What is Marketing? The Ultimate Guide for SMBs

“You have to spend money to make money.” – Titus Maccius Plautus.

That’s right. Even 2,000 years ago, business owners understood what marketing was and why it benefited them. They didn’t have marketing teams, SEO, or social media, but they leveraged the power of word-of-mouth to promote their businesses and grow them over time.

It’s no surprise that marketing has evolved tremendously since the Roman Empire, but the core principles of this discipline remain intact today. In this post, we’ll explain what marketing is and how small business owners can use the four “P’s” (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) to attract more customers. We’ll also provide a list of marketing channels and best practices for launching a campaign at your small business.

What is marketing?

Marketing is any action your business takes to promote its products, services, or brand. It’s your efforts to spread the word about your company and build a positive reputation for your business.

The term “marketing” is vague, and plenty of business operations fall under this umbrella. You can have full-fledged marketing campaigns that feature online ads, TV commercials, etc. Or, you could hand out business cards and post occasionally on social media. Both strategies, and everything in between, are marketing for your business.

Table of Contents: 

• What is the Purpose of Marketing?
• Types of Marketing
• Benefits of Marketing
• How does marketing work?
• Marketing Best Practices
• Marketing & Advertising
• How to Measure Your Marketing Campaigns

What is the purpose of marketing?

Marketing spreads the word about your company and attracts more customers interested in buying your products and services. Business owners use communication channels like email, social media, and paid advertisements to send messages to these customers that convince them to buy, research, or demo different products.

When done right, marketing is very effective. Take a look at this chart from Smart Insights:

This chart shows the average return on investment (ROI) for each dollar spent on different marketing channels. Email alone generated an average of $40 for each dollar spent on these campaigns. In other words, your business could experience a 40x return on investment by simply sending promotional emails to your customers.

Sounds too good to be true, right?

Good catch. Marketing is more complex than just sending an email.

There’s a right and a wrong way to market your business, and knowing how to do things correctly will increase sales and protect you from making costly mistakes that hurt your brand.

Types of Marketing

Here are a few different types of marketing that you can use at your small business. We’ve divided this list into two categories: digital marketing and traditional marketing. 

Digital Marketing Strategies

Here are some digital marketing strategies for small businesses. 

• Content Marketing: Content is the digital or physical assets that promote your business. Content marketing blends these assets into a comprehensive campaign that directs people to your product, service, or brand.

• Email Marketing: Email is one of the most effective marketing channels. Most people have it, and sending messages to those who subscribe to your newsletter or mailing list is easy.

• Blog Marketing: Blogging is a tried-and-true content marketing strategy. You can blog about your products, services, company news, or topics related to your industry. Blogging is not only an effective way to promote your business, but it can also help you build a library of diverse content.

• Social Media Marketing: This is another form of content marketing. Nearly 5 billion people use social media. Whether it’s Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, or any other channel, it’s important to know which platforms your customers use and engage with them as much as you can on these channels.

• Search Engine Marketing: Search engine marketing is the practice of researching keywords and identifying ways to make your content rank higher on search engines like Google. For example, if you run a roofing business and a customer searches for “Home Services in Texas,” you want to ensure your company’s website ranks at the top of the results for that search query.

• Paid Media Marketing: Paid media is an advertisement, like a YouTube ad or a product placement. It’s when your company pays to display a message in a particular place at a specific time.

• Online Marketing: Online marketing is more of a catch-all category. It’s anything your business does to promote your company on the Internet, like your website, social media pages, YouTube videos, etc.

Traditional Marketing Strategies

These are more traditional marketing strategies for small businesses. 

• Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Word-of-mouth marketing is the buzz customers generate about your business. These reviews make other customers trust your brand and want to do business with you.

• Video Marketing: Videos are an excellent marketing tool. You can use them for commercials or create a promotional video for your business. At Thryv, we make videos for customer reviews and testimonials that showcase different products.

