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by Ram Pandit
Image source: Unsplash
Looking for the best marketing plan for an SME? It is worth saying that if you are not on the internet you are not into anything. And it is that almost 3 out of 4 users who did a local search, accessed a nearby business, at least half, during the same day
Compelling reasons to position your business on the internet? It does not matter if you are starting your business online for the first time or you are digitizing your physical business.
In this article, you will learn about the strategies that make up a marketing plan for an SME. Of course, it is important that you evaluate with a professional which of these strategies best suits your business:
When you make the decision to start a small business you have doubts. What will be the best strategy? How can I get my investment back quickly? How to grow my business?
And endless questions more. As we know that these are some of the most frequent doubts in our clients, we want to mention the steps that cannot be missing in a marketing plan for SMEs:
When you start out as a small business you have many insecurities. Many doubts about it and even the infallible great mistake is made of believing that your product or service is going to interest everyone.
The answer is clearly no. Not all users have the same needs, the same tastes and preferences, and your product or service will not meet everyone’s needs.
So focus on the main thing, on the protagonist of your business:
Developing a branding strategy is an essential part of a marketing plan for an SME. It is like the cherry that the cake was missing. When you are a growing company you need to promote yourself. But it is not enough just to promote yourself, you have to catch your target audience.
What personality does your brand have? What emotions will your users connect with? What rituals can your customers develop when buying your product or service?
You must develop a coherent and flexible graphic identity in times of crisis.
For example, the millennial community is to follow a lot of value brands. So if you distribute a visual identity consistently across the different channels, you will better engage your audience.
Once the target audience has been identified and all the interaction that will surround it comes the part where small entrepreneurs tend to get confused. Besides this the million-dollar question:
What will my first strategy be?
It is difficult to start a marketing plan and put all the strategies on the table without having extensive knowledge in the area. It is like sending fuzzy signals everywhere hoping to obtain an objective and tangible result.
The truth is that it does not work like that, it is not enough to have visibility on the internet. For this reason, we advise you that the best plan that you can put together for your small business and that it can be promoted is to consult with expert specialists in the area.
So, well, it doesn’t matter that your investment is small. It will be invested in resources that will bring you positive results:
Some small SMEs decide primarily to sell their services through social networks and that is good to start, but there is nothing more profitable in the long term than having your own website to offer your products and services in the long term.
As a small SME, it goes hand in hand with electronic commerce. If it is a store, it is best to create it through Wocommerce. This way, you can have the most functional payment platforms integrated for your customers.
Don’t forget to design landing pages to offer your product or service in detail. These landing pages are super functional to bring traffic from social networks or from the king of Google positioning itself.
If you were left with the idea that with having a website you are already done, this is another of the blunders that you can make for your business. Each niche is handled differently and has different attractions.
If you have developed a solid branding strategy, it is time to implement it on your website, and what better way than designing a custom template for your business.
There are many benefits of creating a custom template. But I mention some below:
Writing content is one of the most potential ways to connect with that user who can possibly become your potential client. Through persuasive writing, you spend time with your user to explain the wonders of your product or service.
Even in most cases, it serves to open the eyes of people who did not know that they required service or how much they needed it. In addition to this, having a blog section on your website allows you to carry out two extremely important actions that are added to a marketing plan for an SME:
Those who do not have solid knowledge in marketing tend to shy away from web positioning as the sum of the parts in their business. Because SEO works but over time. But it is essential because the results are extremely effective. In addition to this, I mention why to use SEO in your SME.
Yes, SEO is a step-by-step job that generates solid long-term results and therefore it is another of the essential steps that make up a marketing plan for an SME. If you want long-term results in your business and that does not die before starting, start positioning your website.
When starting a small business, what overwhelms the founder the most is that he dies before he is born. Paid advertising is a strategy that can be used in the first instance while SEO web positioning does its thing.
For this reason, it is important to use both strategies in parallel and not separately. To meet short-term objectives, a well-planned SEM strategy can bring high benefits to your SME.
Paid advertising allows you to appear in the first three positions of Google. But… Is it enough just to appear and already in the top positions? The answer is no.
So for this SEM advertising strategy to be well thought out, it must have planned:
What audience are you going to target? Baby boomers? Millennials? Generation Z? The truth is that the odds are very high in selling through social networks. I mention some strategies in your marketing plan for SMEs with social media:
Facebook has become a platform for doing business. The truth is that now you have to pay to have the reach and visibility you need because by magic you will not appear in your target audience. The Facebook CEO took it upon himself to limit organic growth and decided to give this platform a spin.
By having a profile on Facebook you must immediately proceed to create your Fanpage. This will be like the protagonist of your business on Facebook and in addition to this, you will be able to create your SEM advertising strategy or campaign through Facebook Ads.
These three moves will give a positive outlook to your business landscape.
Although organic growth is getting more and more annoying on Instagram, a fast ranking alternative has been created and these are the reels. Through these short videos, you can promote your product or service and why they should buy it.
If you use enough hashtags and the video is attractive enough it will rank quickly.
There are also other strategies that you cannot stop using:
If you manage to communicate in the communicational tone that users have on Twitter, manage trends and are up to date with memes, your business can develop quite well on this platform. Once you develop a strong community you can promote tweets with images or hyperlinks. This way you can bring qualified traffic to your landing pages.
The strong competition between Tik Tok and Instagram is noticeable. The fast positioning of these short videos makes it a worthy social network to use.
If you create videos where your face appears explicitly and how you explain your product or service, you will have the receptivity of your audience. Keep in mind some golden laws to succeed in Tik Tok:
Since we are reaching the end of this article, I have mentioned all the steps you need to develop a marketing plan for a successful SME. We give you some final considerations to transform your business:
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