How to Market a Small Business in a Big City

30 December 2020

Big cities tend to have a highly competitive market base. As such, small businesses based in large cities like New York might find themselves at a loss when trying to develop a marketing strategy to engage a large audience with a relatively unknown brand. Market a Small Business in a large city like NYC requires a multi-faceted approach, and your plan should not merely emulate that of larger brands that may have much larger budgets.

There are plenty of effective marketing strategies available for every budget. Working with a professional digital marketing agency will give you an excellent return on your investment if you have a limited budget. If your business is based in the Big Apple, you may want to consider having a New York digital marketing company help you perfect these strategies as they know how to serve the market best.

Contents

1 1. Research
- 1.1 Here are some of the objectives that market research aims to achieve:
2 2. Create Quality Content
3 3. Leverage SEO
4 4. Have a Strong Digital Presence
5 5. Generate Leads
6 Budget As a Tool, Not a Barrier

1. Research

Conducting thorough and comprehensive market research services in Singapore should be the first step in your marketing campaign. The data you collect reveals vital information about your potential consumer base as well as your competitors. You can then use this information to tailor your marketing strategies to reach your audience best and stand out amongst the crowd.

Here are some of the objectives that market research aims to achieve:

Know Your Audience

This involves general information about your target audience—their demographic information, location, what they do, what they like, how they act, etc.

Identify Your Competitors

Knowing who your competitors are is vital to building brand awareness. Knowing your competitors means knowing what products/services they sell, their marketing strategies, and what kind of audience they target.

Spot Emerging Market Trends

Stay up-to-date about your target consumer base’s latest developments and mold your marketing campaign to remain on-track with those developments.

2. Create Quality Content

Content marketing is the strategic use of high-quality, relevant, and on-brand content like blogs, videos, or articles to market your brand or a product to a well-defined audience. Typical content marketing strategies include, but are not limited to:

Social Media Content Marketing

This involves the consistent uploading of a relevant content on various social media platforms. This content can include images, videos, animations, stories, or even live customer service videos.

Blogs

Blogs are one of the easiest and cheapest ways to produce content on the web. It is essential that your blogs are creative, engaging, and contain original copy, not plagiarized from other websites. They should be well-researched and tailored to the specific audience that your brand is targeting.

Paid Advertisements

Sponsored ads require financial investment, but they can be a great way to reach a broader audience and ensure that your brand remains visible and relevant on the web.

Content marketing is an excellent way for small businesses to market their brand or product with a minimal investment.

3. Leverage SEO

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is another vital aspect to consider when developing your digital marketing strategy. SEO involves curating your website and its content to rank higher in a search page result. With more and more businesses developing a web presence, having good SEO scores should be high on your marketing strategy’s priority list.

SEO isn’t always cost-prohibitive; the price for SEO implementation depends on who is setting it up and working on it. The initial investment can range from cheap to spendy, depending on what level of ranking you desire for your site.

If you decide to do SEO yourself, start by researching relevant terms and keywords for your industry. You can then add internal links and secure backlinks (another facet of content marketing), produce quality, highly-legible copy, write blog posts with numbered lists, and add relevant keywords throughout your website. Properly implementing SEO will establish your site as an authority and drive more traffic directly to you.

4. Have a Strong Digital Presence

When digital ads account for half of all ad spend, developing and maintaining a strong web presence is imperative for any serious small business. A robust online footprint includes both your business website as well as social media pages. It is a cost-effective way of building brand awareness in your target market base.

Developing and maintaining a business website should always be one of the top priorities of your marketing campaign. Your site will serve as the primary representation for your brand on the internet, which is crucial in building consumer loyalty and brand reputation.

For top-notch website creation, there are several options for you to consider. The first one is using CMS like WordPress. The second one is custom web development. For this, you can hire MEAN stack developers, a UX/UI designer, and a project manager.

Additionally, social media can serve as an excellent digital marketing tool to reach a broader or more specific target audience. Social media serves as the vehicle to transport your brand to the masses and increase its visibility.

