The essence of starting a business is to make sales and grow, and marketing is a key way to drive sales and growth to any business. However, many small-business owners think marketing is expensive and only for big businesses.

This article details all you need to know about marketing and how it can work for your business. Let's get right into it!

Marketing is any way of promoting and selling a product or service. It encompasses all the methods a business uses to reach its potential customers, offer services, and turn them into buyers.

There are 4 key things to note about Marketing:

Price is a formal value that specifies the amount of money, goods, and services needed in exchange for a specific quantity of goods or services. In simpler terms, a price is the amount a customer must pay to access goods or services to meet their needs.

Product

A product is anything that can be exchanged for a certain price. A product doesn't have to be a physical object; it can be an idea, information, or service that can be exchanged for a certain price.

Place specifies the market coverage of a product, its specific geographical location. Place aids distribution, delivering products to customers after a purchase.

Promotion

Promotion comprises systematic tactics that encourage customers to purchase or try a product. Some of these tactics include special product packaging, discount coupons, sweepstakes, offering premiums, promos, et cetera. Promotion aims to expand a business's customer base and sell more of its products.

There are several ways a business can market its products. But these methods depend on the nature of the product and the target audience. So, a business needs to understand its target market first to know the type of marketing that would work best for its product.

Here are some types of marketing:

Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing is a method where a business employs an influential person in a particular niche to market its product to its audience.

Rather than focusing on the customer directly, the business employs an influencer (celebrities, content creators, customer advocates, or even employees) to spread the word about their product.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is a strategic strategy focused on creating valuable and relatable content to attract, retain, and convert a specific target audience to customers.

Guerrilla Marketing

Guerilla Marketing is a marketing approach in which a business uses unique and unconventional strategies to promote its product.

This marketing type is especially useful for small businesses because it's cost-effective and relies on personal interaction with customers.

Keyword Marketing

Keyword Marketing entails putting your business at your customers' fingertips by marketing through search engines. This marketing method involves determining specific keywords or phrases relevant to your business and optimizing search engines to appear in online searches for those keywords.

Keyword marketing can be used for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Many words and phrases apply specifically to marketing. Here are some of them:

A brand is a term, symbol, name, or any feature that identifies your business, sets you apart from competitors and serves as your customers' perception of your business. What image/idea comes up in the customers' minds when your company is mentioned? That's your brand!

Target market

A target market is a group of people identified as the most likely potential customers for a product because of their shared characteristics, such as age, income, geographical location, and lifestyle.

Conversion

This is a stage in the marketing process where a potential customer takes an action that brings them one step closer to buying your product. It could be signing up for your newsletter, subscribing to your blog, or signing up for a webinar — anything that implies that they're interested in your business.

Conversion rate

This is used to determine the percentage of people who have shown interest and a level of commitment to your content compared with those who have indicated interest but are not committed.

For example, if you have a website and have 10,000 visitors in a month, but of these 10,000, only 1,000 signed up for your email list, finding the percentage of 1,000 to 10,000 means you have a conversation rate of 10%.

Cost of acquisition

Also called COA, it refers to the average amount of money you spend in acquiring each new customer. To calculate your Cost Of Acquisition, sum up your marketing costs during a specific period, then divide it by the number of new customers you got during that period.

A/B Test

Sometimes referred to as a split test, it involves comparing two varying marketing strategies to get the one that gets the most engagement. This would help you get the most effective strategy for conversion.

For example, send half of your email subscribers a particular text and another half a different text. Then, compare which was opened the most. Of course, the most open one is the most effective and winning strategy.

Brand lift

A brand life is an increase in the number of people currently aware of your brand.

Lead generation

These denote the steps you take to attract potential customers to your business and draw them close for conversion.

Unique selling point

A unique selling point, or UPS, sets you apart from your competitors. It's a unique detail about your business that makes you the best solution for your customers' needs.

Social proof

These are ways you can tell potential customers that people trust you and are satisfied with what you offer them.

