Established businesses have one obvious advantage over their younger counterparts: Deep pockets.
Fortunately, what today’s small business lacks in budget can be made up for with strategy and a few carefully chosen tools. Here are six smart marketing ideas gleaned from my experience running a company that teaches small firms how to compete with big ones.
1. Keep an editorial calendar for your company blog.
Most small businesses can’t afford to bring an entire editorial staff on board, but they can still reap the benefits of a regularly updated company blog by using a good editorial calendar tool. WordPress’ plugin directory offers several free solutions. Editorial calendar software aids collaboration between editors and writers and allows site managers to schedule and automate weeks or months’ worth of posts.
By planning post topics in advance, business owners can source the best writers for the job and choose the optimum time for new content to go out. Strategically timing a post release to coincide with a related industry event can give it that extra dose of relevance it needs to go viral.
2. Automate social media management.
Building a presence on major social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook can be an effective and low-cost way for startups to get a lot of exposure relatively quickly. On the other hand, keeping social media accounts updated is a time-killer. It’s not just the time spent finding content to share: Time wasted logging in and out of different accounts multiple times a day adds up quickly.
Business owners can save hours of time weekly by taking advantage of the same tools enterprises use to manage and automate their social media marketing campaigns. Automation doesn’t have to break the bank: applications like HootSuite offer affordable plans designed for smaller businesses.
Using one of these industry-standard tools, social media managers can quickly and easily update multiple accounts at once, automate post scheduling, track brand or competitor mentions and even find great ideas for content curation — all from within one easy-to-use dashboard. Automatic post scheduling is an especially handy feature for businesses targeting an international audience.
3. Build a network of partner sites.
Getting brand mentions on well-established web publications is one of the most potent traffic-building strategies in a startup’s arsenal. As an added benefit, editorial links are the cornerstone of a successful SEO strategy.
Many starter companies simply don’t have the budget to hire a content marketing firm for a grand-scale publishing campaign. But that doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker: the web is full of publications with an endless need for quality content, and these publications are often happy to work with smaller businesses who can provide them with an article free of charge (in exchange for a bio and link, of course).
To harness this powerful marketing strategy, business owners need to be persistent in regularly pitching editors of prospective sites. To see results from this method, companies only need to secure a handful of strong partner sites they can publish to on a regular basis.
4. Seek out joint ventures and partnerships.
Often called JVs (joint ventures) in the online world, partnerships with other business owners are imperative for entrepreneurs looking to take their businesses to the next level. Luckily, there’s a world of opportunity out there for this kind of collaboration.
Fortunately, what today’s small business lacks in budget can be made up for with strategy and a few carefully chosen tools. Here are six smart marketing ideas gleaned from my experience running a company that teaches small firms how to compete with big ones.
1. Keep an editorial calendar for your company blog.
Most small businesses can’t afford to bring an entire editorial staff on board, but they can still reap the benefits of a regularly updated company blog by using a good editorial calendar tool. WordPress’ plugin directory offers several free solutions. Editorial calendar software aids collaboration between editors and writers and allows site managers to schedule and automate weeks or months’ worth of posts.
By planning post topics in advance, business owners can source the best writers for the job and choose the optimum time for new content to go out. Strategically timing a post release to coincide with a related industry event can give it that extra dose of relevance it needs to go viral.
2. Automate social media management.
Building a presence on major social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook can be an effective and low-cost way for startups to get a lot of exposure relatively quickly. On the other hand, keeping social media accounts updated is a time-killer. It’s not just the time spent finding content to share: Time wasted logging in and out of different accounts multiple times a day adds up quickly.
Business owners can save hours of time weekly by taking advantage of the same tools enterprises use to manage and automate their social media marketing campaigns. Automation doesn’t have to break the bank: applications like HootSuite offer affordable plans designed for smaller businesses.
Using one of these industry-standard tools, social media managers can quickly and easily update multiple accounts at once, automate post scheduling, track brand or competitor mentions and even find great ideas for content curation — all from within one easy-to-use dashboard. Automatic post scheduling is an especially handy feature for businesses targeting an international audience.
3. Build a network of partner sites.
Getting brand mentions on well-established web publications is one of the most potent traffic-building strategies in a startup’s arsenal. As an added benefit, editorial links are the cornerstone of a successful SEO strategy.
Many starter companies simply don’t have the budget to hire a content marketing firm for a grand-scale publishing campaign. But that doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker: the web is full of publications with an endless need for quality content, and these publications are often happy to work with smaller businesses who can provide them with an article free of charge (in exchange for a bio and link, of course).
To harness this powerful marketing strategy, business owners need to be persistent in regularly pitching editors of prospective sites. To see results from this method, companies only need to secure a handful of strong partner sites they can publish to on a regular basis.
4. Seek out joint ventures and partnerships.
Often called JVs (joint ventures) in the online world, partnerships with other business owners are imperative for entrepreneurs looking to take their businesses to the next level. Luckily, there’s a world of opportunity out there for this kind of collaboration.
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