Marketing for Small Business Can Change Your Life (It Changed Mine)

When I started my first business, I honestly thought we would succeed because word about how awesome we were would magically get out. We were providing far-superior service, crushing our competition in terms of the outcomes we provided. Who wouldn’t choose us? Turns out, if people don’t know about you, they don’t choose you.

We built a better mousetrap and the world didn’t beat a path to our door. Eventually, I realized that if we were going to make it, marketing would be the lifeblood of our business. So I learned, tried things, failed, learned and tried some more. And along the way, I grew to love marketing.

Taking my own advice from this blog post—Nine Content Ideas for Any Niche—I thought I would share Seven Awesome Things About Marketing for Small Business. Here’ what I love about Marketing for Small Business, and what you might love, too.

1. Marketing for Small Business allows you to express your vision for the world, or at least your vision for your business and it’s impact on the world. When I started my first business, I had a huge vision. I wanted to change my community, to make a significant impact my part of the world. I built the systems to make that impact, but it wouldn’t have changed anything without marketing which helped people to know and choose us.
2. Marketing for Small Business allows you to have peace of mind. The single most stressful thing I have ever done in my life is start a business. I went from working to feed my family to building a company that would hopefully meet my goals and also my employees’ goals. I often thought about the fact that I was ultimately responsible for bringing in the business that would feed my colleagues’ families. Of course, the people I was working with could get other jobs to feed their families, but they trusted me and I didn’t want to let them down. By marketing my small business, I had the peace of mind of knowing that I was getting the word out, people were choosing us, and families were being fed.
3. Marketing for Small Business allows you to stand for something (or against something). I started my company because I was angry. I was angry with the way companies in my industry were taking advantage of unsuspecting customers, customers who didn’t know enough to demand better. As part of our marketing efforts, we educated the consumers, helping them to raise their standards and expectations for excellent service in our industry. So even if people didn’t choose us, they had a better chance of getting what they deserve because we’ve stood for something and raised the standard.
4. Marketing for Small Business allows you to grow, learn and use what you learn. If you ask anyone who knows me, they’ll tell you that I love to learn. I read books and blogs constantly, listen to audiobooks and podcasts voraciously. But if all I ever did was consume information without applying it, life would be significantly less interesting. It’s in the doing that I really grow, use what I learn, and learn some more. It’s a virtuous cycle that’s constantly changing what I know and do.
5. Marketing for Small Business allows you to help your family and friends. My mission in life is to make the world a better place, and the way I know how to do that best is by helping people who share that mission make a bigger impact. I have so many friends and family members that want to make a difference in the world, and I can use marketing to help them grow their audience and impact.
6. Marketing for Small Business allows you to minimize risk. Whenever you want to introduce a new product or service into the marketplace, there’s an element of risk. You could invest a fortune in a new widget or a new line of service, only to find out that no one wants it. But once you learn some of the fundamentals of Small Business Marketing, you’ll make better choices on the front end because you’ll know your customers better, their wants and needs (Pro Tip: virtually all purchases are based on customer wants, so appeal to them. We buy very few things because we actually need them). And once you make those choices and develop the product or service, you’ll be able to get the word out so more people choose them.
7. Marketing for Small Business allows you to make an additional (side) income if you choose. Our economy is changing. We are in a “gig” economy where people freelance and business owners hire people on contract to accomplish specific business functions. If you get good at Marketing for Small Business, you can earn a nice income from helping other small business owners market their products or services. I teach a course with Connie Ragen Green called “How to Market for Small Business.” And even though the primary goal is to help small business owners market for their own businesses, people who take the course can easily learn to market for other small businesses. Even though it’s not the main thing I do, I have enjoyed helping a variety of small business owners over the years while making a good income from it.

There are lots of other reasons why Marketing for Small Business is awesome—I’ve barely scratched the surface. If you would like more information about how to market for small business, where to start or how to get good at it, please email me for a no-cost, no-obligation consultation.

Ideas to Make it Easier

When you create a blog about any topic or niche, the first thing you’ll need is an abundance of content. You’ll need copy for each page of your blog such as the about page and other pages of the blog. You also need blog posts to keep content and newly updated information flowing through the blog, so that search engines will keep ranking you at or near the top. But how will you know what sort of content to create? Here’s how to create content for your blog:

Study Your Audience – It’s imperative that before you start creating content, you understand who your audience is. Know them down to their income, sex, desires, wants, needs, and more. This is how you’ll know what content to create, as well as how they like to consume it.

Understand Your Niche – In addition, you need to truly understand your niche so that you can write and educate your audience about it. You’ll need to create content that is engaging, informative, educational and that encourages your audience to interact with them.

Know What You Want to Promote – It helps to also know what you are trying to accomplish with each blog post. Do you want to educate your audience? Do you want to promote a product or service? And is it your own or someone else’s? How does this product or service solve problems that your audience has? Can you educate them on the problem as you promote the solution?

Decide What Forms of Content You’ll Need – Your audience may need beginning information or they may be advanced at your niche; you know them best. Knowing this, you’ll be able to choose the forms of content — whether they are educational, or conversational and interactive, or focused in another way.

Choose Which Types of Content You Want to Use – You’ll need to use many types of content, such as text, video, images, and more to keep your audience’s interest. Not only that, you need to use the type of content that search engines like, such as video, long-form text posts and more.

Create an Editorial Calendar – Don’t go forward without a plan of action. Create an editorial calendar to help you keep your content development more organized. You can always add more content as news develops and issues occur, but at least have an outline of the type and forms of content you’ll use for promoting the products and services that you have.

Find Help – If you’re not sure how to go forward, you can contract with a content strategist, writers, and others to help you get things done. Having a plan and then implementing that plan will ensure your success with creating content for your blog.

Repeat – Once you set things up and create momentum, keep it going. Blogging is a long-term marketing strategy that you must keep doing to continue your success. For more ideas on how to create content for your blog, check out this infographic on Copyblogger.

Creating content for your blog needs to be something you do on a regular and ongoing basis. Shoot for three to five times a week at first. Once you become established, you can slow it down to once a week if you include authoritative long-form content. You have two goals: to keep your blog at or near the top of the search results and to keep your audience engaged, informed, and interacting with you. If you create content for your blog that accomplishes the second goal, it will almost certainly help you accomplish the first.

If you’d like some help creating content to grow and engage your audience, please email me. I’d be happy to help.