Today, we are sharing the most profitable online marketing strategies for small businesses in 2022. You will learn how to promote your small business with ease and profitably.

Now you have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of branding and marketing from our previous articles; it’s time for you to move forward and explore new skills. Remember that fundamentals come first, stable and robust brand core, everything else should be consistent and follow the structures we have built.

Many brands are stuck and give up while they are in the first step of the brand lifecycle which if you recall is the introduction step (creating awareness). Here are a few things to consider.

Online Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

Press Release

The press release is an essential online marketing strategy for small businesses. It is crucial when you want to inform people about:

• Your Idea
• Your Product
• Launching a new start-up
• Starting a new product line
• Growing business success story

A great press release will include information such as the founder’s background, your brand goal, your idea inspirations, the problem you are trying to solve, the date of launch, the Location, and why your idea is better than the competition.

A press release should be written with specific rules and guidelines; you can find templates to follow online then submit it to news sites through a publishing agency or hire someone from Fiverr.com or Freelancer.com to do the writing and publishing

Benefits of Press Release

High Authority: With a press release you would look more reliable since you are featured on high authority websites.

SEO Backlinks: Being linked to high-authority news websites would boost your site’s SEO and search ranking.

Business Opportunities: Many small businesses get some business deals by being noticed in a press release.

Things to Avoid

Fake news: Your personal and contact information will be attached to your news release; it’s essential, to be honest, and clear about your idea and goals.

Submitting too early in the process: If you are in the process of developing your product or website, it’s probably not a good idea to send a press release.

You don’t want to throw your audience to an empty or work-in-progress website; I know that sometimes things get exciting and you want to move fast, just take a deep breath and move one step at a time.

Social Media Marketing

What is social media?

Social media as you all might know is a platform for people to interact and share content, It was not created for the sake of business.

But for those platforms to survive they had to become profitable, they had to change their business model and add a revenue channel for advertising services to businesses.

You as a marketing manager or an entrepreneur, you should think of social media as a relatively low-cost tool to reach as many audiences as possible.

In my opinion, the benefit of social media is not to sell but to inform and educate your audience, especially for the first few months of your business journey.

Which Social Media Platform Should I Use?

Well, it does depend on your industry, for example, art, fashion, and accessories tend to be more visually oriented, Instagram, Pinterest, and Polyvore would be the right places to begin.

If you wish to be a manager for such brands, then you might need to develop skills or a right eye for great photography and visual communication, since the quality of the images is essential.

If you work in the business, publishing, and education industries then you might find yourself writing and sharing articles on Linkedin, Twitter, and Quora, you might need to develop your writing and blogging skills.

Or you might hire a freelancer to write articles for you; I would recommend hiring someone professional who is native to the language you want to write your article in. If your content is more video-related, then you might focus on YouTube and Vimeo. I would recommend focusing on one social media at a time.

How does social media work?

Many people might tell you that if you post beautiful photography or great articles people will naturally follow you, to me that is a guru talk, not a real experience from an entrepreneur or brand manager.

Nowadays social media platforms are turning more and more toward paid advertising and limiting the reach of your article through hashtags or organic growth, which makes it much harder for your content to reach your audience, and yes, social media does require consistent management.

How to do it?

People won’t follow you unless you are a superstar. At the beginning of your journey, you won’t be a superstar; therefore we can forget about this option for now. Start with sharing something they genuinely care about. You show an interest in them.

If you share beautiful imagery for the sake of beauty, then people might follow you and like your stuff, but are they following you for the right reason?

You want people to follow you, yet they are interested in your offering, not in the overall artistic composition of your images or the pose and sexiness of the model.

Showing some interest in people: Showing interest in people, you like other people’s stuff, leave comments, and probably share their content, they might notice and follow you back, this process will take you a lot of effort and time, but it works!

Alternative: You may find on Fiverr or Freelancer.com, that social media managers are people who manage your social media accounts, they will follow, like, and comment on your target audience’s posts.

Note: Finding an agent on Fiverr or Freelancer.com requires you to be careful about that specific deal, do your research if you are not sure about it then don’t do it. I don’t take any responsibility regarding this matter.

Things to Avoid:

Fake followers: Those are bots, dead followers, they have no value, it’s not about showing how many followers do you have, but the quality of your followers.

Fake traffic: Avoid phony traffic to your website through social media, those are bots.

Automated software: Avoid automated bots that like other people’s articles, you need a human behind your social media, not a bot.

Blogging

Content marketing: This is a great way to grow organically; you can blog about your industry, or the benefits of your products, and answer a few questions that people might ask about your industry.

Blogging: This is also a great tool to educate your audience and be a high authority source for your costumes since they can find information related to their problems on your site.

You become the expert (If you don’t know what to write or lack the skills of writing, you can always hire a freelancer to do the job for you.

Guest post: Guest post is an excellent method to grab attention to your website, find a platform that is related to your niche, and then contact the editor of the site and ask for permission to publish.

Note: Don’t make the article about your product, keep it educational, no one likes to read a sale pitch.

Influencers/Brand Ambassadors

A great method to increase your brand awareness is by leveraging the online marketing strategy called “Influencer Marketing”. You can do this by working with social media influencers.

Understand the purpose of this campaign.

Increasing brand awareness?

Sale promotion?

Find the right platform influencer

Are your products better to be presented with video, Images, or a word-of-mouth shout-out?

Find influencers that fit your niche: If you work in the fashion industry, it won’t make sense to find beauty and make-up influencers.

Engagement rate is more critical than followers quantity. It’s okay to find an influencer with small to midsize followers since they have a higher engagement rate.

Contact them and ask them if they are available for a corporation and how they like to work

Some like to have your products, others want a payment while some will work on affiliate sales commission. Pricing could range from N20,000 to Millions of Naira, don’t hesitate to email and ask.

I wish you the best on your journey, my last advice to you is to be patient and think for the long term, building a successful brand requires a lot of smart decisions and hard work. If you have any questions, leave a comment below.