6 steps to promote your small business

Use these six tips to get started, they don’t require previous marketing experience or expertise in building a website or a social media presence. They focus on the fundamentals and most importantly they can help you save money and be more effective with your marketing when you do create a website, post on social media, knock on doors, or buy a radio ad.

1. Identify what makes your business unique

One of the first exercises you’ll want to do requires you to look inward.

Start by writing a mission statement that concisely explains the what and why behind your business. Also, consider the values that you want your business to embody and uphold, the problems that you help customers solve, and how you differentiate yourself from your competitors. 

You can then combine all of these to identify your unique value proposition (UVP), the thing that’s going to lead customers to buy from you rather than someone else.

You don’t need to sell something unique to have a UVP. Consider companies that sell similar products like gasoline, groceries, or bottled water. You likely have different impressions and feelings toward the major companies that sell these products—and part of that comes from the companies’ marketing.

2. Write your brand’s story

It’s often easy for people to remember and stay interested in stories, and you can use the power of storytelling to reach your customers.

Every small business owner has a story, and this could be (but doesn’t necessarily have to be) the basis for your brand’s story.

A common example: the founder had trouble finding a product or service that met their needs because of the quality, ingredients, price, etc. They searched and searched, but couldn’t find a solution anywhere. Then, they created a solution for everyone dealing with a similar problem.

Some very successful businesses have been built on this type of story, and their advertisements and marketing draws on the story for inspiration.

Another approach is to share your customer’s story. The customer faces an obstacle or struggle, and your business shows them a solution and a path toward reaching their goals.


3. Create customer personas

It can be tempting to think of everyone as a potential customer. But trying to sell to everyone can lead to bland and forgettable marketing. Instead, narrowly define your ideal customer profile (ICP). This will be a person, or company, that’s a perfect fit for what you sell: they want it, can afford it, resonate with your brand’s mission and story, and they’re ready to buy.

If you already have customers, interview a handful and look for common threads in their stories and experiences. Otherwise, you can interview potential customers and take some creative guesses.

You can take the exercise as far as you want, but consider writing several paragraphs that describe the ICP. Going forward, you can ask yourself how the ICP would react to different marketing campaigns.


4. Define your brand’s voice

You’ve defined what makes your business unique, its story and reason for existing, and the person it’s ideally speaking to with its marketing. Everything up to this point influences your brand voice: the words, tone, and images it uses.

Consider two gyms that are in the same neighborhood. One values creating welcoming environments where everyone is encouraged and no one is judged. The other has tough, military-style classes.

They can both be successful, but they have different ICPs and need different brand voices. It’s the difference between “a friendly home for fitness” and “a bootcamp that will whip you into shape.”


5. Choose your marketing strategy

Now, you can develop your marketing strategy, which is a high-level roadmap that describes how you’ll reach your goals. Think of it as the time you spend working “on” your business’s marketing rather than doing the actual marketing.

The research you’ve done feeds into your strategy as you might already know where your ICP goes for recommendations, which social media platforms they prefer, and what types of promotions they like. You also can take time to identify your main competitors and analyze their offerings, rates, and how they attract customers.

6. Turn your strategy into action

It might seem like that was a lot of work to do before you get to the actual marketing, but it’s important. If one of those gyms tried to use the other’s fonts, images, and messages, it wouldn’t resonate with its ICP. People would be confused, and they likely wouldn’t become customers.

Keep this in mind as you develop specific marketing plans—the actions you’ll take to implement the strategy—for reaching your ICPs. These might include:

• Building website landing pages that speak to the ICP’s specific pain points.
• Sending postcards with discount codes to people who share some of the ICP’s characteristics.
• Partnering with other brands that your ICPs like.
• Gathering people’s emails at in-person events and sending tailored email messages.

Try to figure out the most cost-effective way to reach new leads and turn them into customers. And define your key performance indicators (KPI), the numbers you’ll track to figure out whether your marketing plan is working.


Upfront research can save you money

It can be tempting to skip some of the steps above and throw money at whatever marketing channels seem most relevant today. But go through the steps above before you start a new marketing campaign. Otherwise, you might be spending money to get in front of people who aren’t a good fit for your business.