How can small businesses deploy big marketing strategies?

market, strategies

Your small businesses could have the best product or service in the market, but if you can’t effectively and strategically communicate that to your customers, it counts for very little. In competitive markets, effective marketing is what sets good businesses apart from the pack.

Small businesses have long relied on word of mouth and other traditional marketing tactics. However, consumers and digital marketing is evolving at warp speed; so much so that even seasoned and specialist marketers are struggling to keep up. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to properly manage multiple campaigns, channels, customer profiles, data, and ROI.

For small-business owners who are required to wear multiple hats, including marketing, doing anything other than the basics can feel like a bridge too far. However, technology is levelling the playing field and allowing small businesses to deploy and customise marketing strategies that for so long were only accessible to big businesses with deep pockets and expertise.

Unlocking small businesses’ potential

Consumers today spend, on average, six hours a day consuming online content. At the same time, they’re no longer absorbing traditional channels such as physical newspapers or billboards as often. Their new, tech-savvy habits are an opportunity, not a risk, for SMEs. Traditional marketing methods have always been mostly unaffordable for small businesses, but according to Forbes, 64 per cent of companies report lower costs for digital compared to traditional marketing.

For small businesses, sophisticated yet intuitive and affordable technology lets them not only embrace powerful digital marketing channels but create a unified approach that combines every channel in one integrated strategy. In doing so, it can help them compete with bigger businesses by unlocking innovative marketing capabilities that for so long were out of reach.

Data, personalisation, unification and automation

Today, small businesses can seamlessly build their marketing upon four contemporary and powerful pillars: data, personalisation, unification and automation. Whether they realise it or not, most small businesses have masses of customer data. It’s more than numbers though, it’s insights into their customers’ attributes, interests, background, and goals; both individually and as a ‘segment’ alongside peers with similar traits.

These insights can be used by small businesses to understand the messaging, channels and tactics their customers’ desires. When a consumer feels understood like this, and not just a sales target, their affinity to that brand grows. Just as global businesses can provide personalised marketing based on a customers’ search, purchase and engagement behaviour, so too can small businesses through data.

Digital marketing is about more than just presenting a single message on a single channel; it’s about a coordinated marketing effort across multiple channels to get maximum reach for your brand. Rather than multiple, siloed channels – those that operate individually and without collaboration – a unified approach empowers small businesses to build consistent, strategic and personalised marketing experiences for customers across every channel, including social media, SMS, email and more. What’s more, a unified approach boosts automation, which removes administrative burdens and allows small businesses to make more informed decisions that ultimately drive better results, growth, and revenue.

A unified, data-driven and personalised approach sounds daunting but is far from it. Platforms like Zoho Marketing Plus combine marketing activities across campaign ideation, creation, execution, management and measurement allowing small businesses to create, deploy and customise targeted, data-driven, personalised marketing campaigns as powerful as any big business.

In competitive markets, standing out as a small-business owner isn’t always about the quality of your product or service, it’s often about how effectively you promote it. A unified digital marketing approach allows you to measure ROI, breakdown marketing and sales silos, create real-time interaction, pursue high-quality leads, create a consistent brand presence and, ultimately, boost engagement amongst an Australian audience eager to support local businesses.