15 Small Business Advertising Ideas Can Drive Traffic & ROI

by | May 25, 2021 | 0 comments

For many small business owners, the term “advertising” conjures up images of billboards, radio advertisements, television commercials, snail-mail flyers, and an abundance of dollar signs. However, in today’s world, small business advertising ideas look very different and do not require a large budget.

What Is Advertising For Small Businesses?

Small business advertising is the most cost-effective method of promoting your brand and website through digital marketing channels such as social media advertising.

Due to social media’s popularity, you can easily reach your target audience from the convenience of their computer or mobile device.

A recent survey found that 11 new users join social media every minute. Additionally, more than 70% of North Americans use social media on a daily basis. If your business is not capitalizing on that captive audience, it is passing up a golden opportunity.

Apart from the impressive potential audience, social media marketing has a number of advantages:

  • Low entry barriers: You can create social media accounts for your business if you have a computer or a cell phone. While advertising costs vary across the best social media platforms, when compared to the cost of a 30-second television commercial or radio spot, it’s clear which is more affordable, particularly for a small business with a limited advertising budget.
  • Easily adaptable to your business’s needs: Social media platforms are designed to be customized. By incorporating your brand standards (such as consistent fonts and colors) into your photos, you can ensure that when customers see your content, they immediately recognize its source and are able to associate it with your business.
  • It can be as straightforward or as elaborate as you wish: Whether you’re planning a year-long, multi-platform campaign or simply want to place a few ads, social media can help you achieve your content and advertising goals. There are numerous small business advertising ideas available, and it’s simple to develop a strategy that works for your business by selecting the advertising ideas that will most effectively connect with your target audience.
  • It’s easier than ever to target: You have a great deal of control over who sees your advertisements with digital marketing. Age, gender, and location-based demographics are only the tip of the iceberg. Thus, you can rest assured that the advertisements and content you’ve worked so hard on will be seen by actual potential customers!
  • You may be wondering, “How exactly does small business advertising look?” What are some effective advertising strategies? And how am I going to market my small business?”

If you’re ready to begin utilizing social media marketing, or if you’re stuck for new and creative advertisement ideas, here are our top 12 small business advertising ideas that will help drive qualified traffic to your site!

Top 15 Advertising Ideas for Small Businesses

1.Maximize User-Generated Content:

Your current customers can often be your best advocates for your brand or business! Check your Facebook page’s “Community” tab to see what your customers are saying. Are they photographing their favorite dish from your restaurant or displaying the results of your skin-care products?

Now is the time to spread the love! Ensure that you first obtain permission from the individual who posted the photo. Then find unique ways to display it, such as a collage of satisfied customers. Or, as this women’s boutique did with a series of Sunday Shoutout posts to demonstrate their love and appreciation for their customers!

2. Respond to Your Audience’s Questions:

Conduct a quick online search for your business to determine what questions are being asked. When brainstorming small business advertising ideas, it’s critical to remember that providing value to your audience results in loyal customers. And there is no easier way to accomplish this than by responding to your customer’s most frequently asked questions.

If one person asks a question, it is likely that others will follow suit. Yelp reviews, Amazon reviews, and Facebook are all excellent resources for resolving issues. Make a list of the most pertinent questions. Then, create straightforward, branded graphics to respond to them and share them on the appropriate social media platforms.

3. Make the Most of Your Reviews:

Having a social media page brimming with rave reviews is fantastic! And if you have one, congratulations! However, are you recycling those reviews? You ought to be!

According to studies, more than 80% of customers read and trust online reviews before making a purchase. Convert those hard-won five-star reviews into marketing materials that demonstrate your customers’ happiness! Combine your favorite product or location images with your most positive reviews to create a simple, customized graphic that promotes your stellar customer service and awesome events in a new, eye-catching format.

4. Teach a Skill Through Video:

Let’s face it; video is the dominant content format on the majority of social media platforms. And it is not about to disappear anytime soon. Video is predicted to account for 80 percent of internet traffic by 2019. And 90% of viewers indicate that video content influences their purchasing decisions. Utilize this knowledge to create a video that adds value to your customers’ experience.

