jump to the end for the individual platforms worth your time (right now).
The hardest pill to swallow and acknowledge for most content strategies, especially getting starting filming and creating your own content, is that the influx of client won’t happen over night. It’s most definitely a slow burn until something truly big ignites, but until then know that consistent hard work will be your best marketing at that time.
Once you develop that personality of hard working, trusting, loyal, etc THEN you market that. Any small business marketing idea is essentially a magnification on your processes, so to truly utilize better marketing strategies and more clients, having all of the right systems in place for growth is essential.
But that’s another blog.
Small business marketing ideas are the kind of holy grail, and there’s always something bright and shiny, but, the most relevant pertains to where YOUR actual customers reside. Do you only help people within 2 miles of your shop, or do you have a 50 mile radius of service area?
What’s important to know about all social media platforms is they can be hyper-local, and so if your service area is within 5 miles of your address, the first thing you can try to do is join EVERY neighborhood facebook group within 5 miles of your business address. To understand your entire demographic and the other competition.
If you notice that people consistently are looking for photographers on there, try creating content for providing helpful tips to take photos on their own, and try to be helpful if there are any photography question. (This applies to whatever your business is)
Side note the first marketing i did for Bulb Brain when I was just starting out was to attend in-person networking events. At that time, that was the best kind of marketing I could do: get to know the small business communities in Illinois AND develop my brand.
When I was starting out I didn’t fully know what I was selling, but I knew it involved social media. I quickly added the visual component to Bulb Brain as that was a value add to a great strategy. Heck, without a great picture the words fall dead! Both need to be working in harmony and towards the same goal, otherwise messaging can become conflicted.
Ok more value. Another great small business marketing idea would be to create ‘how to videos’ that pertains to very specific problems that your product or service solves. If you understand where a person is in their problem by the time they come to you, you can help answer some of the questions they might be looking for.
Well how do you know what questions they’re looking for?
If you’re good at SEO you can use some analysis. I’m an affiliate of Answer the Public and I think they have some really good information. But, as I’ve watched people build a deck with a hammer and saw, if you handed that to me, a deck I could not build….
Tik Tok is Hot. LinkedIn is essential, especially if you’re trying to reach buyers in offices. Facebook is ‘dead’ but it represents about 70% of all social media traffic… Instagram is great, Twitch if you’re good at streaming, YouTube is still the #2 search engine. And on and on. Heck, snapchat is still around. Whatsapp can be a way to contact clients.
They ALL require some type of educational content to be packaged as entertainment. Each have a certain voice and if your customers aren’t on these platforms, it’s not important for you to be.
The importance in using social media for small business marketing is their low cost and ease of access. People are forgiving about video quality and you can record quick hand held clips and post them and people will find value in them. The videos you spend money on are the ones meant to go on your website and promoted on youtube, facebook, insta and the like.
So which small business marketing idea is best for you? All of them! Ha. If you do it correctly, the similar stuff you create for youtube can be your posts on facebook, instagram, etc.
Assume as long as you have your business, one of the best assets you can invest in will be your image. A great logo, great pictures and great videos can remain relevant and you have the potential to reuse them over and over.
These are assets and just because you post them once doesn’t mean they’re dead! Heck, all of these social platforms keep changing the algorithm and so fewer and fewer people will see your original post anyways, so, if it’s still relevant in a few months it’s ok to post the same problem solving tips, if it’s still relevant!
Once you have 5 years of photos and videos, package that up with an interview by you for a 5 year celebration video. After 10 years do the same thing!
Ok more small business marketing ideas? Definitely join the chamber of commerce where you do business. Immediately. Their whole goal is to promote business. It may be dead, or maybe they have some really cool events where other business owners go and network, but, the best thing you can do for your small business marketing wise is get the credibility with your chamber of commerce.
It will help build your confidence and plus you’re now hanging around with business people that have been doing it for years! And they’ve been successful! Have you heard the quote about how you become the 5 people you spend the most time with? That’s why it’s important to find these local groups.
They’re actual people like you, starting and struggling and growing their small business, and they’re looking for other connections! Either to help them grow or just to have other small business friends.
You amplify your contacts you met at the chamber by connecting on linkedIn and facebook, and then you post content about your business on those pages! from your personal page! really! and you share exciting and cool stuff about your business, and people see that and they’ll reach out to you and say ‘hey, it looks like things are going well, i have a friend who’s in a similar field, would you like to connect?’
Or next time you see these people IRL (in real life (that’s gonna happen, right?)) then they’ll most likely lead, talking about the content you’ve been posting. So if you’re sharing your boring ass political views, you 2 can talk boring ass politics.
Or if you’re posting awesome movie recs, and cool photography, and cool records and videos then that can be what people approach you about.
So. I dont know if it answered the question I proposed, but there are a bunch of great ideas for marketing a small business. A lot more these days are free and a great thing for small businesses to utilize. It’s important to appear on these platforms so people can find you, and you can show people which problems you can solve. How you do it and getting anybody motivated enough to buy is where the marketing dollars get spent…
The essential platforms are LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter & Snapchat. Consider creating an account on each of these and try posting.
Your first post can be your contact info ‘hey everyone I’m Michael Rataj I’m a videographer-marketer-business person doing visual to strategic sales and marketing planning for financial service professionals, here’s my info’ and then i’ll just post sample videos for the clients I want to attract, or content for clients I want to attract.
IE, 5 video ideas for financial service professionals.
Good luck, and if you need your own small business marketing strategy, reach out!