Small Business Marketing Ideas That Can Make A Difference

Nathan Mckinley
Product Coalition
Published in
4 min readOct 21, 2021

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Running a small business today pretty much feels like a battle to get noticed among a sea of competition. The odds aren’t in your favor from the start, and while things like budget constraints and the occasional bad review don’t shake the more established players in your industry, they can be a death sentence for little old you.

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But when you’re the little one fighting for survival, you learn to use every trick in the book. This is why things like guerilla marketing came to be in the first place. Well, that, and people realizing how successful it could be when done right. In any case, if you’re one of the underdogs in your industry hoping to gain a firm footing as an entrepreneur with a vision, you’re reading the right article.

Today, we’re going to talk about ways that small businesses can market themselves to make a real difference in how your business performs.

Go Where the People Are

It makes perfect sense when you think about it, but have you wondered where the people are even these days? What if we told you that Instagram and Facebook were falling in popularity among the masses? Well, with Instagram rolling out new features to focus more on video content, it’s going to happen sooner or later.

TikTok is the best way to reach a young audience with your content. That’s why more and more small businesses are opening up accounts and putting content out there on the app. Make your content addictive, fun to watch with one of the best TikTok filters for selfies, and maybe a little informative. Once you get those things right, all you have to do is sit back, gather views, and watch as they convert into actual sales.

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Guerilla Marketing

The first thing on our list is guerilla marketing. With the right permits and authorizations, an eye-catching piece of graffiti on a crowded intersection or putting on a show in a crowded event can really get people talking.

Once people notice you and ask questions about who you are, what you do, and what you’re doing there — you’ll get your business rolling.

SEO is Your Best Friend

Almost no business can survive today without an online presence, so we’re assuming that your business, too, has one.

Think about it this way — if you’re looking for small pastry shops in your area the first thing you’ll wanna do is Google it. You’ll be shown a list of small businesses in your area, complete with their location and contact details. Then under that, you’ll be shown a list of websites and articles about pastries, probably from various businesses themselves.

Without investing in SEO, there’s no way you’ll be able to rank as one of those websites on the front page, and without ranking on the front page for at least some google searches, well, how will people even find you on google?

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SEO works wonders for small businesses because it’s free — all you have to do is regularly update your website and follow all SEO best practices, or maybe talk to an expert about it.

Product Packaging

The internet is obsessed with unboxing videos — so much that Google says almost one in five individuals using YouTube watched an unboxing video in 2017 — and the number has only since increased. There are millions of unboxing videos all over the internet and the trend shows no sign of stopping, which is why countless small businesses are investing their money into making their products as “Instagram worthy” as they can.

Once an influencer gets their hands on them on their own dime, it could help your brand and your product go viral!

Remember — business marketing is now more about getting noticed by the right people more than it’s about getting noticed by as many people as possible. Sure, you could play the number game but it won’t be the best policy — or the cost-efficient one for a small business trying to stay afloat. Whatever business marketing strategy you choose to go with, keep your target audience in mind.

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I’m Business Development Manager at Cerdonis Technologies LLC - Mobile App Development Company in Chicago, USA. I do have accumulated knowledge of Latest Tech.