Tours of live venues and product demonstrations are always popular! However, one of the best video advertising ideas for small businesses is to use it to teach a new skill. Most likely, the phone in your pocket already has the capability to capture some pretty amazing video. Therefore, grab an employee or a tripod, find a quiet location to film, and demonstrate your expertise!

How-to videos or short pieces of advice Videos increase the number of people who see your business and establish you as a source of knowledge in your industry. Which results in increased trust, brand loyalty, and sales.

5. Contests Provide a Win-Win Situation in the World of Small Business Advertising

Conducting sweepstakes or giveaway contests is an excellent way to increase traffic to your social media channels and website. The key to a successful contest is to ensure that everyone benefits. The contest winner receives an incredible prize, which converts them into loyal customers and brand ambassadors. Additionally, it grows your business’s audience.

Even better, contests that encourage participants to take photos or leave reviews generate content that you can use in future advertising campaigns. A local Manhattan pizza restaurant did just that with their Snap-a-Slice Instagram contest, which was inspired by one of our small business advertising ideas.

Instagram is an excellent platform for contest-based small business advertising. Due to the visual nature of the format, it’s simple to gauge audience interaction and response to your contest. Utilizing Instagram hashtags enables you to track the success of your giveaway and any user-generated content that may result.

6. Become a Guest Blogger:

A successful marketing strategy requires you to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. And guest blogging is one of our favorite small business advertising strategies because it enables you to share your expertise with a larger audience than you might reach otherwise.

The key to guest blogging success is to partner with an individual or business that is complementary to yours, not a competitor. A guest blog should be informative, have a distinct voice, add value to readers, and include a call to action that directs readers to your website and encourages sales revenue. Additionally, it is critical to share your guest blog on the most popular social media platforms. Don’t forget about sites like Pinterest and LinkedIn if your blog is relevant to that audience.

And how do you locate websites that allow guest blogging? It’s easy to find. Yes, that is one of the simplest methods for locating these websites. You can begin by utilizing your own keyword phrases. For example, in the marketing industry, try marketing, followed by keywords such as online marketing, internet marketing, and digital marketing. Then incorporate the following key phrases:

  • +guest blog
  • +guest post
  • +write a guest post for us
  • +submit a guest post
  • +become a guest blogger

7. Recapture Your Audience:

Oftentimes, all your prospective customers require is a gentle reminder. Remarketing services target users who have previously interacted with your brand through a visit to your website or a click on a link in a digital advertisement you are running. It’s a straightforward way to reassure your audience that you’re still around if they’ve expressed interest in your content.

Consistent and recognizable branding across all platforms and in all of your advertising materials is critical for effective remarketing ads. A great advertisement is one that your customers immediately recognize as coming from your business.

8. Demonstrate Your Data:

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Additionally, when it comes to small business advertising ideas, an infographic can be extremely effective. You’re an expert in your field, and you probably have a ton of data in your back pocket that your customers could find useful. Utilize all of this expertise and create some infographics to incorporate into your marketing strategy.

An infographic is an excellent way to present that data because it highlights the critical information and saves the reader time and energy by eliminating the need to sort through tons of extraneous details in order to find the most important facts and figures.

Our attention spans are shorter than ever, so easily digestible and shareable information is becoming increasingly important. According to studies, 65 percent of people are visual learners, and infographics that convey ideas, facts, and solutions are certain to stick in your audience’s minds longer than more traditional advertising tactics.

9. Encourage Engagement:

Everyone enjoys a good giveaway! Whether you’re running an entirely online contest or giving away swag at an event or in-store, we’ve got you covered. The key to incorporating giveaways into your advertising strategy is to ensure that they benefit both parties.

If you’re hosting an online giveaway, invite participants to enter by submitting photos that you can use in future marketing campaigns. Additionally, use this opportunity to collect contact information for those critical email lists. Additionally, an in-person giveaway provides an excellent opportunity to capture images for social media use. Assign a photographer to photograph your giveaway winners posing with their prizes. Everybody benefits!

