Top marketing strategies to grow your business

Best marketing strategies for small businesses

Building a successful marketing strategy that generates new sales opportunities is a serious challenge for small businesses. Gaining traction in any competitive market can seem like an insurmountable mountain to climb, especially if capacity or marketing budget is limited.

That’s why we’ve created this handy guide, helping you overcome this challenge by providing a deeper understanding of the following core principles:

• What marketing for a business looks like in practical terms
• Why marketing for business is essential for short-term and long-term growth.
• How to market your business with proven strategies and best practices

Let’s get started with these marketing tips for small businesses — and how to apply them:

1. Narrow your focus with market segmentation

One of the very first steps in the development of successful marketing strategies for small business is market segmentation.

Why is this so important? Because many small business budgets, resources, and capacity can drastically limit the ability to be competitive in large market sectors.

That’s why it’s wise to take a step back and assess a more global view of your standing in the market. A wider lens and a little bit of analysis can inform how your business narrows a large market focus into smaller (and more attainable) segments, based on buyer personas and demographics.

A market segmentation strategy empowers your team to more accurately forecast the potential ROI (return on investment) of smaller market segments. There are major categories of characteristics you can analyze to narrow your target market, such as demographics, geography, psychographic, or sociocultural segmentation. You can also take a hybrid approach and consider multiple categories.

For example, your research could reveal that women who live on the west coast and are under the age of 40 are most likely to purchase your product or solution. With this knowledge, you can create highly-targeted direct marketing or ad campaigns that contains the tailored messaging for this consumer group.

We’re confident you’ll find that marketing (and selling into) a narrower and more well-defined segment is far easier — and potentially more profitable — than the larger market segment.

2. Adopt an SEO strategy that moves you up in the world, er, rankings

We all want to be on the first page of Google search results. To get there, you’ll need to leverage the power of a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

Cracking page one requires effort, as Google’s algorithm continues to get smarter and prioritizes content that’s unique, credible, and legitimately best-in-show and most-relevant to the user’s search. A successful small business SEO strategy requires significant research on your buyer personas and a steadfast commitment to SEO keyword optimization for every piece of content you share with the world.

These focus areas can help you better understand what products or solutions your target audience is searching for online — and better position your small business to be discovered in those searches.

Keyword research is an important component of your research of buyer personas. You can use the personas as a guide to determine the most important keywords for your content. You can also use a keyword finder tool (e.g., semRush, Ahrefs) to identify other related keywords that align with your target audience.

The last step in your small business SEO strategy is to perform optimization for all your content — inserting those keywords in key web page components, such as headlines, H1 tags, meta-descriptions, and calls to action.

3. Invest in paid advertising campaigns

We’ve come a long way from the “old days” of paid ads, when we were dependent on an external source for performance analytics.

It’s a great time to take advantage of today’s golden age of digital advertising across platforms ranging from Google to Instagram. The advancement of paid ad technology and ease of use of the tools that provide instant insight into your campaign performance or ROI at any given moment is a game-changer.

You can easily adjust and refine your advertising campaign in real-time and seamlessly reallocate budget with the tap of a button. This functionality maximizes impressions, click-throughs, and most importantly, conversions that fuel company growth.

Find inspiration in our success story

The Eventbrite marketing team leveraged the power of paid social targeting to drive incremental ticket sales in support of our creators during an uncertain time — due to the ongoing pandemic.

The Campaign Strategy

Eventbrite’s team looked to capitalize on the high demand for tickets to events on New Year’s Eve. They did so by creating a multi-channel paid social ad campaign across Facebook and Instagram, targeting two distinct audiences in five major U.S. markets.

Their goal was to drive traffic to NYE events and generate ticket sales — by moving consumers from the awareness stage to purchase. The rising tide of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 spreading across the country would present an unexpected challenge in achieving that goal.

Results

The New Year’s Eve campaign proved to be a testament to the power of marketing events to the right audiences. And the power of agility and resilience in the face of adversity.

The Eventbrite team saw a spike in event ticket purchases two to three days before New Year’s Eve. The data showed a 3.7x ROAS (return on ad spend), producing $275k ticket sales for our event creators. This means that for every dollar spent on the marketing campaign, we generated $3.70 in event ticket sales.

“Event marketing works. And, in particular, paid social marketing works. Despite the COVID wave, we saw a massive amount of interest from consumers who were still interested in celebrating New Year’s. So for creators unsure about investing in paid marketing, we hope this signals to them the value of this approach. And Eventbrite has the tools — Eventbrite Boost — to help them do that.”

–Gareth Hornberger, Eventbrite’s Senior Director of Global Marketing

Marketing strategies for B2B business

As an organization built on a B2B (business-to-business) sales and marketing model, we can help you successfully reach and engage prospective customers in your target audience with a successful B2B marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll provide tips and insights into how to market your business solutions to other businesses or organizations by growing brand awareness and communicating the unique value of your product or service.

Check out these proven marketing strategies for B2B that will extend your reach and engagement with decision-makers in your target audience:

1. Prepare to do some digging

Unearthing any treasure is going to require a map, shovel, and tough work. In the B2B space, this is the marketing research that needs to be performed to develop buyer personas in your target audience.