They could come in the form of customer reviews/testimonials, your total sales number, positive media coverage, or even awards—just anything to show that you can be trusted to deliver.

The Marketing Funnel is a model which shows the transition of potential customers to (regular) customers. To do this, you need to know what they think at each point and what strategies would work best to make them click "buy."

There are 3 segments of the marketing funnel: ToF, MoFu, and BoFu.

Top of the funnel (ToFu)

At this step, potential customers realize they have a problem that requires a service or product like yours. To find the best out there, they begin researching and exploring the options available to them.

At this stage, you want to spread your net as wide as possible. Concentrate on increasing your reach as far as possible; then, you can begin to convert these massive numbers of prospects.

Middle of the funnel (MoFu)

The MoFu stage is when the customers know what they want and are currently looking at the solutions. At this stage, they would have signed up for your newsletter or contacted you through social media or your website.

In this stage, you must build a strong relationship with them to guide them to the last stage of the customer's journey — purchase.

Bottom of the funnel (BoFu)

At the BoFu stage, the customer knows exactly what services he needs and is willing to pay for them.

As you go down the marketing funnel from the ToFu to MoFu to BoFu, you'd notice that the prospects reduce. Hence, the BoFu stage is crucial for you as a business owner, and you should not take any chances.

At this point, the customer means business, so reach out to them personally and convince them until they click "buy."

Marketing campaigns are short-term initiatives geared toward a clearly-defined marketing goal.

So, what should set a marketing campaign apart from your traditional methods of pitching yourself to your customers?

The goal has to be well-defined. For example, your goal could be to get 30% of customers who bought a product or service from you to buy another product you have to offer.

Your marketing campaign should exist outside of your ongoing long-term marketing endeavors.

It should have a clearly defined budget set apart to achieve it.

Also, it must be time-bound and have a clear start and end date.

Define your budget.

When setting up a marketing campaign, it's important to have a specific and realistic marketing budget that your business can afford.

To set a realistic budget, first, calculate each customer's lifetime value (LTV). Then, consider how many potential customers this campaign is targeting.

Compare your results to your budget and determine how your marketing expenses can affect the rest of your business expenses. Also, consider how other businesses in your industry use their marketing budgets.

Define your end goal.

Choose a specific end goal for your marketing campaign. For instance: 1000 app downloads in 2 months; 20% increase in sales after 4 months. Make sure your goal is as detailed as possible. The more detailed, the better!

Define your target audience.

Your target audience is the group of people who need your product. If you don't define your target audience, you might expend resources to market an audience that doesn't need your products. Hence, defining your target audience is one of the secrets to a successful campaign.

Here are some tips:

Study your current customer base.

Know your (potential) customers' pain points and aspirations.

Know their age, location, sex, personality, income, and interests.

Knowing these will help you understand what strategies to employ to win them over and get them to buy your product.

Design your campaign

Your campaign content should have at most one Call To Action. If you have more than one, it will confuse the targets on exactly what you want them to do.

So, ensure your CTA is clear and well-defined. It could be asking them to follow you on Facebook, subscribe to your email list, or send you a message. The content you create could also vary depending on which you prefer or which is most effective for your target audience.

You also don't need any ad agency to help you do this. Some tools help you create professional content to interest your prospects enough to convert them, including Canva, Promo, iMovie, and Gimp.

Carefully choose your promotional channels.

Promotional channels are the media through which you get your campaign content to your audience. You can decide to only focus on one or as many as you like promotional channels. You have to consider your budget and the type of audience you are trying to reach.

As a small business, here are a few promotional channels that are cheap and effective for your use:

Social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, et cetera

Email

Direct mail

Events and tradeshows

Online advertising

Some other promotional channels, like magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, et cetera, can be used to market products. Take note of the demographic you are trying to reach and what medium is most popular.

Marketing is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes and ages, and it plays a vital role in driving sales and conversions, building a strong brand presence, and growing your business.

As a small business owner, implementing the strategies and concepts outlined in this guide will effectively help you promote your products and services, engage with your target audience and, ultimately, thrive in the marketplace.