Every year, there’s more and more for us with a small business to think about. The last five years has seen a surge in the use of the internet and in particular the mobile phone. Everyone is online these days…I know that if I want to buy something, the first place I go is the internet. With this in mind, I’ve done some research on what is trending in 2017 and will continue into 2018 for marketing your small business.

Mobile phone

As more and more people rely on their mobiles for everything, from ordering fast food, the supermarket shop, to clothes, shoes and gifts, it makes sense to make sure that your small business is online and easy to find.

Most website visits are from a mobile and there are more searches being conducted on a mobile that anything else. Unfortunately research shows that there are many businesses out there that do not yet have an online presence…and do not think to include mobile phone marketing into their marketing plans. There are several ways to optimise a website for the mobile user and something to think about for 2018, if you haven’t already. You can ‘Google’ how to do this.

Content Marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO) continues to be important in order to ensure your business ranks highly in search engines, so it is easier for customers to find you. Content marketing is more important than ever – the Google search engine looks for new and original content for their ranking, so it’s vital to keep your website up to date, ensure that blogs are posted regularly with fresh and engaging articles. For example, customers love to hear a real-life story, so writing about how you have helped someone by solving a problem they had, is a great way to show that you care and value your customers, and it promotes trust and loyalty to your brand.

Video Marketing

You will have noticed how much more video you now see on your social media sites, especially on Facebook and Instagram. According to research conducted by livestream.com 80% of audiences would rather watch live video from a brand than read a blog and 82% prefer live video from a brand to social posts. This tells us a lot about where marketing is going in the future, customers are no longer happy with faceless marketing, they want to see real people giving them real information. So, it’s going to be very important in 2018 to incorporate video into your marketing strategies, whether it’s for a product launch, running a webinar or talking about product reviews or your services, it’s a fantastic opportunity that none of us can choose to ignore. You can use Facebook ads and YouTube to help you or just go ‘live’ on Facebook in real time. You may make some mistakes or stumble over a few words, but your customers will be able to relate to you much more easily.

Facebook ads

Facebook ads reach more than 1 billion viewers every month, so as a small business, you can’t afford not to try this out. You can use a Facebook ad to target your audience by age, demographic and gender. It’s not ridiculously expensive and has proved to be very worthwhile – definitely worth thinking about. Facebook has a great help centre, which can take you through this process, step by step.  Facebook asks you to choose the objective of your ad – why do you want to advertise on Facebook? You could choose to direct more traffic to your website, or to just make people aware of your brand. You can set a budget, choose who to target by age, gender, location etc. And you can see the stats of who looks at your ad. You can also choose to simply promote your business page.

This kind of targeted marketing is likely to become more and more popular, so why not give it a whirl?

Outsourcing work

Doing everything for yourself with your small business makes sense at the beginning, but as your business starts to grow, you have less time and it is always the marketing and advertising that suffers. Ultimately, this can lead to a decline in the focus of your business and a decline in sales.

Small businesses are starting to understand that it’s important to have a good marketing strategy and have someone that knows what they are doing to get the right messages out to potential customers. This often involves paying someone else, an expert in that field, to do it for you. Not only does this give you more time to concentrate on your products and services, but also means you have someone focussing 100% on marketing your business. You may have to pay out up front, but it will be worth it in the end, if you get the right person.

If you can’t afford to use someone for all of your marketing, you could just outsource your blogs and get someone to write one or two a week for you – this will keep your business publishing new and fresh content, which will bring more customers to your website or highlight your brand…and it’s a much more affordable option.

It’s also worth seeing if you can get a well-known blogger interested in what you do – get them to review some of your products or offer a service for free and ask them to write a stunning review.

There are several ways to get help, but they do all come with a cost, some small and some not so small, so it is worth trying to factor in a budget for outsourcing as well as for advertising and promotion.

I hope that this article has been useful and that you have some new ideas to add to your marketing plan for 2018. Please feel free to contact me if you need any help with your marketing.