Online and offline marketing strategies are essential for businesses of all sizes to connect with their target customers and stand out in a crowded market. While both approaches have unique benefits and drawbacks, they can also be used together to create a more powerful and effective marketing campaign. However, to be successful in both marketing efforts, you must first and foremost identify what makes you unique from your competitors and leverage it to position your business before your target customers. In today’s podcast, Rich Brooks from Flyte New Media and Stephen Halasnik from Financing Solutions discuss small business marketing: how to stand out online and offline.
Summary
Small Business Marketing: How to Stand Out Online and Offline
Marketing is at the heart of every successful small business. No matter how great your product or service is, if you don’t have an effective marketing machine, whether online or offline, in place to acquire customers inexpensively, you have no business. Marketing is the number one thing that helps entrepreneurs reach the 10 million dollar benchmark. And smart business owners strive to position themselves in the marketplace, explaining why they have something more valuable than their competitors, identifying their target customers, and educating them throughout their buying journey.
In this era of digital marketing, a lot of businesses are investing in a variety of online marketing campaigns. That’s why it has become imperative that you differentiate yourselves from anybody else in the market by identifying what makes your business interesting to the consumers. Spending time upfront to understand what makes your company remarkable through your clients will help differentiate you from competitors and make your marketing campaign much more effective.
Leveraging the remarkability formula is a veritable way of beating the competition and setting your company apart from others. Below are the four remarkability formulas to help you create a successful marketing campaign.
Find
This means figuring out something that makes your business remarkable and difficult to replicate. In other words, what makes people want to do business with you instead of your competition? If you are unsure what differentiates you from others, you have an entire survey group of current and past customers that will help you to figure it out.
So, ask your customers why they choose you instead of your competitors; from their feedback, you will see specific phrases repeatedly. And those are the words you will want to use in your small business marketing efforts.
For instance, at Financing Solutions, we have reduced the expense, rejections, complexity, limitations, and poor turnaround times inherent in advancing loans to small business owners, making us a remarkable financing institution for small companies.
Focus
For your small marketing campaign to be successful, you need to narrow it down by clearly focusing on your ideal target customer and aligning your marketing to match their needs. Niching down allows you to identify a smaller segment of your target audience, so you deliver a more specific and tailored offering that resonates with them directly.
Narrowing your business to a specific audience helps you to attract more leads and increase conversion. Therefore, instead of targeting a large group of potential customers, you should rather focus on a well-defined audience as it increases the number of your ideal clients. 
Forge
Create something outside of your main offering to stand out from the crowd. You must develop innovative products and processes to solve your clients’ problems.
Having extrinsic offerings will give you a competitive advantage over others in the market, leading to increased brand recognition, customer loyalty, and improved market share.
Frame
Position your offering in a new way so the value you are providing is revealed to your customers. Framing helps you create a unique image or identity in the market for your brand or product relative to your competitors.
You must establish a clear and distinctive brand identity to stand out and resonate with your customers. You should present the information about your business in a fashion that will impact the perception of your target audience, so you affect their buying decisions.
Online Vs. Offline Small Business Marketing Strategy
Small business owners often struggle with marketing due to limited resources, but with the rise of digital marketing, there are now more ways than ever to reach potential customers.
Online Marketing for Small Businesses
Benefits:
Online marketing offers small businesses several advantages over traditional offline marketing, which are:
- Lower cost: Online marketing can be significantly cheaper than traditional marketing methods, making it more accessible for small businesses with limited budgets.
- Wider reach: With the internet, you can reach a global audience, which is impossible with traditional marketing methods.
- Measurable results: Online marketing offers more accurate and detailed insights into the success of your campaigns, allowing you to adjust and improve your marketing efforts over time.
Strategies
Some effective online marketing strategies for small businesses include:
- Search engine optimization (SEO): This involves optimizing your website and online content so that it appears higher in search engine results, increasing visibility and attracting more traffic.
- Social media marketing: Utilize social media platforms to promote your business, engage with customers and build brand awareness.
- Email marketing: Send targeted and personalized emails to potential customers to drive sales and build customer relationships.
Offline Marketing for Small Businesses
Benefits
Although online marketing is growing in popularity, offline marketing still has a place in small business marketing. Some of the benefits of offline marketing include the following:
- Personal touch: Offline marketing allows you to connect with potential customers, which helps build trust and loyalty.
- Broader reach: While online marketing is accessible to those with internet access, offline marketing can reach those not online, such as older generations.
- Tangible impact: Marketing materials like brochures and flyers can be physically handed out, creating a tangible impact and increasing recall.
Strategies
Some effective offline marketing strategies for small businesses include:
- Direct mail: Send targeted, personalized direct mail to potential customers, such as postcards or flyers, to drive sales and build customer relationships.
- Networking: Attend events and engage with other business owners to build connections and promote your business.
- Print advertising: Place ads in local newspapers or magazines to reach potential customers in your area.
Learn More About Our Guest
Rich is the author of The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing, a popular and well-received book that helps entrepreneurs and marketers reach more of their ideal customers online. He has appeared in Inc. Magazine, The Huffington Post, FastCompany.com, CNN.com, The Social Media Examiner, and many other news stories on digital marketing.
Learn About Financing Solutions
Financing Solutions provides an easy-to-setup unsecured small business line of credit to small businesses. The small business financing product is a great cash backup plan that costs nothing to set up, nothing until used, and is inexpensive when needed. Financing Solutions is rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and 5 stars by the BBB/Google Reviews.
Unlike a traditional business bank loan, our business credit line requires no collateral or personal guarantee (except in fraud cases), making it an excellent alternative business financing option. Small businesses often use their line of credit for short-term expenses, working capital, to make payroll, or for business investment, especially when business cash flow is temporarily down.
Get a free, no-obligation business line of credit quote by filling out our simple 2- minute business line of credit application here.
Remember: The time to set up a credit line is when you don’t need it.