Hopefully, regular readers of our blog know that we believe in the power of the Internet to level the playing field between big brands and small businesses.
It doesn’t matter as much if a store has one location or one thousand, the store with better content on Facebook will have a higher engagement rate. The online advertisements with better keywords and optimization will have a higher click-through rate.
Online marketing and social media makes it easier for small businesses to thrive and reach more people, making it possible to compete with big businesses even though their budgets are vastly different.
This infographic shows how small businesses compete, and even have some advantages over, larger companies. For example, small businesses can:
- Maintain an online presence – Be active on social networks, but do not try to be everywhere. Find out where your customers spend the most time, and put a lot of effort into your presence on a few social networks. Once you’ve established a presence on one or two, branch out to others. But remember, be where your customers are.
- Focus on inbound marketing instead of outbound marketing – Attract users to your website through methods such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising, social media marketing, blogging, sending out e-newsletters, etc.
- Realize the importance of customer relations – Big brands frequently have so many customers that they don’t bother paying attention to each individual customer. You can get ahead by paying attention to everyone, and making them feel important. Social media makes it easy to reach out to your customers and engage with them.
- Seek funding – Look for grants and other forms of funding; you don’t have to go it alone!
- Adapt quickly – You have an advantage here because when it’s time for something to change, it take a big business time to roll out that change or implement it throughout the entire company. You are more agile and can adapt more quickly.
[via BLUE-Powered by Cox Business]
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Tags: branding, customer relations, inbound marketing, Infographic, small business, small business marketing, social media marketing
As a recent start-up trying to compete in the large world of Marketing & Advertising we are working with a niche market (Small Businesses & Government Consumers). We are building a bridge for small business owners to cross into a huge consumer base some 52million consumers that are label Government or affiliates of the Government. I have over 22 years directly supporting the Government and know my target audience very well. Since we launched 3 weeks ago, we have gained several small business customers that are paying for advertising. It’s only a matter of time that we catch the eye of the large brands. We offer a Bigger and Better consumer base for advertisers that are seeking ROI. We know that in this down economy everyone is looking to save something. We teach our business owners to incentive their products and services to capture the attention of the government consumer. We provide them a service like no other can or has been able to provide. We use our Search Engine website along with social media to keep our consumers abreast of the savings and progress of the company. We have already started to invest in Mobile app technology to further increase our brand and those of our businesses. We anticipate solid growth within the next 6-12 months and plan to launch the Gov-Savings Mobile app in fall 2013. We also welcome feedback from more experienced professionals.
Congratulations on launching your start-up, Royce! It’s very smart to start working on a mobile app early on in your business. Mobile is where it’s at right now, and its growth won’t start slowing down anytime soon. Best of luck with everything, and thank you for sharing your story!