39 Creative Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses Success 2024

Napoleon

— 12 min read
39 Creative Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses Success 2024

For every business type that you set up, effective marketing strategies are crucial to achieving success. This wouldn’t only help you gain the visibility and awareness that you need, but could skyrocket your sales.

Whether you are a new start-up or you are looking forward to trying more marketing options, Foundeck here explained the 39 creative marketing ideas for small business' success in 2024.

39 Creative Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses Success 2024

Here are the 39 marketing ideas you could explore in 2024.

1. Run a social media Competition

One of the easiest ways to market your product online and get more followers is by running a competition. With it, you won’t only be able to get your services or products to a good number of audiences, but you’d be able to engage more people. So by running a competition, the audience has the chance of winning your product, which would be in the form of a gift in exchange for a like, follow, or comment. You could simply allow your existing audience to invite more followers, and then the person with the highest number of followers wins and receives the freebie.

In fact, you could run a social media competition to achieve a lot of goals like getting people to like or comment on posts, sign up for newsletters, follow your page etc all of which will be targeted towards increasing your sales.

2. Build a Business Profile on Google

Creating a business profile on Google is also a must-do for every business. This allows you to list your business on Google without having to pay for it. With that, you can include essential business information, including business name, location, available work hours and contact information. Ideally, your profile information should be provided completely and it should express what your business does. This would make it easier for your profile to be visible whenever people search for products or services related to yours.

3. Email marketing

Email marketing doesn’t only allow you to offer products to customers but it helps you build a long-lasting relationship with them. As such you would need to continue building your email list. You can do this by encouraging new customers to sign up for your newsletters after making a purchase from your website, direct them from your social media handles, collaborate with other similar small business owners and so on.

While this type of marketing is great, understanding how to curate effective emails is key. This would involve using relevant and attention-grabbing subject lines, dishing out meaningful and genuine content, adding a call to action and so on.

4. Attend networking forums

As a business owner, networking with people both within and outside of your industry is important. This doesn’t only help you connect with people, but it could also help you seal a business deal. Whether you are attending a local or an international event, you should always be prepared to pitch your product or service to the audience. Even if there aren’t chances to do pitching, you can always build a long-term, healthy relationship with individuals who might later be your loyal customers.

5. Get an Industry Awards

Getting an industry award is a sure way to improve your visibility, credibility and reputation and multiply your business sales. Being recognized as the best product or service within your industry is a great win. With it, you won’t have to struggle in making sales as a lot of the audience would be willing to try out your offers since you’ve been selected as the best. Depending on your business niche, there is a lot of awards recognition you can sign up for.

6. Involve in Influencer marketing

Having an influencer market your product on their social media platform could bring an awesome result to your business. Because influencers are popular individuals with a lot of audiences, it is easier for people to buy from you through their recommendations. While you can pay influencers to advertise for you, you can also offer them a free product or service in exchange for their input.

 7. Referral marketing

Past customers would be willing to recommend your product or service to others if they are satisfied. As such, you should only give good quality items that would be worth the referral. Once you can achieve that, you will need to set up a referral scheme and offer incentives for every new customer referred to you. While doing this, be sure that the incentive used will be favored by people and also ensure that the cost of the incentive isn’t detrimental to the business.

8. Friends and Family Promotions

You can never underestimate the support that could be gotten from friends and families as regards marketing. So while trying other marketing ideas, do not hesitate to reach out to friends and families. Let them use your product or service if possible. You should also give them your business cards, flyers and so on so they can distribute within their community, among friends and colleagues.

9. Utilize guest posting

Apart from involving in blogging, you can also try guest posting. This will be done by submitting your written content to popular websites for publication. Since this website is well known, it is easy to get your post to a lot of people. To ensure that your brand gets noticed through the guest post, you should include a backlink that will lead visitors or audience to your website. This way you aren’t only promoting your content, but also gaining website visitors and buyers.

10. Collaborate with similar small businesses

You should also endeavor to collaborate with similar small business owners around. This should be businesses whose target market goes in line with yours and not those who are your direct competitors. By connecting and working with them, you could host a webinar together, recommend each other on social media, run a marketing campaign together, etc.

11. Request and use customer reviews

New customers are most likely to buy from you when they see positive reviews from your past customers. Beyond using word of mouth to encourage potential customers to buy from you, feedback from past customers can do the work. So it's important to set up a framework that will allow buyers to share their experience about what they like about your product and your brand in general. Once you can get this from a few customers, you should display it on your social media platform, website, etc.

12. Website optimization

Having a functional website for your business is good, however, it is better to optimize your website for SEO to get visible on search engines. As such, you would need to include keywords that resonate with your product or services when building website content. Including an FAQ section to provide answers to customer's questions and queries is important.

13. Offer free samples or a trial

People always like freebies, so if your business can afford to give out free samples to your potential customers, then it won’t be a bad idea. Once you offer a good quality product at first and the audience is satisfied, they will be willing to patronize your business and recommend others to you.

14. Host a Live stream

For every small business owner, hosting a live stream once in a while should be part of your marketing strategy as it doesn’t only help you stay connected to your audience, but it could help you generate more visibility and sales. By hosting the live stream with an influencer within your niche, you stand more chance to gain more audience who would most likely turn into customers.

15. Offer free gifts

Apart from offering free samples, giving gifts per each order you get is another marketing strategy. In fact, most customers would choose a vendor that offers gifts over the one that doesn’t. The gifts should necessarily not be expensive but should be something buyers would always find useful. Importantly, these gifts should be branded and contain contact information of your business. This way, you can reach other audiences through your past customers. The gift items could be branded t-shirts, mugs, stickers, key holders, purses, etc.

16. Create an affiliate program

By introducing affiliate programmes into your business marketing strategy, you would allow individuals to earn a commission when they invite others to buy your product or services. With it, you could allow several customers and any other individuals who sign up for the affiliate program to generate unique links that people can purchase through. As such, there would be a set down commission rate that would be granted per each successful product sold.

17. User Generated Contents

Another great way to market your product through social media handles is to utilize user-generated content. Encourage customers to send videos, pictures and testimonials of the product they got from you. They could make a video of when they’re unboxing and using the product, they could give a short video testimonial of the result of the product. All of these will be gathered as User-generated content and can be posted on your website and social media handles for potential customers to see.

18. Video Marketing

With the billions of content that are published online every day, It becomes more and more competitive to gain visibility through social media handles. While we have written and video content everywhere, as a business owner, prioritizing the use of quality videos in your marketing options is crucial. Whether you wish to run paid ads, post on social media pages, etc, investing in the videos that will be used is essential. As you would expect, people are most likely going to watch and engage in your videos if they are of high quality than when they are not.

Beyond posting content relating to your field, staying relevant on social media handles also involves giving your ideas, and opinions on a trendy topic or just joining a trendy act. Do not hesitate to bring up trendy discussions that would help increase your social media page engagement. As you wouldn’t want to bore your followers, discussing what’s in vogue with them is key. Moreover, as you get more engagement, your chances of gaining a new audience increase and that is important to getting more sales.

20. YouTube videos

YouTube allows you to upload relevant video content. By creating an account and getting more people to follow you, you not only earn from the platform itself, but you could advertise your product to the audience from there, get them to sign up to your email list or follow your social media page. By providing answers to people's cogent questions through YouTube videos, people would recognize you as an expert in your field and they’d definitely be willing to buy what you sell.

21. Create blog post

With meaningful, genuine and valuable SEO-related content, more prospective buyers get to access your website and possibly buy from you. With blogging, you would only be earning from the content itself, but you could directly or indirectly send website visitors to the page where you display your product. However, to be able to achieve this, you should keep in mind the category of people that will need your products, and the keyword options they are most likely to search for as this would guide your SEO strategies.

Many cities have their community social media handles where they post and discuss trends, happenings, achievements, tribulations etc. about the city. In fact, some also allow small business owners to launch and advertise their products in these groups. You should therefore endeavor to reach out to these groups so you can get your product and services to your immediate community easily.

23. Start Podcasting

Apart from using video and written content to connect with your audience, with podcasts, you can engage with people in audio form. You can discuss a lot of topics relating to your field with your audience. However, it must be discussions that are interesting, appealing and engaging to your connections. This way you won’t only be viewed as an expert in the field, but people will also be willing to patronize you.

24. Attend local events

Attending events within your community and neighboring city is a good way to get your product or service to the eyes of the people. As you do this, you connect more with others, tell them about your service, share your business location and build a healthy relationship with people who could turn into customers tomorrow. Importantly you should understand that your immediate community should be your first target customers, so be ready to connect with them.

