Small businesses have a higher chance of dealing with different challenges in their early years. Some are harder than others to overcome and about 20% of small businesses fail by the end of their first year. By the end of their fifth year, 50% go under, and by the tenth year, it rises to 80%.
These numbers may scare you but the good news is that these business problems and challenges are actually fixable. You just need to assess the situation, maybe take a step back, look at your pain points, and rethink your strategy.
We will discuss some of the common challenges that small businesses may face, together with the corresponding tactical advice about how to fix them.
1. Finding Customers
This problem is huge for small businesses because you are still building your name in the market. And with the current environment, there are a lot of channels to focus on for acquisition and it is a challenge for you to prioritize. Add the acquisition costs being too high and these small businesses may not have enough resources to create marketing campaigns.
To solve this problem, small businesses should make sure to figure out who their ideal customer is by identifying their target market. It's important that you're spreading the word to the right people. Build your buyer persona and begin creating content that caters specifically to this persona through different channels you think are effective.
2. Increasing Brand Awareness
Building an audience is more valuable than direct sales, and running marketing campaigns should be the top priority of businesses. Not only does it generates awareness, it also builds trust with your audience and it helps them associate your brand with your products and services. With this combined, it will help drive sales and build a base of loyal customers.
As a small business, you can start spreading awareness by co-marketing and blogging. Co-marketing means partnering with another brand to help you inherit some of their image and reputation and create brand evangelists outside of your circle. You can also write consistent high-quality blogs to help you drive traffic to your website and convert them into leads.
3. Build an Email List
You need to build trust with your leads through consistent nurturing, staying on top of mind, and continuously providing value. This can be done by building an email list. Email marketing is still ranked as the most effective marketing channel and it can either directly influence their purchasing decisions.
The easiest way to build your email list is to build opt-in email lists. It is made up of subscribers who voluntarily give you their email address so you can send them emails. This means that these customers are already interested, and interested customers are more likely to make purchases, especially with nurturing. You need to be creating enticing content that inspires them to sign up for your email list. It can also create traffic in your blog if you try to link your email content to your blog content. Be creative and keep in mind to capture your audience’s attention every time.
Learn what online lead generation is and why your business needs it, how you qualify someone as a lead, how you generate leads, and why inbound lead generation is much more effective than simply buying leads .
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