Marketing For A Small Business: 5 Key Tips

Did you know that most small businesses spend less than $10,000 each year on marketing?

It takes time and money to create marketing for a small business, but it’s an investment that can make the difference between failure and success.

Marketing for a small business is all about getting attention, building trust, and driving consistent sales without wasting money. Marketing budgets are normally tight which means you should focus on marketing strategies that provide real returns on investment.

We’ll discuss some of the ways you can market a small business in Las Vegas or anywhere else to help you get ahead.

1. Define Your Brand

Defining your brand focuses on telling people who you are, what you offer, and who you can help. Creating a consistent brand will help build trust and make it easy for people to recognize your small business. You’ll want to:

Create a brand story.
Define your ideal customer.
Create brand guidelines.
Create a marketing plan.
Create a clear offer.

Keep reading to learn more about each of these aspects of marketing your small business.

Create a brand story.

People like to do business with people they like. They want to know they are giving their hard-earned money to honest, likeable people who share their values. So they want to know why you started your business.

Sure, you want to make money, but there’s probably another reason you chose to start the business you did and run it the way you do.

For instance, I consult with business owners because I love helping people solve their problems. I write and record videos because I can help more people by publishing content than I can by doing one-on-one consultations. Ultimately, I do what I do because I love the feeling of helping others succeed.

What about you?

Take a few minutes to think about your mission statement, vision, and goals. Share with people how you want to make their lives better.

Define your ideal customer.

Your ideal customer is the type of people or businesses you want to work with.

You’ll want to describe your ideal customer as well as you can. Some of the things you might want to consider include age, marital status, location, hobbies, education, and income.

You might also want to consider:

Do they have kids?
Do they have pets?
Where do they hang out?
Where do they shop?
When is my ideal customer online?
What big life events are coming up?
Where do they get information?

Depending on the type of company you run, your ideal customers will be different.

Here are some examples.

Local service company

Most local service companies will be working with homeowners or business owners within a small radius. The people normally live there, work there, and are in their 30s or older. They tend to have household incomes of at least $100,000 and can afford to spend on services routinely.

Yard signs, branding on trucks, uniforms, and mailers can help attract your target customers because they see you around town.

Local services might also target businesses in office buildings or shopping centers if they provide commercial services. In this scenario, you’ll want to define your service area, number of employees, customer traffic, and other aspects that indicate whether a business is a good company to provide services.

Luxury online clothing store

A luxury online clothing store will most commonly cater to women because they like to buy more clothing. They can sell globally, but they will most likely focus on sales within the U.S. because they don’t have to deal with the complex shipping calculations for overseas orders.

Their clients may be single or married, have income, and pay attention to fashion trends. Depending on their target demographic’s age, they might be on TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram.

Create brand guidelines.

You’ll want to define how your brand communicates with customers including the language you use, font type, brand colors, logo, name, uniforms, and other marketing materials. You’ll want everything you use for marketing to create a cohesive brand image.

When you’re thinking about your brand guidelines remember just because something sounds like a good idea, doesn’t mean it is. Wearing white shirts to dirty work will make you look dirty.

Create a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is useful to help you stay on track and provide subcontractors or freelancers information they need to represent your brand the way you want people to see it.

Make sure to include all the information you’ve put together and define things like:

Marketing channels: Which social media and traditional marketing channels will you use?
Marketing budget: How much will you spend monthly on marketing? Learn more about c reating a marketing budget.
Post schedule: How often will you post and what will it be about?
Marketing tools: What software will you use to create visuals and text? How will you share information, and track the effectiveness of communication? I suggest at least a CRM that offers email and SMS marketing.

Create a clear offer.

Ultimately, you need to create an offer that helps your products and services stand out from those around you.

One of the best offers I’ve seen from a service company is Wise Coatings. They do garage floor coatings and offer 1-day installation with a lifetime warranty. In addition, they donate a portion of revenue to supporting elephants and send customers brownies as a thank you gift.

Check out the UpFlip Course taught by the founder to learn strategies he uses.

2. Start With The Low-Cost / High-ROI Marketing Channels First

There are numerous marketing channels you can use to market your business, but some work better than others. You’ll want to start with the lowest cost, highest return channels and work your way to other channels.Some of the most effective marketing strategies are:

Google Business Profile: This free marketing channel helps your business show up on Google Maps and local searches for free. The more complete your profile is, the better it will show up. Make sure to include pictures and ask for reviews. Sign up for Google Business Profile.
Social Media: Choose a platform where your target audience hangs out to post consistently. While most people sing the praises of omnichannel marketing, it’s hard to be everywhere at once. Plus if you do it wrong, you’ll blow up your followers with dozens of notifications at once. Nobody likes that.
Email & SMS Marketing: These strategies are low cost ways to communicate with your clients to stay fresh in their minds and they have some of the highest returns on investments. Make sure to start building your email list ASAP.
Local Networking: The Chamber of Commerce, meetups, and cross-promotions with nearby businesses can help spread the word and bring in new customers.

Traditional marketing strategies like flyers, mailers, and business cards are also highly successful for some types of businesses, but have higher startup costs. To do these effectively, many local business owners will leave a door hanger at 3-5 homes in each direction from a client’s house after they complete a service.

3. Start Advertising Slowly.

Ads can be a successful way to help people find your business, but you need to be aware of the limitations. When using channels like Google Ads, Meta Ads, or Tiktok ads consider:

Budget: You’ll want to spend at least $1,000 per channel monthly on ads.
Settings: Digital ads have numerous settings that will impact the results.
Time: It can take up to three months for ads to start paying off. This is because it takes time to finetune the targeting either programmatically or manually.

As you see results, you can up the spending gradually until the return on investment starts to decline. Once you are at your ideal spending level keep the ads at that level until you see a change that indicates the current ads are no longer working.

4. Use Organic Marketing For A Small Business.

Most business owners build their business organically using social media, search engine optimization, and requesting reviews.

Every business should record videos training and answering frequently asked questions because they help people understand how the business runs. This is a great low cost way to make one task work for both marketing and employee development. Just use your phone to record it. Combine these with a blog for maximum benefit.

Make sure to ask your customers for a review before you leave. Then automate your review request process using a CRM like HousecallPro or Jobber. Offer employees a bonus for every 5-star review tied to a customer they serve. This will encourage them take ownership of the work.

You might also want a loyalty program or referral program. A loyalty program encourages people to come back for more rewards, while a referral program incentivizes customers to send friends.

5. Track & Adjust

Use free tools like Google Analytics or simple spreadsheets to track where leads come from, how well they convert, and what makes you the most money.

When something works well, keep putting more money into it til you get peak returns. When something doesn’t work, fix it by optimizing the content or stop spending money on it.

The cost of advertising should at least be covered by the number of customers you get. Converting them into repeat customers and increasing the lifetime value is crucial to running a profitable business.

Quick Wins While Marketing For A Small Business

Try these quick wins to start making marketing work for your small business.

Claim Google Business Profile.
Collect and showcase at least 10 reviews.
Post 3x a week on 1–2 platforms.
Start an email list with a simple welcome offer.
Partner with at least one local business for cross-promotion.