Marketing services for small businesses

A clear marketing strategy

Developing a marketing strategy can identify the best and most appropriate ways to get the most out of your investment, while remaining within budget. It acts as a guide, showing you what to do and when to do it. It will coordinate all of your efforts to ensure they complement and support each other. Your marketing strategy is the foundation on which your overall marketing activity is built. Without this framework, your efforts can become muddled, time can be wasted and the message missed.

There’s proof, too. Research from the Content Marketing Institute found that “marketers with a written out content marketing strategy were twice as likely to say their marketing was effective as those that had no written out strategy.”

A clear website

These days, anyone can build a website using any of the hundreds of basic platforms available – but it shows. To create something that both stands out from the crowd and gives you that professional edge, it’s important to engage some real, experienced web designers who can create a user-friendly visual representations of your ideas, logos and concepts.

Your website is your shop window; most people research online prior to buying, even when they’re on the high street, so your site must look good, work well and be easy to navigate – a good site will keep people coming back. A great website is an incredible playing-field leveller – no one needs to know (or care) that you operate from a shoe cupboard.

Strong branding

Happy with your logo? Is your branding uniform across all elements of your business? Does it accurately represent what you’re about? Maybe you’d just like a bit of a change. No matter the reason, good branding is vital for businesses, creating an identity that is recognisable and unifies all elements of your operation.

It’s a big task, however, and necessitates much thought, research and consideration. Getting it wrong – remember Royal Mail rebranding as Consignia at a cost of £1.5million only to revert one year (and £1milllion) later? – can cause some real damage. Get it right and you could do more than simply increase sales. Look at Skoda; once the joke of the motoring world and now considered one of the best marques in the world.

Whether it’s just a change of colour or a total overhaul, your logo speaks volumes, so it makes sense to work with experienced graphic designers who have a strong track record with successful branding projects.

Admittedly, this might leave you with a lot to think about, but the cold truth is that, if small businesses want to compete with the big fish, then they need to up their marketing game.