7 Best Marketing Strategies for SME’s in 2021

Strategy is a key aspect of every successful business – it allows gaining competitive advantages, setting goals, and effectively achieving them.

Very often, a small or medium business starts its path to success without a chance of any outside investment. Therefore, it is a creative challenge for marketers in such organizations to achieve the best possible results at the lowest cost. Even more impressive is the fact that a third of these companies spend less than $10,000 a year on advertising, according to The Manifest.

The creation and development of small businesses have a number of features that determine the set of promotion tools. One of them is the entrepreneur’s moderate resources and, as a result – limited marketing opportunities. Small business marketing specialists face the daunting challenge of building brand awareness, increasing online visibility, and building customer trust with budget-friendly solutions they have on hand, which we will discuss today. Keep reading to learn more!

Effective Marketing Strategies for Your Small or Medium Business

The following marketing strategies for SME’s are ideal for the typical budget range and goals of small businesses. Here’s a list of small business marketing strategies that actually work:

1) Email Marketing

Email advertising involves collecting email addresses of potential and existing customers by regularly sending them targeted emails of various types: promotional, survey, newsletter emails, etc. This strategy is suitable for small businesses because of its minimal cost – typically, you only need to pay for email software, or simply use one of the free solutions, which are plentiful online. 

Email advertising is a strategy that delivers maximum return on investment (ROI), even more so than social media or email marketing. Statistics show that businesses can get roughly 122% ROI from an email promotion. According to Oberlo, an average return on every dollar spent on email advertising is about $42. In other words, it is very beneficial for small or medium businesses to include email delivery into their promotion plans.

oberlo
Information provided by Oberlo

Here are some tips on budget-friendly email marketing strategies for SME’s:

  • Choose free mailing services.
  • Collect your own mailing lists and update them regularly.
  • Don’t forget to optimize your posts. Test themes, submission times, day of the week, texts, apply various creative approaches. Use A/B testing to determine which emails work and which don’t.
  • Many people check their email from mobile devices, so make sure that your emails look good on different screens.
  • Always include the unsubscribe button in each email to avoid spam complaints.

2) Content Marketing

Unlike direct advertising of your products and services which many marketing strategies for SME’s concern with, content marketing aims to reach your target audience through informational or entertainment content. The idea is that when the target audience is attracted by your content, they will more effectively learn about your business. The content you use can be in any of the following formats:

  • Articles;
  • videos;
  • audio files;
  • illustrations;
  • infographics;
  • e-books;
  • white papers;
  • research results;
  • reviews;
  • etc.

Here are most popular types of content businesses chose to use in past years:

semrush report
Information provided By Semrush

Since content marketing does not directly solicit a sale, it works best primarily as a brand acquisition strategy rather than a sales strategy. Content Marketing Institute shares research, which suggests that the majority of marketers (approximately 80%) say that that could achieve good customer engagement by posting content, but only about 60% of them claim that it also boosted their sales. However, supplementing your promotion strategy with relevant high-quality content is a must if you aim to build customer trust and brand loyalty.

3) Blogging

One can not discuss effective marketing strategies for SME’s and not mention blogging. Blogging means regularly posting new updates to your blog or website. Blogs should be updated more regularly than other types of content you post, such as documents, case studies, or About Us pages, which makes them more time-consuming but, nevertheless, worth investing into. In 2021, over 86%  of marketing specialists use blogging as a promotion strategy.

Blogging works if you post high-quality content, which should be both SEO-friendly, easy to read, and creative. Creative writing is hard, which is why many content marketers struggle with getting unique and engaging content. However, you can learn how to upgrade your creative writing skills by practicing writing articles on different topics as well as checking good writing examples online. You can take a look at some great writing examples here: https://subjecto.com/essay-samples/

If you regularly post new content to your blog, it will help with building brand awareness, as well as customer loyalty. A blog can capture the attention of new potential buyers who first hear about your business, as well as remind your loyal customers of your company. 

Blogging

4) Social Media Marketing

If you are using websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc. to promote your business, it means that you are using social media promotion.

One of the problems with social media promotion is that it can be difficult to know if it works. Research shows that about 60 percent of marketers report having difficulty tracking ROI. In fact, marketing specialists see social media primarily as a driving force for brand engagement. the 2021 statistic shows that using social media promotion has many benefits – get a scope of them below.

 Social Media Marketing
Information provided by Statista

5) Offline Marketing

Old-school promotion means, such as displaying posters or distributing brochures, flyers, radio ads, etc. is essential for small businesses that need to enter a certain market because these marketing means are usually displayed or distributed in a specific area. Flyers and posters should be an integral part of any small business marketing plan. One of the more traditional promotion approaches is advertising in print media such as newspapers, magazines, newsletters, etc. 

One of the problems with this approach is that it is difficult to measure success. To overcome this, make sure your flyer and poster clients are easier to track. You can include coupon codes in your content, or, in the case of flyers, include tear-off paper coupons. That way, you can find out if the design, print, distribution costs were worth the investment.

Offline Marketing

6) Referral marketing

As the name suggests, referral marketing is all about getting new leads and sales from referrals. This could be your existing clients or other people who just found out about your business. If you’ve ever participated in a tell-a-friend program where one can get a discount or freebie by recommending a product or service to their friends, then you’ve participated in referral marketing. Marketing specialists agree that referral marketing campaigns are very effective in selling and getting new customers. Nielsen research shows that 92% of consumers trust referrals from family and friends and that referrals work more convincingly than paid advertising and expert recommendations. 

Referral marketing

7) Event Marketing

Small businesses, especially those with a storefront or serving a local community, can host events that engage their target audience. This approach is known as event marketing. The idea is that by participating in an event, your target customers will be brought together in the same place where they can buy your products, or at least learn about your brand.

In 2021 event marketing went digital, but is still largely utilized and highly effective. According to Statista, in the US alone over 79% of promotion specialists rely on event marketing to generate sales for their business. 

Trust our Tested Marketing Solutions for SME’s

Small and medium business owners often do not engage in marketing strategies to avoid additional costs. However, it must be remembered that marketing is an effective tool for achieving stability and growth, which is crucial for SME’s. Businesses whose owners ignore promotion with the help of marketing tools are unlikely to develop and make a substantial profit.

This is why you should implement the aforementioned marketing strategies for SME’s. These seven solutions work wonders for small business marketers with limited resources – not only will they enable them to achieve better results with limited resources, but they will also provide them with the opportunity to channel their efforts in the right direction to get the most out of their investment!


Related Articles

Leave a Comment