Creating Compelling Marketing Campaigns for Small Businesses

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Written By Said

Said is a thought leader in small business marketing. He has founded, grown and sold dozens of successful businesses throughout his career. 

Introduction:

Marketing is the perfect tool to advertise your services, gain loyal followers, and grow your small business brand beyond where you are physically located.

There are many components that go into making a marketing strategy compelling and successful. However, if you really want to create a perfect marketing strategy, you need to understand how things work and how it all comes together to enable a brand’s success. Eager to know? Let’s jump right in!

How to create compelling marketing campaigns for your small business?

Define your marketing campaign’s objectives

Before starting, you must be aware of what you want to achieve and how your strategies will help you achieve your campaign’s objectives.

Important: describe what your differential value is with respect to your competitors, this is very important since from here the basis of your communication strategy will be created in the different communication channels that you are going to use: social networks, corporate website, newsletters, videos, etc. 

When you know why users will choose your company, that is when you can begin to define your objectives: generate leads; increase traffic to your website and get to know your brand; convert visits into online sales; become a reference/expert in your sector

All of these goals are coherent and achievable and you can think of them as the goal, But there are different paths to achieve your goals.

For example, to get traffic to your website you can use SEO techniques and not spend money or advertise and invest part of your budget so that visits increase faster. Although the result is the same, the consequences vary in the long term.

small business marketing

Understand your target audience

Before you do anything else, you need to stop and be very sure who your customers are. As a small business, you probably have some satisfied customers. Ask them how they found out about you, what made them convert, what they value about your service or products, and what they value about brand in general.

If you are good at what you do, you will get many stories about how your company solved client’s problems and how your products improved their lives. Gather demographic data from your customers: age, gender, profession, roles in the home, profession, interests, most used social media channels, etc. All of this will help you describe your buyer persona: knowing who your customers are and how they behave is essential.

In order to create perfectly targeted messages, you must create your buyer persona based on the segments you want to target.

Establish your goals

Before jumping into creating your marketing campaign, you must figure out what your expectations are for this campaign. Do you aim to generate leads, acquire new customers, re-engage with existing ones, boost brand visibility, increase sales of a specific product or service, or drive traffic to your website?

Setting clear, realistic goals is important from the get-go. This allows you to measure the success of your campaign effectively. To do this, it’s vital to establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) aligned with your goals. For instance, if your aim is to grow your newsletter subscribers, a measurable KPI could be reaching 1,000 subscribers. Identifying these KPIs helps track your progress and determine the campaign’s effectiveness.

Create targeted content

When it’s time to make your marketing campaign, focus on crafting content that speaks directly to your intended audience. Sometimes, thinking up fresh campaign ideas can be tricky. If you’re stuck, check out what successful competitors are doing. 

This can give you valuable insights into what works. But remember, never copy their work outright. Instead, use it as inspiration to build something unique. Add your own flair, your own voice, and your own special offer to make your campaign stand out.

Engage with your audience 

To engage with your audience effectively, make them eager to join your campaign. One way is by offering a special prize, preferably related to your business, to attract more participants and deter cheating or spam. 

Additionally, investing in visuals like videos, pictures, or infographics can grab attention. Another tactic is to incorporate gamification. Everyone enjoys playing games, so offering fun and interactive experiences such as quizzes, memory games, or jackpots can boost engagement and participation rates. 

Offer Something Valuable

When crafting your marketing campaigns, it’s important to provide something of value to your audience. Not everyone who sees your campaign will immediately become a customer, so it’s essential to use each opportunity to showcase what your product or service offers and how it can solve your audience’s problems. Your goal is to help prospects get to know your brand better and build trust.

The call-to-action (CTA) has a major role. Offer something that is free, extremely valuable, and unique. This could be anything from a case study, a video, an e-book, an interactive online brochure, or even a free consultation. 

Elevate your chances of going viral 

To up your chances of your campaign going viral, it’s important to make it being shared across different social media platforms. Here’s how you can do it:

  • Your campaign must be easy to share on the various social media channels.
  • Encourage participants to share your campaign on their social media by offering them rewards or additional chances to win.
  • Make it simple for participants to share your campaign with their friends and invite them to join in. 

Distribute and Promote Your Campaign

It’s important to let the world know about your campaign. Choosing the right mediums to reach your audience is important. After all, what’s the point of having a compelling campaign if no one is going to see it? Right? There are tons of ways to do this:

  • Share it on different social media platforms;
  • Send an email to your subscribers informing them of your campaign 
  • Spend a bit of money on advertising through LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google 

Key Takeaway 

Now that you’ve got into a relationship with new prospects, you can start nurturing those leads. Track the mediums through which they came to you, and share more about your business, etc. And to do so, you need to keep collecting information to better understand your users and deliver personalized content.

Maintain this relationship until you become known and trusted. When they’re ready to buy a product, they’ll think of you first. While this process takes time and effort, following the steps outlined above will definitely bring you positive results in the long run.