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Getting Off the Ground: 4 Marketing Tips for New Businesses

Marketing is a key part of every small business’s strategic plan, as it’s essential to boosting visibility and acquiring new customers. One of the hardest parts of getting your business off the ground is building up your customer base, especially if your company doesn’t have the benefit of social proof or a dedicated marketing team.

Let’s explore four tips for launching your small business’s marketing efforts and creating key connections that lead to more customers.

1. Create target personas.

According to MassageBook, most small businesses decide on a specific niche to operate in for best results. This process usually entails assessing your skills and expertise and surveying your competitors. Use the information you gleaned from that research to create target personas of your ideal customers.

Take into account your target audience’s:

Demographics, such as age, location, and income level
Needs
Habits
Obstacles
Communication preferences

Then, combine all this information into a single persona. For example, if you’re running a cafe, one of your target personas might look like this:

Name: Anna, the College Student
Age: 18-25
Occupation: Student at the local college
Needs: A quick coffee or snack on the way to class, or a calm and relaxing space to snack while studying or doing homework
Obstacles: Other cafes in the area have long wait times or are overcrowded and noisy
Habits: As a student with limited funds, she usually purchases one of the cheaper coffees.
Communication preferences: She’s not receptive to email marketing, mostly due to having a full inbox from school. However, she spends much of her time on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

Having a detailed, thorough customer persona will inform how you handle the rest of your marketing efforts. With more personalized and targeted communications, you’ll make your small business irresistible to customers.

2. Build a strong website.

Today’s consumers expect easy access to information about your business, which makes a strong website crucial. Here are a few essential details you should include on your website:

Business name
“About us” or mission statement
Detailed product or service descriptions, including pricing
Contact information, such as phone number and email
Physical address and business hours, if applicable

Incorporate your logo, brand colors, typography, and other key elements to ensure visitors immediately understand that your website belongs to your business. Focus on what makes your business unique—for example, a massage practice might highlight its dedication to care by emphasizing its use of SOAP notes, whereas an ice cream parlour might discuss why it never offers a seasonal flavor twice.

Leverage a robust website builder to create a business site with all these elements. The right platform should make it simple to customize your website and offer an accessible online experience to all your visitors.

3. Focus on your most impactful channels.

When you first start marketing your small business, your instinct might be to use as many marketing channels as possible. However, this can lead to stress and anxiety: you’ll be adding a lot of extra work to your plate, and you may not see the results you desire.

Instead, focus on the channels that are most effective for your business. Remember the audience personas you created? Consider their communication preferences and start with the channels most aligned with them.

After you’ve conducted your marketing efforts for a few months, Deep Sync recommends using the data you’ve collected to refine your marketing approach. For example, if you’re not seeing lots of engagement on your social media posts, you may want to pivot your strategy to a different platform. Or, if you’ve found that certain types of content perform better than others, you might focus more on creating those to appeal to your audience.

4. Work with other organizations.

Partnerships with other organizations can provide an easy and impactful marketing boost, as you’ll gain access to the other organization’s audience. Here are a few types of organizations you could work with:

Other small businesses: Small businesses with similar or adjacent audiences, yet aren’t competitive with your offerings, are ideal. For example, if you run a dog daycare, you might work with a pet store, a pet groomer, or a veterinarian.

Large corporations: These entities sometimes support small businesses to create jobs and economic opportunities. Look for companies that offer programs that support your business’s marketing efforts. For instance, Goldman Sachs has a 10,000 Small Businesses program that teaches entrepreneurs how to run their businesses and connects them with other like-minded individuals.

Nonprofits: Partnering with a nonprofit doesn’t just result in better marketing—it also boosts your small business’s reputation, which might be what you need to set yourself apart from the competition! Look into co-marketing or co-branding opportunities, or even create a workplace giving program to support the charitable organizations in your community.

When proposing a partnership, outline exactly what you need from your partner and what you’ll offer them in return. When your partnership is accepted, stay in regular contact with your partner to show that you are a trustworthy collaborator.

Getting started with small business marketing requires you to do more than simply invest in the latest tools. Start with these four tips to solidify your marketing foundation. In the future, you can tweak and build up your strategy as necessary to build the loyal customer base you want!