Three affordable but effective marketing strategies every small business should utilize. Source: Shutterstock

3 affordable, effective marketing tips for your small business

ACHIEVING marketing success requires a constant awareness of upcoming trends and emerging platforms. And for small businesses who may have a small marketing team and an even smaller budget, choosing how best to grow their brand may be a tough task. Here are three simple marketing tips to help get you started.

Blogging: Put your story in words

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Company blogs have become a trend that many businesses have adopted. Though maintaining a blog may seem like a big investment of your time, it can reap many benefits.

Blogging is an easy and cheap way to drive traffic to your site and attract potential customers.

Research has shown that 57 percent of companies who have a blog reported acquiring a customer as a result of it. In the same study, a survey of marketers revealed that 81 percent of businesses say that their business blog is critical for their business.

By keeping a business blog you can boost search engine rankings, develop relationships with potential and existing customers, establish your company as an industry leader, and create opportunities for sharing.

Social media marketing: Give it a personal touch

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Social media marketing has become a critical part of effective brand strategy in the past few years, and your small business simply cannot afford to become complacent in their efforts.

Personalized marketing techniques are becoming increasingly popular, and can help boost sales quickly. It involves tracking customer behaviors and buying patterns, and targeting them based on their interests.

Personalization techniques do not have to be complicated. In fact, you can start with something as simple as including your customer’s name in the mass emailers you send out.

Social media sites such as Facebook offer advanced advertising platforms which allow you to market your brand to specific audiences. This can help you drill down your marketing efforts to reach specific audiences, say for example, individuals who work at a specific company you would like to promote your product or service to.

Livestreaming: Get real with your customers

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Ask any marketer, and they will tell you the importance of including video content in your marketing strategy. And with video being cheaper and simpler to curate now more than ever, your business has the power to deliver engaging and compelling content to a large audience.

In particular, livestreaming, orĀ transmitting of live footage over the internet to an active audience, is a trend that is taking the social media world by storm.

Many social platforms have livestreaming functions integrated into their sites, making expanding your brands reach even simpler.

Developing a live video should be treated no differently to any other video campaign. Unplanned, messy video footage has the potential to damage your brand and have the opposite effect to what you desired.

Yet, while planning and preparing for live video is vital, what makes this content so effective is its personal and casual quality. So striking the right balance is key.

Last year, Facebook reported users spend 100 million hours per day watching videos on their platform. So, if video content isn’t part of your brand marketing strategy, you’re already behind.