Owning a small business entails wearing multiple hats throughout the day and week to ensure operations run smoothly. Often, it is challenging for business owners to keep track of the various tasks necessary to remain afloat and even excel, and marketing is often something that can get pushed to the side. If you are uncertain about the marketing aspect of operations, these marketing tips should provide a foundation and guide as to were your attention should be.
Social Media
Dedicate a portion of your time each day to monitor and post on your social media accounts. Many business owners find that the beginning and end of the work day are good times to review these. You can post updates in the morning and respond to any queries in the late afternoon. Focus your social media attention on 2-3 of the most relevant platforms to your business rather than attempting to use too many.
Content
Content is what tells the story of your business, its how you get found, and how customers research and review you before ever reaching out.
Creating new content can seem daunting and an impossible task. The easiest way to find new topic to write about is to keep a note of all the questions you get asked throughout the week in your business. Asked more than once? Great, its a common question, Publish a blog on how to solve that problem. Changes are if someone asked you, a lot more people have also had the issue.
E-mail
We all know keeping an inbox under control can be a tiresome task, and something that a lot of traditional brick and mortar businesses can tend to neglect. But for a lot of people E-mail will be their first and preferred method to reach out to you as a potential customer, and if they are left waiting too long on a reply or just get forgotten in a sea of unread emails, you'll potentially lose their business.
Go through you email periodically through the day, if a reply would take less than 5 minutes do it straight away, otherwise queue it up for some set aside E-mail time later in the day.
Brainstorming Time
Sometimes you need to just set some time to think and strategise. Have you sat down and researched your buyer personas, who your ideal fictional customers would be?
Have you thought of a content strategy that would attract your buyer person to your website?
Research and strategy takes time, and its important to dedicate yourself to it if you want to see results.
Dedicated Phone Time
There is only so much automated and digital nurturing you can do before you need to get on the phone and have a real conversation with your leads.
Don't let this be a scattered activity withoutstructure. Set aside some time every couple of days and find out who you need to reach out and build a relationship with.
Maintaining control over your marketing efforts is essential for the reputation of your company. Hopefully these marketing tips will assist you in taking care of the tasks you need to each day.
