Life can be hard for SMEs, can’t it? It can be difficult to compete with those larger businesses that have been established for a long time and have big budgets to back up their efforts. However, this does not mean that all hope is lost. There are ways that you can give off an impression of a professional and well-established business, enabling you to fight back against those bigger businesses in the industry.
This is a contributed post. Please refer to my disclosure for more information.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the different ways you can market your SME successfully below.
Invest in professional and brand video content
There is only one place to begin, and this is by making sure that you are investing in professional and premium quality content, with video being a prime example. Video production is one of the best ways to make an impact with your marketing efforts and establish yourself as an industry leader. Nothing makes a better impression than a creative, crisp, and branded video does. You can get that small firm feeling off your back with something like this. Plus, the benefits that are associated with video marketing are extensive. Videos help to create a feeling of trust and evoke emotion within the person that is watching them. Not only this, but they make concepts easy to digest as well, which is important when you consider the fact that we are all looking for convenience and ease in the digital age. When you consider all of this, it is really not hard to see why video is considered such a premium marketing solution, but this is only going to be the case if you choose a provider with care and thought. The last thing you want is to find yourself with a shoddy video that causes more harm to your brand than good.
Master social media
Becoming a social media master is definitely one of the best ways that you can take your small business to new heights from a marketing perspective. Social media is a significant tool because it enables your customers to get closer to your brand than ever before, and vice versa. The most successful companies take full advantage of this. You can see lots of great examples of companies that do social media well, as well as those who do not do such a good job. This can help you to get a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t. Firstly, we would always recommend that you simply focus on two or three (at the most) social media platforms. There are so many social media websites out there today, and if you try to build a presence on all of them you will never be able to do so effectively. This is because you are simply not going to have the time to post consistently and interact with people in the way that social media requires. It is better to be a master of a few things than a jack of all trades when it comes to social media. The best thing to do here is to do your research into your user demographics so you can find out what social media platforms your audience is using. It makes sense to create profiles and concentrate on these social media platforms after all. Aside from this, posting on a regular basis is important too. Your brand needs to have a distinct voice and personality, which is why it makes sense to have one person in charge of all of your social media efforts. Aside from this, make sure that you do not end up arguing or disagreeing with people on social media; it does not look good for your brand. Plus, once something is posted on social media, it is going to be on there forever, so you can’t delete something, even if you do hit the delete button. Another tip that we have for you is to make sure you do not simply post an endless string of promotional messages. If you do this, you are only going to end up irritating people. Instead, it is about authentic engagement and interaction when using social media, so do keep this in mind.
Focus on building a strong brand and making your USP known
As a small company, one thing you cannot compete on is the size and scope of your business. However, this does not mean that you are not going to be a better choice for a lot of people. It is simply about letting these people know why your business is the best option. To do this, you need to understand your USP and what makes you stand out from the crowd. What makes your business different from the rest? Could it be your personal approach? Maybe you have a unique product or element of your service that is different from what other companies are providing? By establishing and developing your USP, you can make sure that your business stands out from the crowd and you can tempt people to consider your business over the competing firms in your market. There are a lot of people that would rather work with smaller companies, they simply want to know what they are getting for the service and they need to find these businesses, to begin with. Therefore, refining your business and making sure that you stand out for the unique service you provide is critical here.
Avoid trying to cheat your way to the top with black hat techniques on SEO
This is a mistake that we have seen a lot of people make when it comes to search engine optimization for their small business, and so while it is more of a word of warning, it is a very important one. We are sure you have seen adverts from marketing firms that promise to get you to the top of the Google search engine result pages in a certain number of days. While this can be very tempting, no one has a relationship with Google and no one can promise to get you to the top of the search engine result pages so you really do need to be mindful of things like this. If someone claims to be able to achieve such impressive results, the chances are that they are using black hat techniques, which you should never use, as they will only come back to bite you in the long run. So, what are black hat SEO techniques? Black hat techniques work against the search engine, rather than obeying their rules and the way the company works. Black hat techniques will violate the terms and conditions in place at the likes of Google. This is for the purpose of trying to get to the top of the search engine result pages. It may even work for a small period of time. But it is never worth it. Once Google discovers that you have violated their terms and conditions – and it will discover this – your website will be penalised. We have even seen some websites being removed from the Google search result pages altogether. Therefore, this can be something that is incredibly difficult to come back from. Examples of black hat techniques include the likes of keyword stuffing, as well as incorporating keywords in white text on your website so that viewers cannot see the words but the search engine bots can. These sorts of approaches are not acceptable. Instead, you need to focus on building your search engine visibility in an organic and natural manner. Yes, it may take a little bit longer, but your presence will be sustainable, and so you can be sure that you will enjoy the fruits of a high search engine marketing position for years and years to come. There are so many different approaches that you can use to build your search engine presence organically. This includes incorporating keywords in a natural manner, optimising your images, amending your meta title and description, and posting regular blog posts. You should also look into the option of guest blogging and posting content on other websites that link back to yours. If you do not have any experience in search engine marketing, it makes sense to outsource this area, but you must choose with care because you need to be sure that the company you select does not use black hat techniques!
As you can see, there are many different ways that you can market your business effectively and compete against the bigger companies in the industry. Marketing is something that you can use to set your business apart and compete with the bigger fish in your sector. That is not to say that it is going to be easy. However, with the wealth of different marketing mediums that are available today and the limitless amounts of creativity that your business can tap into, you have the ability to really take your business to new heights by marketing effectively.