10. Establish a Refer-a-Friend Program:

Word of mouth is frequently the most effective form of advertising. By channeling the enthusiasm of your current customers, you can exponentially grow your small business’s following and customer base. While many small business advertising strategies focus on creating and distributing content to your target audience, a referral program puts your customers to work for you!

Refer a friend programs work well because consumers trust their family and friends’ perspectives and opinions. By incentivizing that relationship, you can create a cycle in which existing customers are rewarded for spreading the word about why they love your business.

Referral program rewards do not have to be extravagant; they can be as simple as a percentage off their next service or purchase. This also encourages those customers to return. Make sharing easy for your customers by including social media share buttons throughout your website.

11. Organize an Event:

Nothing generates more buzz for a business than an event. And, with the advent of social media, it’s incredibly simple to spread the word, generate excitement, and grow an online audience from an in-person event. We constantly create content for event pages and promote them for our clients. The key to success is to execute these tasks using digital tools.

Create Facebook events to inform your audience about upcoming events and to encourage them to share and invite their own circle of friends and family.

A Snapchat filter that promotes your business and branding is an excellent way to encourage attendees of your event to share their enthusiasm. Additionally, hashtags on Instagram and Twitter help you discover all of the wonderful photos and nice things people are saying about your event or business. Make certain to inform your guests of the hashtag to use!

12. Give Back:

It’s always rewarding to give back to the community in which your business operated…and it’s occasionally beneficial to your advertising strategy as well. There is no shame in bragging about your team’s accomplishments.

Whether organizing a food drive, sponsoring a sports team, or running a charity 5K, there is something for everyone. Begin discussing your volunteer project on social media ahead of time to generate excitement and engage your customer.

Consider tagging your charity partners in social posts to spread the love, and consider guest blogging and collaboration to expand your audience.

13. Don’t sleep on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a significant social media platform that is frequently underutilized. Don’t simply add network connections and log out; engage in conversation with them, share your blog posts and offers, join and contribute to forums, and share others’ high-quality content.

14. Engage in some local SEO

The most advantageous aspect of Google’s algorithm is that it is designed to return the most accurate, high-quality, and relevant results for any given search query. Because it is not necessary to pay to play, this level the playing field and enables small businesses to compete with larger competitors for page one real estate.

Local SEO is completely free, but it does take time, so get started now and keep working; the rewards over time can be enormous. Here are some must-dos for local SEO:

  • Include location-specific keywords in the titles, headings, and body content of your primary website pages (for example, “Portland bakery”).
  • Submit your information to online directories, ensuring that your information is consistent across platforms.
  • Create pages or blog posts that are neighborhood-specific.

15. Create an email marketing strategy

Email marketing is an excellent way to engage new visitors and maintain relationships with existing customers. And, while email marketing is not new, it remains one of the most reliable methods for achieving a high return on your marketing investment, if not the most reliable. This is how to ensure it:

  • Consider your subject lines with care and creativity.
  • Assure that each email contains an offer that entices your readers to take the next step.
  • Monitor your performance and conduct A/B tests to determine which copy and offers are most effective with your list.

Implementing Small Business Advertising Ideas

Marketing and advertising can be a daunting task for small businesses, even more so when compared to the budgets of larger companies and brands. However, with a little creativity and dedication, you can pinpoint your target audience, connect with them via social media, and cultivate an engaged and enthusiastic community around your business!

As always, if you require a full campaign or simply some guidance from your Marcelo Design X experts, we are here to assist. Contact us immediately; we look forward to promoting your business!

Do you have any additional clever small business advertising ideas that we missed? Leave them in the comments section below. We adore receiving correspondence from our readers!

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Marcelo Design X

We are a creative agency that offers digital solutions for businesses that want to impact the digital age, build awareness of their products or services, and increase their business income. We are specialized in Web Design, App Development, SEO, Branding, Digital Marketing.

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