• Print Marketing: Print marketing is a physical marketing message – think billboards, signage, and sales sheets. These mediums are excellent for building brand awareness.

• Guerrilla Marketing: Guerrilla marketing is untraditional marketing. It surprises your customers because they don’t expect to see your message in this form or place.

Each type of marketing has its quirks. What works well on one may have a different effect on another. Double down on the channels that work best for your business, and avoid spending too much time on ones that don’t yield positive results.

Benefits of Marketing 

Some people think marketing isn’t very important. After all, a great product should sell itself, right? 

There are several ways marketing can help your business – and that doesn’t always mean selling. Here are a few benefits of marketing that you should consider: 

1. Marketing helps you connect with existing customers.

When you create a marketing campaign, you start by researching your target audience. You learn about your customers and create messages that connect with them over time. 

Successful marketing strategies improve relationships with your customer base because you create enjoyable experiences that make people want to return for more. That connection is one of the biggest benefits of marketing, increasing loyalty to your brand and shielding your customer base from competitors.

2. Marketing improves your brand awareness. 

Brand awareness refers to the number of people who recognize your brand (logo, company name, content, etc.). Marketing increases brand awareness by promoting your business to new audiences. Through memorable content and delightful experiences, marketing campaigns help people remember your brand for future purchases. 

In fact, if we break down the stages of marketing – the first stage is the “attract” phase. It’s where you promote your brand and teach people about your products and services. 

3. Marketing helps you understand your customers. 

Marketing is like fielding a baseball or learning how to do makeup. The more you do it, the better you get at it. Why? Because every marketing campaign begins with research. You need to understand your customers if you want to connect with them.

The best way to research your customers is with marketing tools like a CRM, social media manager, reputation software, etc. These tools collect customer information and help you understand consumer behavior. They also measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns so you can improve your strategy and attract more customers.

4. Marketing makes it easier to find your business. 

Visibility is huge for small businesses. Most people find local brands through a Google search, and the ones that appear have strong online reputations. Not only do they have great reviews, but they also mastered something called “SEO” or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the practice of researching search engines and adjusting your marketing content so that it ranks (appears) for words and phrases that your customers search for. 

Here’s a simple example: Let’s say we own a plumbing company in Denver, Colorado. We want our brand to appear whenever someone searches for “Best Plumbers in Denver” or “Best Plumbers Near Me.” To do that, we’d have to optimize our local listings, create content for our website, collect customer reviews, and improve our online reputation so Google knows we’re a trustworthy business. It takes time, and several factors go into search rankings, but this is another way marketing can help your business. 

5. Marketing improves brand loyalty and customer referrals. 

The first phase of marketing is attracting customers. The last phase is retaining them through brand loyalty. It’s much cheaper to retain an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. So, the goal of marketing is to get people back to the first phase by increasing their loyalty to your business.

Brand loyalty can also lead to customer acquisitions through referrals. When people have a great experience with your business, they tell their friends, family, and coworkers about it. That increases brand awareness and builds trust with people who might not be familiar with your company. And, if you have a customer referral program, that incentivizes customers to recommend your business. They get rewarded for the referral, and you get a new customer.

6. Marketing helps you optimize your pricing. 

In addition to customer research, marketing also requires competitor research. You need to research your competitors and find out how they’re marketing similar products. Not only will you pick up effective strategies, but you will also learn how to optimize your pricing. 

Once you see what your competitors are charging, you can work towards a fair and competitive price. It will also help you understand pricing structures and how brands package their products and services. For example, most HVAC companies offer free quotes as a complimentary service. If your business charges for quotes, that’s one reason why customers might not do business with you. 

Pricing is a huge factor in buying decisions. Marketing will help you find the right product price to compete with other industry brands.

Tip: Try our free pricing calculator to find the best prices for your products and services. 

