Editor's choice | SmallBiz.com - What your small business needs to incorporate, form an LLC or corporation! https://smallbiz.com INCORPORATE your small business, form a corporation, LLC or S Corp. The SmallBiz network can help with all your small business needs! Tue, 13 Jun 2023 00:33:05 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.2 https://smallbiz.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/cropped-biz_icon-32x32.png Editor's choice | SmallBiz.com - What your small business needs to incorporate, form an LLC or corporation! https://smallbiz.com 32 32 7 Important Tips for Improving Your Small Business’ Local Marketing Strategies https://smallbiz.com/7-important-tips-for-improving-your-small-business-local-marketing-strategies/ Wed, 11 Jan 2023 13:24:22 +0000 https://smallbiz.com/?p=83036 Oftentimes, startups tend to neglect the local market, as most of them adopt their marketing and business cues from bigger conglomerates. While the big shots in the industry may boast an impressive client list, their marketing strategy might not always be ideal for small businesses. Sometimes it’s much better to hire a local marketing agency.

While every local marketing strategy won’t work for your startup, these tips will guide you.

photo credit: Pixabay

Know Your Audience

The most fundamental step to establishing any effective marketing campaign is understanding who your target audience is. Not only should you know what category the ideal clients belong to, but you should also understand the ideal customers’ interests, as well as what appeals to them. You also have to know where your target audience is. For instance, what media platforms would be best ideal for them?

Reach Out to Your Target Audience

Now, you have to develop the best means to reach your audience. With your knowledge of who and where they are, this has been made a lot easier. Develop your marketing campaigns around the interests of the audience. Create an advertisement that properly explains how your services and products solve the problems your audience has.

Get Involved

Find community events and actively participate in them. Volunteer for an important cause in your town, and don’t forget to market your business anyhow you can. You and your employees can put on T-shirts with your brand’s logo on them. Engage people and give them a reason to work with your business.

Post Testimonials

Unless your company is completely flawless, you are more likely to get bad reviews than positive ones. However, when you do get a positive review, share it with others. When your company positively interacts with other customers, encourage these customers to create and post good reviews about your business.

Client testimonials and references

Utilize Local Media

Never underestimate the reach and influence of a small town’s local media. Local radio stations, shows, or newspapers can be increasingly effective if you’re looking to generate more traffic and revenue.

Improve Your Company’s SEO

Search engine optimization, especially organic SEO, encompasses developing content and making sure that your business has an ideal website to reach its customers without having to pay for ads.

Organic SEO could be a major investment for your business. While it might take you months or years to successfully pay off, its benefits are beyond immense. This marketing strategy has become even more important for businesses as search engines such as Google have refined their technology to deliver more applicable outcomes to searchers, including location-based search results.

Cross-Promote Alongside Other Local Companies

When executed appropriately, cross-promotion can be a perfect method of marketing locally. As the name implies, it is a reciprocally beneficial marketing strategy that comprises two or more companies advertising one another to their respective customers. Gaining more clients and boosting sales overall.

While you might think local marketing only works for startups and local organizations, lots of global or big companies create local marketing plans to reach more people in a certain region where they would love to increase sales.

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Shopping Video – New Marketing Trend https://smallbiz.com/shopping-video-new-marketing-trend/ Tue, 24 May 2022 12:27:00 +0000 https://smallbiz.com/?p=64852 One of the best ways for marketers and business owners to increase sales and engage customers is video shopping. This new marketing trend involves using video content to promote and sell your products.

Here is everything you need to know about shopping videos for business owners.

What is Video Shopping

Video shopping involves using video content to promote your products/services with the aim of increasing sales. With a shopping video, business owners can show off their brand and give relevant information about their products and services. Also, videos help influence the decision-making process of buyers and increase sales.

Types of Shopping Videos

There are two main categories of shopping videos, and they are:

Live Video Shopping

This type of video shopping involves creating a live presentation of your products. It is not pre-recorded, thus making it easy for customers to interact in real-time.

Non-Live Video Shopping

In this case, you record the video and then upload it on platforms where customers can find them. While you can’t get real-time responses from customers, non-live videos are easily accessible, unlike live videos.

Engaging social video ads

Benefits of Video Shopping

Video shopping can provide many benefits for business owners and their customers. Some of the advantages of video shopping are:

1. Engaging Visuals That Increase Sales

Consumers generally prefer video content over text because they are a more expressive form of content. With video shopping, business owners can create an interactive environment where customers can engage. This form of engaging content increases your chance of converting visitors to actual customers.

2. Increase Brand Awareness

Business owners can increase the chance of being seen by their target audience through impressive shopping videos. Shopping videos prove to be a convenient way to promote your business and increase brand awareness.

3. Convenient Customer Interaction

Video shopping helps engage with customers in real-time, thus making them feel seen. You can chat with customers one-on-one, which makes it easier to serve their needs. Whether it’s a car dealer chat or a skincare consultation, you can count on video shopping to improve rapport.

4. Bring Products to Live

With video shopping, shoppers can easily browse products in real-time. For example, fashion brands often bring clothes to life by making a video of how it looks on a real person. This will help customers have a feel of how the item will look on them, and this can increase sales.

5. Easy to Create

Creating shopping videos doesn’t have to be a long and complicated process. Shopping videos tend to be short and easy to make without requiring a professional. With a smartphone or camera, anyone can make a marketing video that converts. Also, there are many channels and platforms available to create videos that will persuade visitors into being actual customers.

6. Increased SEO Ranking

Videos tend to perform better than other forms of content, and having them on your website will increase your SEO rankings. This makes it easy for customers to find you and do business with you.

Video marketing

If you are running an online business, you need to keep up with new marketing trends to boost your brand. One of the latest marketing trends to implement is video shopping. When done correctly, video can help provide valuable information for customers, boost engagement, and increase sales.

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