What is the best marketing for your business?

Great marketing content is both well-produced and well-placed, but how can your business achieve this? Find out the best marketing strategy for your business, and learn how to improve your advertising to customers using this article.

We’ll cover the central question of what the best marketing tactics are for small businesses, including:

• What makes for the best marketing content?
• What are the pros and cons of different marketing methods?
• Should you use only one method of marketing?
• How to see your marketing success in real-time with Countingup

Before you hit ‘post’ online or approve the final draft of a radio advert, small business owners need to think about what they’re sharing and to whom. It’s never been easier to share your business’ message, but that means you’ve also got a lot of competition. That’s why we’ll first walk you through what makes for the best marketing content, so your business always leaves a great impression.

As you’re looking to advertise to customers, you need to know how to speak their language. This means more than simply making advertising content that they can understand; it has to go the extra step and resonate with your customers.

Whether this is appearing in spaces they pay attention to (like magazines, local billboards, Facebook groups or Twitter hashtags), or using a style of delivery they like (such as font and colour or tone of voice), your marketing needs to speak to your customers on multiple levels.

To gain this understanding, you’ll need to do some research on who your target market is and answer key questions like:

• Demographic information: age, gender, location, size of friend and family networks. Understanding them as people can help you find more about their behaviours.
• Interests: which publications (online or offline) do they follow, what values do they hold, what are they passionate about? Knowing what they like can help you appeal to them more.
• Worries: what stops them from buying your product? Cost or environmental impact? Genuine need, or fanciful want? Understanding their priorities can help you communicate your value better.

Read more on this element of marketing in our article What is a target market and how to define yours.

Even with all the information in the world about your ideal customer, if your advert isn’t well-produced, you’ll struggle to see sales increases. Modern customers expect a certain level of polish in the adverts they see and poor ones stick out as odd. Though you may not mean it as a marker of your business’ quality, adverts are often the first thing customers see about your business, so they have to be good.

Luckily, creating engaging content doesn’t always have to be expensive or time-consuming. Instead, it’s more about taking care as you make it: 

• Make sure your camera angles and lighting feature what you’d like to
• Ensure your sound quality captures music and voices well
• Confirm that printed materials show colour and text how you want 

In addition to the quality of what you make, consider how to make it engaging. In particular, consider whether it strikes the right tone. For example, adverts for funeral businesses need to appear more sombre than ones for children’s toys, and so playing into those expectations is important if you’re to meet customers with the right mood and delivery.

Below we outline some of the main benefits and issues when working with different marketing channels. If you’d like to learn more about marketing, read our guides What is small business marketing? as well as How to use social media for business, and Marketing strategies for startups.

• Pros: Locally focused, cheap
• Cons: Flyers may be vulnerable to weather, and street canvassing is inefficient if you have a target market in mind

• Pros: Locally focused and can be very engaging between audio and visual elements
• Cons: Can be expensive and time-consuming to produce well

• Pros: Cheap and quick to get started, potential to open your business internationally
• Cons: Similar to making radio and television advertising, good content can be made cheaply but the best marketing content takes planning and a sizeable budget to achieve

• Pros: Newsletters and written content allows you to build a more targeted following (either as an email list or website visitor base) and lets you cover multiple topics to offer additional value to customers
• Cons: Takes careful consideration to build over time and can be expensive if you outsource 

• Pros: Popular with customers as they either receive things for free or can learn more about your product/offer without having to buy it
• Cons: Customers may only be interested in a freebie rather than your freebie. Similarly, you don’t always have control over what reviewers/influencers may say.

Businesses should ideally aim to use multiple marketing methods as it helps spread their message and business presence across a larger area. However, you’ll also need to be careful not to spread your efforts too thinly. 

For example, sharing the same piece of news or information across 4-5 different websites is time-consuming enough without having to add on other formats like monthly newsletters and print advertising. Once you have to do the same each time, you may risk dipping in quality or efficiency.

For this reason, you may wish to focus on having a smaller, more focused presence, perhaps with a website, one or two social media accounts and some form of flyer or local advertising if your business benefits from it.

Did you know that thousands of UK business owners are using the Countingup app to save time on their financial admin and focus on growing their business?

Countingup is the business current account and accounting software in one app. it automates time-consuming bookkeeping admin for self-employed people across the UK.

With automatic invoicing, expense categorisation features and a receipt capture tool, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances and save yourself hours of accounting admin. Countingup also comes with real-time cash flow information so you can see exactly how and when your marketing strategy starts to work.

Find out more here and sign up for free today.