7. Marketing improves your brand reputation.

Whoever said, “all publicity is good publicity,” clearly never worked in marketing. While it’s good to bring attention to your brand, marketing focuses on improving your reputation as a business. It positions your company as an organization people want to work with and tell others about. 

That’s why you often see brands like Red Bull hosting free events like these: It improves their reputation with their target audience. People attend the event, see athletes endorsing Red Bull’s products, and want to try those products for themselves. 

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Now, let’s pull the curtain back on all the magic and show you how marketing works. 

How Does Marketing Work?

Most small business owners don’t have a marketing team. They either manage their marketing independently or outsource it to an agency.

If you’re taking on the work yourself, brush up on the four “P’s” of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. Let’s review each in the section below.

The 4 P’s of Marketing

1. Product

Think about how this product is different from others in your industry. What makes it unique from its competitors? What features does it provide? What problem are you solving?

The more you understand what you are selling, the easier it will be to promote it to your customers. Focus on what makes your product unique and how it will help customers achieve their goals. If you can position it as a solution to their problem, you’re more likely to make a sale because you’re highlighting an actual need for it.

2. Price

The price is what customers are willing to pay for your product or service. Price can also be dictated by the resources used to produce that product.

Branding can also affect price. Take Nike or Lululemon, for example. These brands create the same products as their competitors but charge more because they’re considered higher-end brands. Their products may or may not be better quality, but the brand’s value is what people want to buy. If you have a strong brand, you can leverage it to find the best price point for your products and services.

Tip: Learn how to raise prices strategically with this free guide. 

3. Place

Place is where you plan to sell your product. It may be a physical location like a brick-and-mortar store or online via your website and social media pages. z

When it comes to where you sell your product, you shouldn’t expect customers to seek out your business. Instead, you’ll have to meet them on the channels where they are most active. For example, you might partner with influencers and create an Instagram ad if your audience is younger. If more of your customers are Gen X, you might create a bot to process sales on your Facebook page instead.

Either way, aim to meet your customers on their preferred channels. They’ll be more likely to respond, creating a seamless conversion path from marketing to sales.

4. Promotion

Promotion refers to the communication used when selling your product. It’s the messages you send to customers that explain why they should buy from your brand and what makes your products better than your competitors.

Promotion is also where you devise your content marketing strategy. Content marketing is the practice of creating assets that promote your brand. We’ll dive into a few different types later, but content marketing is the foundation of promotion. It catches a customer’s eye and compels them to do business with your company.

Let’s review a few different types of marketing, including content marketing, in the section below.

Marketing Best Practices for Small Businesses

Here are some strategies you should follow when implementing any type of marketing campaign at your business.

Identify your target audience.

The best marketing campaigns utilize personalization, so knowing who you’re selling your products and services to is important. This information includes their demographics, interests, purchase history, and any other details you can gather about this audience. Once you have that, you can craft personalized messages that speak directly to your ideal customer.

For example, a seasonal marketing campaign might target customers who are doing holiday shopping or are preparing for an annual event.

Set goals for your campaigns.

Marketing is like science. You come up with hypotheses and then test them with experiments. Except in marketing, your goals are your hypotheses, and your experiments are your campaigns.

For example, if I wanted to increase traffic to my website, I might set a business goal of raising it by 5%. From there, my experiment and hypothesis could be “If we add industry-specific keywords to our home page, we will rank higher on Google and increase our traffic by 5%.”

This approach helps you track what you are testing and makes identifying campaigns that aren’t producing meaningful results easier.

Solve, don’t sell.

Nobody wants to be sold on something. It adds stress to the buying experience and makes the customer feel pressured to make a decision. In most cases, the harder you try to sell something, the more dubious people will be about your intentions.

Rather than selling something to your audience, try to solve a problem for them. Talk about how your product or service will help them achieve their goals and why your company is the best option for this use case. This messaging will differentiate you from competitors and position your brand as a trusted resource of information with its customers’ best interests at heart.

Measure performance.

