overview of who is opening your emails and what they are engaging with.
This is where all your customer emails who have agreed to receive marketing emails and materials are stored. You must make sure that this list is stored securely and only contains the addresses of people who have agreed to receive marketing messages. This is to ensure you are staying GDPR compliant with 4 people’s data. Your email list is likely to be just a bulk one for people who have agreed to receive marketing information and is great for sending general messages like newsletters or key company announcements. But you can go one step further and segment the list to create targeted lists - perfect for marketing campaigns and tailored messaging.
Think of the famous Terrys chocolate orange with it's many segments, this is how you should visualise your email lists. You do not want to be sending out bulk emails and annoying your contacts so categorising them into specific lists is vital to ensure they do not unsubscribe from future emails. For example for new customers you may want to send them a welcome email or a special offer, so you would keep them in their own contact list. You can create new lists just by using filters in your system of choice. For example, you could filter by sign-up date to send a message to new customers, or you could filter by company type. Creating list segments will take a little bit of time to set up at first, but once they’re done you only need to maintain and monitor them.
So how do I write engaging and informative email campaigns :
Social Media, we all have it ? well have you ever used it for business? It is one of the most powerful ways to market your business with or without paid ads. It’s easy to maximise your voice on social media with some simple scheduling and planning tools. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have all of the social media channels for your business. Choose the channels that are more likely to resonate with your customers and attract the right attention.
Many B2B companies find Twitter and LinkedIn tend to work best for them, while B2C companies might lean more towards Facebook and Instagram. If you want to have all the channels then go for it! Just think realistically about how much time you have to manage and run the channels and whether your customer base uses that channel as well.
Just like anything there are peak times in which people use certain social media platforms. This is why it is important to gage your audience and do some research on the best times to post. This can increase engagement massively and will allow you to be seen by more people. Don’t feel pressured to post on every channel every single day either. A few posts a week is plenty for keeping your presence up to date. You could always increase to daily posting for special events or promotional weeks.
Customers love to know they have someone on hand if they face any problems. With social media they can contact you using private messaging or commenting on your posts. This is great way to improve customer satisfaction and trust.
Keeping yourself up to scratch with what is going on in the world is a greate way to come up with ideas for offers, posts and upcoming content for your customers. Always have a look on social media to see what is trending and what is coming up in the world. For example Fathers Day, Boxing Matches, Pride Month...
Focus your efforts
We’ve discussed a lot of different ways you can maximise your marketing presence here, but the most important thing is to know where to focus your efforts. This way you’re making the most of the limited time you have for planning and actioning marketing, as well as getting the most out of it. We’re all about working smarter, not harder here at AJH Media, and we want you to do the same.
FREE tools we recommend to improve your marketing: