Small business leaders, including CEOs and Founders, reveal their most effective marketing strategies in this comprehensive guide. From investing in SEO and evergreen content to offering smaller packages for quicker value, we’ve compiled the top twelve tactics that have driven success. Dive into the insights that span from the foundational to the innovative, and see how these strategies can be applied to your business.
- Invest in SEO and Evergreen Content
- Harness the Power of Video Content
- Showcase Real-Person Reviews
- Utilize LinkedIn for B2B Engagement
- Empower Customers With User-Generated Content
- Drive Traffic With a Robust SEO Strategy
- Engage Through Guest Posting and Influencers
- Combine Storytelling With Smart Outreach
- Boost Visibility With Social Media and SEO
- Syndicate Content Across Social Platforms
- Grow Sales With a Referral Program
- Offer Smaller Packages for Quicker Value
Invest in SEO and Evergreen Content
Investing in SEO and evergreen content has been a great way to continue to reach my audience without being beholden to increasing ad rates across various platforms.
Now that we have great content on our blog, it enjoys organic search traffic that is free and passive for us, as minimal updates are needed.
Kristine Thorndyke, Co-Founder, TEFL Hero
Harness the Power of Video Content
Video content has remained a significant marketing strategy that has proven successful for my small business. It helps me capture attention more effectively than words or pictures, allowing me to tell my brand story and connect with potential customers.
Demonstrating product usage and offering behind-the-scenes glimpses help enhance customer understanding. This approach sells products and helps me connect personally with my viewers.
The impact extends to online visibility, with videos improving my site’s search engine rankings and making it very easy to draw more traffic to my site. This increased prominence, coupled with the established trust and connection, yields higher sales.
In essence, video content is a powerful strategy that has helped my small business reach a broader audience, fostering trust and driving engagement and conversions.
Peter Bryla, Community Manager, ResumeLab
Showcase Real-Person Reviews
A big part of marketing is trust. You can have the largest advertising budget in the world and still fall flat if your campaigns feel shallow or disingenuous. Customers have a sixth sense of insincerity.
That’s why real-person reviews are so valuable. If you don’t have a dedicated page on your website for highlighting satisfied clients and customers, you need to make one now. Giving space to happy results is better than any paid-for marketing strategy.
The same goes for Yelp or other third-party review sites. Monitor your ranking so you can reach out to dissatisfied customers quickly. If you are lacking in reviews, consider adding a perk or benefit to encourage clients to weigh in.
Rob Reeves, CEO and President, Redfish Technology
Utilize LinkedIn for B2B Engagement
For Ignited Results, a highly successful marketing strategy has been the focused use of LinkedIn for B2B networking and lead generation. We developed a series of LinkedIn content campaigns that targeted specific industries we serve. This content was not only informative but also encouraged discussions and engagement within those professional communities.
We complemented this with active participation in LinkedIn groups and direct outreach to potential clients through personalized messages. This approach helped us establish meaningful connections, showcase our expertise, and directly engage with potential clients in a professional context.
This LinkedIn-focused strategy significantly increased our visibility in our target markets, leading to valuable business relationships and a noticeable uptick in client acquisition. It’s a testament to the power of using a platform-specific strategy to effectively reach and engage with your desired audience.
Jon James, CEO, Ignited Results
Empower Customers With User-Generated Content
One marketing strategy that has proven remarkably successful for our small business is leveraging user-generated content. In the world of travel, nothing speaks louder than authentic experiences shared by real people.
A few years ago, we launched a campaign encouraging our followers to share their travel stories and photos on their social media platforms with a unique hashtag. The response was overwhelming. Not only did we see a surge in engagement, but we also saw an increase in organic reach as participants’ friends and family started following our page to support their loved ones.
This strategy transformed our customers into brand ambassadors, giving us access to their network and expanding our reach. Besides, the user-generated content provided us with a treasure trove of authentic material that we could repurpose in our future marketing efforts.
The power of user-generated content lies in its authenticity and relatability. It’s a testament to the fact that sometimes the most effective marketing strategies are those that put your customers front and center.
Swena Kalra, Chief Marketing Officer, Scott & Yanling Media Inc.
Drive Traffic With a Robust SEO Strategy
One of the most successful marketing strategies we’ve used is a robust SEO strategy. By ranking at the top of Google search results for relevant keywords, we’ve driven consistent, high-quality traffic to our site—people who are ready to buy our products or services.
As an example, one of our clients, Bridgesaw.com, saw a 278% growth in just 12 months after starting our SEO strategy. The key here is focusing on quality over quantity. You’re reaching out to customers who are specifically searching for what you are offering, resulting in a much higher chance of conversion compared to other outbound marketing strategies.
Hiring a digital marketing agency for SEO might seem like an investment, but given their expertise in staying up-to-date with Google’s algorithm changes and the potential boost in sales, we’ve found it to be a very cost-effective choice.
Magee Clegg, CEO, Cleartail Marketing
Engage Through Guest Posting, DigitalPR and Influencers
One marketing strategy that has yielded significant success for our small business, particularly in the specialty coffee industry, involves a multifaceted approach. Guest posting and creating backlinks to reputable industry contacts have been instrumental in amplifying our online presence. By collaborating with established platforms and thought leaders within the specialty coffee sphere, we’ve not only expanded our visibility but also positioned ourselves as valuable contributors to the industry’s conversation.
Directly engaging with Instagram influencers and fostering collaborative posts with more established accounts has been remarkably effective. Our approach involves starting conversations by introducing our passion for coffee as a new hobby, building intrigue and curiosity. This technique allows us to establish genuine connections while gradually revealing our brand’s values and offerings.
By strategically aligning with influencers and established accounts, we’ve leveraged their reach and credibility, tapping into wider audiences and fostering authentic relationships within the specialty coffee community. This personalized and suspense-building approach has proven to be a catalyst in building meaningful partnerships and expanding our business reach in the industry.
Andrew Chung, Founder, Best Cafe Designs
Combine Storytelling With Smart Outreach
You know, at Content Whale, we’ve hit our stride with a mix of storytelling and smart outreach. We’re all about bringing stories into our content—not just the usual marketing talk, but real stories about how we solve problems or a peek into our team’s creative antics. It’s stuff that our audience can connect with, and honestly, it makes our content stand out.
And then, there’s our outreach strategy. We’re not just sitting back and hoping people find us. We actively reach out to other websites with our content, which is both engaging and super informative. It’s a win-win—they get great content, and we get those valuable backlinks that bump up our visibility online.
It’s kind of surprising how many companies aren’t making the most of content marketing. It’s such a cost-effective way to draw in leads and get more eyes on your site. By blending our storytelling chops with a bit of outreach hustle, we’ve built a strong online presence without breaking the bank. It’s all about that combo of cool content and smart networking.
Bhavik Sarkhedi, Growth Head and CMO, Content Whale
Boost Visibility With Social Media and SEO
One marketing strategy that proved successful while I was working with Grooveshark was leveraging cost-effective strategies like social media marketing, content marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO).
We’ve seen a marked increase in organic traffic and visibility by engaging directly with our audience via social media, creating high-quality content that established Grooveshark as an authoritative source of information, and conducting keen keyword research to boost our search rankings.
Specifically, our content tied to popular musicians and our app usage resulted in a significant increase in backlinks and traffic—creating a beneficial viral loop. The beauty of these strategies is that they’re budget-friendly, which is crucial for small businesses.
Sam Tarantino, Founder, Harmonic Reach
Syndicate Content Across Social Platforms
We create content on TikTok and then syndicate it out to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Since we market to B2B audiences, our content is niche, and it has reignited numerous past relationships, as well as some new ones. The best videos turn into ads that reach large audiences and drive leads for us.
Robert Brill, CEO, Brill Media
Grow Sales With a Referral Program
One marketing strategy that has proven significantly successful for us is implementing a referral program. We built an incentive system where our existing customers were rewarded for referring new customers to our Shopify store. It worked like a snowball effect; one satisfied customer introduced multiple new people to the brand.
Not only did this quickly increase the visibility and traffic of our store, but it helped us build a tight-knit community around the brand. Also, since trusted referrals usually lead to higher conversion rates, we experienced a substantial boost in our sales revenue.
Another successful strategy was using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) combined with PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising to increase our online visibility. By optimizing our website and bidding on keywords relevant to our products, we could significantly enhance our store’s visibility and attract lots of organic traffic. The PPC advertising, meanwhile, instantly pushed our store to the top of search results, driving immediate traffic and sales. This blend of SEO and PPC became quite a significant change for us.
Steve Pogson, Founder, First Pier
Offer Smaller Packages for Quicker Value
I’ve found that providing smaller packages with quicker time-to-value has increased my closing rates and allowed me to drive more clients for my go-to-market strategy studio. When we started the business, I had a single high-ticket offer with a minimum delivery time of three months (a long time-to-value).
Over the years, we have refined the offerings. Now, we have smaller offerings that are ten times cheaper and deliver value in two weeks. This has been proven to increase our closing rates and speed up our sales cycles.
This does not come as a surprise, as after 30 years of observing buying patterns, I’ve observed that most customers buy based on risk rather than value perception in high-ticket or high-risk perception products.
Starting with cheaper and quicker time-to-value services or products, like small assessments, live sessions, trials, or freemium product offerings, is a great marketing strategy to help prospective buyers reduce the risk perception of buying, close new clients, and then expand by upselling more high-ticket products or services.
Jose Bermejo, Founder and Managing Partner, Predictable Innovation Strategy