Being a small business owner can be extremely difficult. Simply running the day to day operations of a small business can be much more work than full-time job. As a result, there are certain things small business owners may end up ignoring. One of these is marketing. Unfortunately, without successful marketing, any business, large or small, will probably end up failing in the long-run. Instead, give your marketing efforts the attention they deserve. Below are a few ways to elevate the marketing of your small business.

Localize Your SEO

Small business owners with brick and mortar locations may assume they don’t have to be concerned with things like search engine optimization. This is not true in the least. These days, a vast majority of consumers perform online research before making a purchase in person at a brick and mortar store. In fact, for bigger purchases, 81 percent of consumers perform online research before spending money. Not coming up in relevant search results could mean losing a high volume of business to your direct competitors that have done that legwork.

In regards to your SEO, you need to make an effort to ensure that your SEO is localized. This will do a much better job of attracting the local consumers you need to transform into dependable long-term customers. Make sure to include keywords in your SEO that reference your city, state and region. This will help to ensure that your business comes up near the top of locally relevant search results. Also make sure your business is listed on all major online maps and navigation services, and add a listing with your street address to business service websites like Google My Business.

Create Video Advertisements

While a lot can be done with pictures and text, almost nothing else conveys the amount of information that video can. For many decades, television commercials were the most effective form of advertisement for scores of businesses in many different industries. Unfortunately, running a television commercial when viewers were likely to see it was prohibitively expensive. While you may have been able to run a commercial late at night on a UHF channel, prime-time slots could only be afforded by the largest of corporations.

Thankfully, this is no longer true. These days, as many, if not more, people spend their time watching videos on the internet as they did watching network television. As such, you can use this fact to your advantage by utilizing video marketing for far cheaper than it has ever been in the past. Partnering up with internet companies that run video ads can allow your ads to be seen by thousands, or even possibly millions, of consumers. Work with a company that produces internet video advertising to make sure your production values are up to snuff so you can give the viewers a great impression of your products and services.

Integrate Market Research

Of course, there are also other mediums you can use for advertisements and marketing materials. However, you should also consider the fact that your small business’s marketing in general may be uniformed. What this means is you may not have done the proper market research to determine exactly how and to whom you should market your products. Obviously, you will probably know the general physical market based on your geographic location. However, do you know the age, sex, race, ethnicity, religion and more of your average customers?

To obtain this kind of information, you should perform some basic market research to help better inform your marketing. This will give you a more data-driven approach that will likely be much more effective at reaching the right consumers and converting them into paying customers. It may also give you data on exactly what groups you are not reaching with your products and services. For example, if the elderly are not giving your restaurant the business you need, you can tailor some advertisements to court that demographic specifically.

Conclusion

Overall, don’t be afraid to take your marketing to the next level to help expand the reach of your small business. Don’t let the fact that your business is small dissuade you. Almost every huge corporation from Walmart to Microsoft started out as a tiny small business. Putting more emphasis on your marketing can help your business grow naturally so you can reach your full potential.