25. Maximize local hashtag usage on social media

With the use of hashtags on Instagram and TikTok, potential customers within your local community can easily reach you. By using hashtags that are peculiar to your local community and neighboring city, people will be able to find your store while searching for items within the hashtag locations.

26. Break a world record

If there is any activity you could do to break a world record, then it's worth trying it. This should in some way be related to the business or services that you offer. Doing this won't only help you get the visibility that you need, but could help you multiply your sales in no time.

27. Join social media groups

Getting through with people of similar minds on social media is crucial. There are several social media groups containing those who sell the same or similar products and services as yours. With this, many customers simply search for groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc to get the product and services that are needed. Apart from that, this strategy could be a nice way to connect with people with the same interests as yours.

28. Maximize other e-commerce platforms

E-commerce platforms like Shopify, and Etsy are platforms where you can display and market your product. With just a few setups and listings, you would be able to get customers for your products. If on the other hand, you offer services, then you could maximise the use of freelancing websites like Freelancer.com, and Upwork, indeed, to get more clients.

29. Invest in paid ads

Beyond utilizing social media handles to promote your products, you should also invest in paid advertisements. This would involve using Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. to market your products to a larger audience. You would need to understand how this type of marketing works before diving into it. Moreover, you would be required to set up adequate targeting for the best results.

30. Build a social media community

Creating and building a social media community is also important for a business owner. If you particularly sell products, then you should be doing this. You would need to create groups or pages on platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram and consistently dish out engaging written and video content to your audience. The more valuable content you give, the more likely you are going to attract more audience. As you continue to build more audience, your sales will increase.

31. SMS Marketing

With SMS promotions, you can reach a large audience. This will require just a little effort and you can easily advertise the new offer you’ve got, provide information about your trendy products, offer discounts for your sales and so on. While this marketing strategy has been in use for many years, they are still utilised by many small business owners.

Another smart way to market your product or service is to publish your business story, products or services and special offers and discounts on popular local and international magazines and newspapers. Being featured on TV stations and radio could also be a good way to gain more visibility and sales both within your locality and beyond.

33. Sponsor local events

By participating in events within your community, you gain more visibility from people. This could involve donating to a charity programme, offering a free service to a nearby school, supporting a sports team and so on. When you offer all of these once in a while, you become recognized easily within your local community and this could boost your sales with time.

34. Host offline workshops and classes

Apart from organizing online events, you can also set up classes and workshops that will cater for people within your city. This should be offered at a discounted price and should be centered on sharing your expertise with others and indirectly marketing your product or service to them.

35. Use the concept of Mystery boxes

Although the concept of mystery boxes is quite new, it remains one of the best marketing strategies today. This method involves offering different amazing products as a surprise to buyers at a very low price. So, rather than selling your business product separately, you can offer them together as mystery boxes. For example, if you are into kids' clothes, you could package kid’s toys, sweets, inner wears as part of the item in the mystery box. In most cases, the cost price of all products in the box is usually way less than the price of all items combined.

36. Build a LinkedIn page

Besides building your online presence on social media platforms, creating a LinkedIn page is also important. With it, you can easily connect with other small business owners, professionals and entrepreneurs, improve visibility, share meaningful industry-related content and so on.

37. Offer discount prices on holidays

By offering your product or services at a discounted rate on holidays, you can multiply your sales rate. There is no doubt that people like to get premium items at a relatively affordable price, so you can always maximise Valentine’s Day, Black Friday and every other holiday or special event.

38. Send a handwritten holiday or thank you note to customers

Customers are always happy and willing to patronize more if they feel loved and valued.  By sending a handwritten note to them on their birthdays, holidays or a thank you note, they feel connected and they are more inspired to build a long-lasting relationship with the brand. Because of this, they could willingly refer their friends and family to your business.

39. Be a people person

To succeed as a small business owner, stay connected with a lot of people daily. Even if they don't need your product, they could recommend your product or service to others. Be open to communicating with people through meetings, chats, phone calls, etc. The more you build your networking skills, the higher the chances of retaining more customers.

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Conclusion

Even if you are starting your business on a very small budget, there are always marketing options you can always try out. While there could be many, your ability to recognize and properly strategize what works for your business is crucial. This guide, therefore, has provided the 39 creative marketing ideas you can explore as a small business in 2024.

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