A better understanding of each persona — and what factors into their buying decision — is going to help make you a hero in the eyes of your peers on the sales team, as they convert prospects to new customers with ease.

2. What are your competitors doing?

A successful marketing strategy for business also requires a deep analysis of the competition.

Scope out the competitive landscape and discover how other businesses are marketing to your target audience. If you can get some intel on these key questions — illuminating your competitive set’s strengths and weaknesses — you’ll be making waves quickly.

• How are they differentiating their product or services?
• What digital and social marketing channels are they using to attract and engage prospects?
• How do they leverage marketing content across traditional and non-traditional channels?
• Look at their business reviews online. Where are they thriving with customers? Where are they not?

3. Join the email marketing parade

According to Hubspot, 93% of B2B marketers use email. If you’re not committed to a multi-tiered email marketing program, you’re missing a golden opportunity.

B2B prospects are much more likely to open your emails if they can succinctly communicate how you will solve their business problems. That’s because your B2B customer’s purchase motivation is likely driven by logic and financial incentive.

4. Embrace social media marketing

As much as we like to hate on social media, you can’t deny the facts. Facebook currently has 2.9 billion monthly active users, LinkedIn has over 830 million members, and over 1 billion people use Instagram every month. So putting your brand out on these platforms needs to be in your marketing mix.

We already know what you’re going to say. “Social doesn’t generate any sales, ever.” We get it. Social media marketing is a long-term investment that requires a commitment to posting engaging content (constantly).

But just like most long-term investments, the payoff comes with patience.

Think of it like dating. Your followers are not interested in being exclusive right away. They want to get to know you over time — to see if you’re a potential strong fit. The longer sales cycle gives you an equal opportunity to share your strongest qualities and selling points. Do it right, and your followers will not only convert to customers — they’ll become evangelists who tell their network all about you.

Digital marketing strategies for business growth

Let’s talk about how to market your business and grow your brand in the ever-evolving digital landscape. Because we know you want to stay ahead of the curve — and the competition — by leveraging the latest technology transforming digital marketing for business.

1. Expand your brand online

Investing in digital advertising through a social media platform, such as Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, is a great way to gain awareness and attract prospective customers in your target audience.

With the advanced user technology available in paid social media programs, it’s easy to select the demographic criteria of your target audience. More control over your ad spend — and who sees your product or service — drives stronger engagement, clicks, and conversions.

2. Email marketing is still here for a reason

Effective email marketing campaigns can dramatically increase the numbers on your sales funnel and grow your business. Once you have developed and finalized your unique value proposition and brand identity, it’s time to launch your company’s email marketing program.

First things first. You’ll need to compel your target audience to open your email. To achieve a respectable open rate, give some thought to your own experience analyzing sales or marketing emails that arrive in your inbox every day. What compels you to open it — as opposed to instantly deleting it? Is it the subject line? Is it the personalization from the sender?

Check out our guide for expert ways to grow your email marketing.

3. Embrace the power (and ROI) of content marketing

A surefire strategy you can embrace to help earn your place on the first page of Google’s search results is a commitment to content marketing. The Content Marketing Institute defines this as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Please take note of the word “consistent” in the definition above. Being effective in the content marketing game requires consistent posting of high-quality content — meant to be interesting and educational, inspiring interest in your brand or products/solutions without hard-selling them.

Doing so will help you earn recognition as a “subject matter expert” in your field, delivering more exposure and top-of-mind awareness from the online audience (and target customers) you need to help build sustained growth.

4. Invest in marketing automation software

Employing an end-to-end marketing automation program like Hubspot or Marketo can be a game-changer for company growth. But it’s not for everyone. It’s expensive and can be a major undertaking, requiring extensive training and a serious commitment to change management for most companies.

What does the ROI look like, you ask? Envision an automated inbound marketing machine that works non-stop to fill your sales funnel.

How to market your business using live events

Eventbrite gives you all the tools and technology you need to grow your brand online, create stronger community connections, and convert event attendees into loyal customers with unforgettable experiences.

Take your marketing strategy for business growth to the next level with Eventbrite Boost, the only all-in-one event marketing platform. Our intuitive digital event marketing solution helps you target and communicate the right value proposition messaging to the right audience at the right time. The result? More clicks, more ticket sales, and more market share for your business.

Check out this inspirational success story featuring a small business using live events to spark growth.

Busspepper Promotions nets a 3.4x return on ad spend with Eventbrite Boost

Busspepper Promotions’ Mateen Hepburn brings the best of the Caribbean to Londoners “who’ve never experienced the culture.” And with the help of Eventbrite Boost, Busspepper has optimized its approach to event marketing and seen their ticket sales take off.

Hepburn used Eventbrite Boost to run a social media ad campaign for their “For the Love of Carnival” event in February. Boost’s audience targeting capabilities and real-time performance analytics features helped deliver huge results: Hepburn sold 699 tickets and netted a 3.4x return on ad spend.

Learn more about how Eventbrite Boost helps Busspepper Promotions reach the widest audience and sell out events.

Be inspired by greatness

Explore and find inspiration in the successful online strategies event creators are using to grow their following and business in our “Heart of Gathering” video series.

Watch the videos