Business owners hate wasting time. It sucks to put a bunch of effort into a campaign and not see a return on your investment. It’s even worse when you think something is working, but you’ve actually been doing more harm than good.

The best way to safeguard your time is to monitor the performance of your campaigns. Marketing tools can show you which assets are performing well and which may need improvement. By keeping a close eye on your marketing metrics, you’ll avoid costly mistakes and spend more time working on campaigns that lead to deals for your business.

Focus on your strengths.

Once you know what works and what doesn’t, double down on your strengths. When it comes to marketing, customers want to take the path of least resistance. They seek out convenience and comfort and prefer familiar and trustworthy experiences.

Don’t waste your time pushing campaigns that don’t resonate with your target audience. Customers don’t change their habits often unless you give them a good reason. Instead, focus on improving good experiences by improving the channels and messages your customers seem to like most.

Some people confuse marketing with advertising. Although they’re related, advertising is really a subcategory of marketing. Let’s explain why. 

Customer referral programs are a great example. Here’s an advertisement for a customer referral program:

Source

This is an ad, but it’s not the whole campaign. It promotes the referral program, but the program itself is also a form of marketing. Advertising is the component of your marketing campaign that promotes your core message.

Before we wrap up, let’s discuss how you can measure the performance of a marketing campaign. 

How to Measure Your Marketing Campaigns

Here are five steps you can take to measure your marketing campaigns. 

1. Adopt marketing tools.

The first thing you’ll need is marketing software with reporting features. Here’s a list of tools you should consider: 

• CRM
• Email Marketing Software
• Automation Software
• Social Media Manager
• Online Listings Tool
• Website Builder
• Online Review Manager

Some platforms bundle these tools together, storing all of your campaign data in one place so you can compare and measure performance over time. 

2. Choose metrics that align with your goals. 

Metrics are units that measure marketing campaigns. Traffic to your website is a marketing metric. Likes on your Facebook posts are a marketing metric – you get the point. 

It’s important to pick the right metrics for your marketing campaign. They should align with your goals and help you achieve a specific outcome. For example, if my goal is to rank higher on Google Maps, I might try to get more Google Reviews or rank for keywords related to my area. By focusing on these metrics, I should improve my position on search engines.

3. Check in on your campaigns over time. 

Marketing isn’t a “set it and forget it” activity. You should monitor campaigns while they’re running and update them over time. If you work in “sprints,” you can break your campaign into phases and make small adjustments before each one. That will keep your content fresh and increase your chances of success.

Here’s where it’s important to have real-time reporting tools. Your marketing software should have an analytics tab that shows your campaign performance. 

4. Set a deadline for your campaign. 

A deadline doesn’t mean you have to pause your marketing campaign. Deadlines are a time to check your progress and see if your campaign is working. If it is, great! Find ways to scale your campaign and double down on your success. 

If it’s not working, now is a great time to make improvements. Test a new theory and reset your goals for another campaign. Now that you know what doesn’t work, it’s time to try something new.

5. Visualize your campaign’s performance.

Here’s an inside tip from a pro marketer: just because your campaign is a success doesn’t mean people will understand what you did. Most people don’t speak marketer, so you have to distill information into a format that coworkers, partners, and stakeholders will get. 

If you want to share your campaign with others, visualize its performance. Create a graph or chart that tells the story of your campaign and highlights what you achieved. Visuals are much easier to understand than a spreadsheet of rows and numbers.

Marketing Your Small Business

It doesn’t matter if your company has one employee or one thousand – marketing is essential for growing a business. Since most small businesses don’t have a marketing team, it’s up to the business owner to leverage different platforms and identify the best channels for their company.

Fortunately, technology and automation have made it easier to manage these marketing efforts, giving business leaders a detailed breakdown of what is working and where they can stand to improve.

If you haven’t tried these tools yet, explore them and combine them with the best practices above to get a good start on your first marketing campaign.