Strategies to promote small business

This article discusses the importance of effective strategies for small businesses to attain sustained growth, survival, and overall development. It highlights various marketing strategies such as Facebook advertising, Google My Business, Google AdWords, content marketing, organic social media, coupon deal sites, email marketing, and webinars that can help small businesses promote their products and services effectively.

Running Head: Strategies to promote small business
Strategies to promote small business

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Table of Contents
Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................. 2
Facebook Advertising....................................................................................................................................... 2
Google My business........................................................................................................................................... 3
Google AdWords................................................................................................................................................. 3
Content Marketing............................................................................................................................................. 3
Organic social media......................................................................................................................................... 3
Coupon Deal Sites............................................................................................................................................... 4
Email Marketing.................................................................................................................................................. 4
Webinars................................................................................................................................................................ 4
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................................. 5
References................................................................................................................................................................. 6

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Introduction
Irrelevance to the nature of the business, requirement for effective strategies is must in
order to get the business on board as well as to reach towards the desired destination.
When a business is introduced in the market, it comes up with the objectives like attaining
sustained growth, survival for a longer period of time and overall development. With
regards to these objectives, the most crucial required element is consistent learning
(Sharma, 2014). This helps the business not only just to move towards their desired goals
and objectives, but this element also ensures the survival of the business for longer period
of time. Along with this, it could be said that organization needs to implement appropriate
control over its activities with the objective to function as per the designed policies and
strategies (Acquaah & Agyapong, 2015). As these objectives are considered as the primary
elements for the organizational success irrelevant to their nature, size and type of industry,
significance of the management functions i.e., planning, organising, commanding,
coordinating and controlling cannot be denied as these functions help the organization to
attain desired goals and objectives in an effective and efficient manner.
According to Groenewald, Prinsloo and Pelser (2014), it is necessary for a small
organization to select the strategies wisely for its success and growth. Selection of the
strategies is necessary for the organization in terms of maintaining its performance along
with enhancing the rate of growth at the same time. Amongst the all strategies, marketing
strategies plays vital role in terms of enhancing the demand and presence of the business in
the target market (Taiminen & Karjaluoto, 2015). It has been seen as per the trending
business environment that every business is required to alter their marketing strategies
time to time. Marketing strategies have acquired top position in the priority list of the
strategies as these are effective in terms of spreading awareness amongst the target
audience in relevance to the organizational products and services along with maintaining
the organizational presence in the highly competitive and dynamic business environmental
conditions (Alford & Page, 2015).

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As per María Guadalupe Arredondo-Hidalgo and Diana Del Consuelo Caldera-González
Gerardo Álvarez-Valadez (2018), the most effective crucial strategies for the success and
growth of small business organizations would be smart integration of online (digital) and
offline strategies i.e. traditional mediums in order to ensure the future growth and success.
It is necessary for a small business to be flexible along with good planning and
organizational skills to get succeeded in the dynamic business environmental conditions
(Chong, et. al., 2017). Due to lack of funds in the small businesses, it is necessary to utilise
all the available resources whether financial or human for the efficacy and efficiency of the
organization. Following strategies could be adopted for promoting a small business:
Facebook Advertising
Approximately one third of the total population of the world are active users of Facebook.
It is one of the oldest and most effective social media platforms. According to a research, it
has been found that approximately 2 million small and mediums scale enterprises uses
Facebook to promote their products and services (Gibbons, 2015). The major reason
behind this is that the platform is inexpensive yet effective as number of active users for
this platform is very huge (Radicic and Pugh, 2017).
Google My business
Google My business is one of the most powerful things through which small or any size of
business could easily be promoted in the domestic or in the international market. Along
with this, this tool is most useful and the appropriate strategy for the small businesses who
runs a local business and targets local clients (Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014). This is a type of
paid advertisement and when a user will search on Google (for example, for the book
stores), with the help of Google My Business listings, it will show the results in the top
three links. This will ultimately pull of the sales of the organization along with the objective
of enhancing organizational performance (Hassan, Nadzim & Shiratuddin, 2015). Along
with this, Google’s brand image helps the businesses to build trust amongst their target
audience and when a user get the relevant searches as per their requirement, Google also
show relevant options such as Google Maps to direct the users to reach towards their
searched results (Sharma, 2014).