5. Generate Leads

When your marketing campaign loses its potency on a specific target audience, you’ll need to generate new leads that you can then use to either find a new audience or expand the one that you’re already targeting. Here are some ways to generate new leads:

Optimizing Your Landing Page

Use landing page strategies like implementing Call-To-Actions and write compelling headlines to improve your website’s traffic and conversion rates.

Lead Generation Software

As the name suggests, this software identifies and collects new leads from multiple sources. With the right software, you can generate quality leads that significantly boost your conversion rates and sales.

Data Validation Software

This is similar to lead generation software, but instead of crawling the internet for leads, it validates the information you already have. It works in one of two ways; it can either complete a batch validation analysis of a lead data spreadsheet or live as an API on your site’s contact forms and checks the data’s accuracy in real-time as forms are submitted. This can save time and effort when pursuing new leads.

Email Marketing

Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective ways to generate brand awareness and boost sales. These include implementing newsletters, sign-me-up forms, or generating automated email ads for specific audiences.

Budget As a Tool, Not a Barrier

Small businesses should develop a very different marketing strategy than large corporations in a big city like NYC. Approaching marketing from a small business perspective is the best way to ensure the most effective use of limited budgets and resources. Your finances should never be a hindrance to achieving your marketing goals. With proper strategies and a bit of creativity, your marketing campaign can be just as impactful as your competitors’.

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Ariana Smith

I enjoy writing and I write quality guest posts on topics of my interest and passion. I have been doing this since my college days. My special interests are in health, fitness, food and following the latest trends in these areas. I am an editor at Content Rally.

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Basic Small Business Tips for Noobs Who Want to Start a Venture in 2020

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5 Steps To Launching Your Own Small Business

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Most people understand they need to research how to deliver the services or goods they intend to provide and how to advertise to the right customer base. It goes further, though.The kind of industry you would do best in and the business model that best suits your area and target marketplace are also variables to consider. You might know what you can do, generally, from your skill set, but you need to get specific about what your area needs and where it is underserved if you want to count on bringing in customers quickly.Look at the cost of setting up a company, leasing compared to buying operational space, costs for local advertising, and recommendations for staffing while you are at it. The more knowledge you have going in, the better your chances of success once you get things going. Running a company is all about building consistent processes for regular tasks, and you need research to understand which processes will be productive, too.2. 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That means your managers should not need to consult you when setting up their departments. In solo operations, it means that you should not need to do extra research outside of consulting your plan unless something unforeseen happens.Your plan should describe the major operations, layout marketing tactics to reach the initial audience with demand and to keep growing from there, identify the equipment you'll need, and otherwise cover everything that goes into actually running the company. That makes it a lot easier to put the pieces together.5. Put It All Into MotionThe first step after finishing your plan is usually financing because that gives you the financial reach to start operating. There are just a few cases where that is not the case. Solo operations can sometimes bootstrap basic services to get a little income going by working out of the house or a client's facilities. Otherwise, it's a matter of lining up the money, then buying the equipment and hiring any staff you need. Last comes marketing and launch. It is always a better idea to keep a dedicated portion of your income aside to fund your business, irrespective of its size. Businesses are full of ups and downs, and once you have set foot, there is no backing off. As a result, you have saved a significant amount of your finances to back up your persistent losses. Upon completion of these steps, you might want to allocate a part of your economic resource to bring the necessary equipment for your business. This will streamline your operations and will ensure that your business operates seamlessly. Key TakeawaysStarting your own business takes not only a great deal of money but also time and effort. However, it can also be extremely rewarding when done in the right way. Make sure to follow the above steps that will guide you throughout your business-setup process. For detailed insight, you can always consult a licensed professional for business advice. Get started today!Read Also:Essential Investments Small Business Owners Should Make For Long-Term SuccessResolutions To Help The Small Business Owners To Avoid Being BankruptHow You Can Invest In Your Small Business

How to Market a Small Business in a Big City

1. Research