How to Keep Your Business Thriving and Growing
Free online marketing toolkit from Cox Media—available online at www.coxmedia-marketingtoolkit.com and summarized below—includes step-by-step templates and best practices used by small businesses like yours.
Unprecedented, uncertain, unpredictable
We’ve heard those words or a variation over and over the last few months. The truth is, well, they are true! We are all navigating through business challenges that we didn’t plan for, which might mean you’re feeling overwhelmed. Marketing may be the last thing on your mind, but it’s important to continue to find ways to increase your customer base.
Why is marketing so important to small businesses?
It’s simple: you can’t make a sale if no one knows about your products or services. In order to attract customers in a competitive market, your ideal prospect needs to understand why they should choose you over another business. Marketing enables you to educate current potential customers about your business — and helps them see how you meet a need they may have. Well-executed marketing will result in growth for your business.
While not every business has the resources to have a full-time marketer on staff, there are some easy things you can do without a marketing degree.
We’ve created a free toolkit — available at www.coxmedia-marketingtoolkit.com — with the goal of helping small businesses. This guide includes easy tips and templates to help keep your business in business, including:
Industry SWOT Analysis
You don’t have to be perfect in every area, but it’s important to know how you stack up against your competition. Access a template to help identify your business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Unique Value Proposition
Define what problems you solve or benefit you provide with your products or services. Partner this information with your SWOT analysis to define your competitive advantage.
Marketing Must-Do Checklist
If you’re not doing these, you may already be behind. Simple (and mostly free!) must-do’s such as:
+ SET UP AND CLAIM YOUR BUSINESS LISTINGS ONLINE
Consumers no longer flip to yellow pages to find a business. Instead, they go to the web. Your basic business profile is free and easy to set-up. Do a search on different browsers to see what information you see about your company and then claim or create a listing for your business at business.google.com/create.
+ SEE WHERE YOUR TRAFFIC IS COMING FROM
Use Google Analytics, a free tool, to see each referring website or forum that is sending traffic to your site. This will help you see where you should be investing your efforts in the future.
+ Social Media Best Practices
So much to do on social media and sometimes there just isn’t enough time or resources. We’ve devoted a section to the guide on social media, but here are a few tips to get you started:
CHOOSE THE RIGHT PLATFORM
You may not need to be on every single social media platform. Research and evaluate where your customers are spending most of their time and engage on those social platforms to get the most out of your efforts.
RULE OF THIRDS
Use this as a guide when figuring out what type of content to share —1/3 share posts to promote your business, convert readers, and generate profits; 1/3 share posts of ideas from influencers in your industry (or like-minded businesses); 1/3 share posts of personal stories to build your brand.
SOCIAL LISTENING
Know what people are saying on your social media channels. Why? If you do this—you can track, analyze, and respond to those conversations. If you don’t —you’re missing out on valuable insights for your business.
To see more and put the free templates into action, go to
www.coxmedia-marketingtoolkit.com.
About Cox Media: Cox Media is the advertising sales division of Cox Communications. In addition to our proven media solutions, we offer consultative insights to help our clients reach their audience more effectively and efficiently. We are focused on developing customized marketing solutions that maximize our clients’ ROI.