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Google AdWords
It has been observed that more than 40,000 search queries are received on Google in every
second. There are no other strong advertisement options are available to get the business
on board along with promoting the products and services amongst the target audience
(Weinstein & Winston, 2016). Google AdWords is also known as the godfather of the online
marketing channels. Despite being expensive, this tool is highly result oriented as well as
capable enough through which organization could attain competitive advantage (Jones,
Borgman & Ulusoy, 2015).
Content Marketing
According to research conducted in 2016, it has been observed that 18% marketers believe
that content marketing is a highly result oriented tool. It is the process of creating and
distributing relevant, valuable and appropriate content to their target and potential
customer segments for retaining them as well as to attract new customer segments. For
every customer segment, separate content approach is being used and it is considered as a
profitable action for the organization (Yadav, 2013). Content marketing is also considered
as an effective tool for attaining long term goals and this feature of this tool separate it from
other paid advertisement tools (Karimi & Naghibi, 2015). For attaining positive results
from content marketing, it is necessary to execute all the following things in an appropriate
manner:
 Quality content
 Relevant topics
 Optimized for SEO
 Optimized for readers
 Consistent content creation & promotion
Organic social media
Social media has brought revolutionary changes in the marketing industry. With regards to
this, social media tools are most effective because these tools are inexpensive and highly
effective. Approximately 67% of the consumers use social media for customer support and
amongst them half of the users prefer social media over telephone (Heller Baird & Parasnis,

Strategies to promote small business 5 | P a g e
2011). Thus, it has become mandatory for the organizations to set up their online presence
to spread awareness along with the objective of setting appropriate brand image in the
target market (Kim, Jang & Yang, 2017). Major social media platforms are Instagram,
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, etc. For small businesses, investing in the organic
social media platforms act as the most effective tools for the organization to attain their
desired goals and objectives. For example, Instagram is mainly used for promoting clothing
brands as people follow celebrities and role models and they are meant to be much active
on social media platforms (Yadav, 2013).
Coupon Deal Sites
Irrelevance to the nature and size of the business, their primary objective is to attract
audience and with the help of coupon deal sites like Groupon, ShopAtHome, SlickDeals, etc.
This will help the organization to promote its business along with attracting target
customer segments (Lovelock & Patterson, 2015). In consideration to this, organization
could easily transform their expectations into reality along with the enhancing
organizational performance. Primary benefits of promoting products and services on
coupon deal sites are mass exposure, increasing brand awareness, targeting local audience
and to target new customer segments. This is another form of paid advertising and it helps
the small business enterprises to set up their effective brand image in the target market
along with competing with existing companies (María & Diana, 2018).
Email Marketing
Email is one of the most and widely used communication channels amongst the digital
tools, thus, email marketing is considered as the cornerstone of digital marketing. This
mediums is used by the business enterprises to target customers at individual level
because when customers visit any site, they does not purchase immediately and to convert
these leads into sales, email is considered as one of the most effective tool for converting
leads into sales (Blinov, 2015). Numbers of benefits are linked with the usage of email
marketing and some of these are as follows:
 Global reach
 Easy to frame and use

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 Low cost
 Instant communication tool
 Easy to optimise and track
Webinars
This is a seminar which takes place online and the form of webinars is presentation,
discussion and demonstration. Webinars are also used as the great medium for the email
marketing in terms of converting leads into sales (Radicic & Pugh, 2017). This medium is
also used as an effective platform to build credibility with the current subscribers.
Webinars are meant to be more creative, entertaining and engaging in comparison to the
simple videos. In certain niches, Webinars are very effective and in relation to this, it is
necessary select one of the best medium as per the requirement of target audience (Ryan,
2016).

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Conclusion
Thus, it could be concluded that the above discussed strategies are the most effective and
relevant as per the requirements of a small business corporation. In this paper, numerous
marketing and promotional strategies have been discussed in relevance to the small
business’ requirements. Primary motive of every business corporation is to enhance
performance of the organization and in relation to this, adaptation of promotional and
marketing strategies is must.

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