The daily grind of any solopreneur can be really overwhelming.
While it might be true that you have this wonderful product or service that makes people more efficient and happier, nevertheless when it comes to sharing this offering with the world, it looks like you have hit a dead end.
Now, when you read about marketing strategies for business growth, all that you see are these great examples of Apple and Coca Cola, which must have worked for them, but then again as a small business or a startup, you do not have the budget to ask Kendall Jenner of sponsor a baseball team to promote your offerings.
This is because the truth is, you do not need that as a small business, since most big brands create advertisements for brand exposure, like Budweiser sponsors major NFL teams to make their fans say “Oh, look I know these guys” when they go for buying Bud Light at the local supermarkets.
Now your small business probably does not need that kind of reach or advertisement since in really small business and startups ideally require marketing that works with a small audience who are likely to purchase your offerings.
Therefore, instead of millions or thousands of people seeing your products, in small businesses if a dozen good leads in your small business CRM software platform’s database gets converted you can consider yourself as a winner and thereby grow your business.
Hence in this write-up here are five killer strategies that will for sure grow your small business or startup for little to no money at all.
Before You Start
Now if you want to grow your small business, it is most important that even before you start your marketing efforts, you need to build a plan which is one of the most vital tips for any small business trying to grow using digital marketing.
This is because primarily you need to understand what people you are targeting, how many leads you need to generate to keep growing and why would your leads want to buy your offerings, which are certain most crucial factors that will define both the quality and quantity of your marketing efforts which is needed for your business growth.
Hence kick-off your marketing by defining your audience.
Now it can be an issue if you are just starting out of you do not have any leads or prospective customers to base your assumptions on, and so look at who your competitors serve and thereafter brainstorm with your teams before answering these questions listed below:
When you have that figured out, think how many clients can your team handle at once, and how many leads do you need each month to make your business grow.
• What is the demography of my audience?
• What problems and pain-points so they solve with my offering(s)?
• Where does my audience look for information?
• Which social media platforms are used by my audience?
• How long on an average does your audience take to make a decision about their purchases?
Now, in case you are targeting customers in another country, it is natural you might have trouble viewing the web as they do.
Hence, to resolve this issue, get a VPN service and use the VPN to change your location while you access foreign websites and see what your customers see while they search for your offering.
Since with these assumptions, it will be easier for you to choose one or marketing strategies for your small business, since it must be understood that a plan is also an assumption, and so always be ready to change your plan if you see that the leads that you are getting in your easy to use CRM database are different than what you are expecting for your sales and business growth.
1. Create authority
One of the best things that you can do for your small business is to establish yourself as an authority. Hence, share your suggestions, advice and expertise on popular platforms, so that people might notice your business right away.
Therefore, guest blogging is a great way to find a huge exposure. Now even though you may not be writing for Forbes anytime soon, but if you find blogs and websites related to your business that have a big enough following, and accepts contributions, leaving a link to your business website or blog will surely boost your website’s authority in the eyes of Google bots and your potential customers.
2. Focus on long-tail keywords
It is an accepted fact that organic traffic ensures a much better ROI than PPC, even though your conversion rate might be lower with organic footfall sue to the lack of precise targeting.
Now it might take years before your new business website can rank well with high competitive words like “easy to use CRM”, “buy jewelry NYC” and others, therefore focus on dominating the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) with low-competitive long-tail keywords like for example “what is the best Salesforce Alternative CRM in the US?” or “What gems to buy instead of rubies?” to make your audience find your business easily in the marketplace.
Hence make a quick search of the long-tail keywords related to your industry, look for the topics that can cover the keywords that you can rank for, create unique contents and promote them by:
• Searching and outreaching smaller blogs and offering them to repost their contents with a back-link
• Outreaching resource pages and offering to post links to necessary, helpful and relevant contents
• Asking top bloggers in your industry of their opinions, mentioning them in your posts and asking for promotion of your offerings on their social media platforms
• Searching and finding out broken links and offering to post your link instead
• Finding post in Reddit or Quora asking about the topics and providing meaningful answers with back-links to your business websites and blogs
Pro Tip:
Work on creating a newsletter and create an effective way of getting people to subscribe as you are growing website traffic with content. It has been found that the ROI of email marketing is approximately $32 for every dollar spent.
3. Hire micro-influencers
If you are selling products like something that looks good on photos and is Instagram-worthy, get on Instagram to sell your offerings.
Now, this does not necessarily mean you need to spend thousands of dollars on a post since according to a survey done by Emarketer it revealed that you can even pay influencers on Instagram as low s $100 and still get conversions.
For this send your micro-influencers a free product for their review after selecting your influencers on YouTube and/or Instagram that works in your niche. The main criteria for finding such influencers is selecting one who has at least more than 5,000 subscribers, have a good engagement in their comments and are respected for their expertise by their followers.
4. Outbound prospecting
Now, this strategy is not fit for everyone, and so this is the reason why if you are in a B2C market you should start primarily by defining your audience and your goals.
Nevertheless, if you are a B2B company and need just a couple of customers to grow each year, outbound prospecting can be your preferred match.
However never send emails to everyone, as buying a mailing list from the web is a sure way for making your emails reach the spam.
Therefore, here is what you need to do to make outbound marketing effective for your business growth:
• Study your leads and if they seem like they need your help, it implies that they are not cold
• Find the right person to contact
• Personalize your emails using an easy to use CRM can increase your email marketing ROI by 122 percent
• Never engage your lead in a conversion with a sales pitch
• Follow up every week with your prospective leads consistently
• Always ask for referrals
5. Automate
Irrespective of whether you are doing inbound or outbound marketing, it is never possible to keep track of every leads manually on your own.
Hence use an easy to use CRM, especially Salesforce Alternative CRM software platforms that are mostly used by small businesses and startups to keep all your contact’s data and history in one place.
Using a CRM for small and medium business aids in keeping track of all conversations and calls and thereafter analyze your interactions easily, which is especially helpful if you are interacting with your customers across multiple channels since once you buy CRM it can make your marketing efforts more organized and also reduce its cost.
Takeaway
Doing marketing for your small business as a solopreneur may seem hard. Nevertheless, if you know your customers and have an idea as to where you want your business to be in the future, applying the right marketing strategies will surely get you dozens of qualified leads for little or no money and make your find success and business growth.
