Small Business Marketing Plan: Online Marketing Strategies for SMBs

A small business marketing plan helps you identify who your customers are, measure your company’s position compared to competitors and track the performance of your marketing actions.

An online marketing plan for a small business should answer the same questions as a traditional off-line SMB marketing plan:

• What are your customers searching for online?
• How could you reach your targeted customers?
• Which online marketing techniques will help you increase traffic and differentiate your product from competitors?

Creating a Small Business Marketing Plan with WordStream

Using WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool to find the keywords that will help you reach your customers should be a key element of your small business marketing plan. By discovering the terms and phrases that your potential customers use when searching for products and services like yours, you’ll be able to “speak their language.” Effective keyword research ensures that your site can be found when those who could benefit from your offerings are looking for them via search.

In addition to the Free Keyword Tool, we’re dedicated to providing free educational content that business owners and marketers can use to help them discover their most profitable keyword opportunities:

• Keyword niches: Discover your most profitable pockets of keyword opportunities
• Negative keywords: Eliminate waste in your pay-per-click campaigns by identifying irrelevant keywords that could burn through your budget
• Keyword groups: Sort a list of keywords into an organized structure ready to use in SEO or PPC campaigns

And while you’re at it, check out this complete list of online marketing tools and start reaching more customers today!

Incorporating PPC into Your SMB Marketing Plan

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is another marketing technique, along with search engine optimization, to help you reach customers online in an efficient, cost-effective manner. PPC presents several advantages for small business online marketing efforts:

• It’s measurable and data-driven
• It’s repeatable and scalable
• It’s more budget-friendly than outbound marketing

However, this technique can rapidly consume your entire marketing budget if you do not use the appropriate tools and processes to limit your spending and ensure ROI.

Google AdWords is great at providing ways for you to spend money, but the vast array of features and data can be difficult to analyze. WordStream for PPC helps you make sense of your AdWords account and control your spend, by providing tools to help you:

• Build effective PPC campaigns from scratch
• Create new ad groups
• Expand your keyword opportunities
• Cut wasteful spending with negative keywords
• Analyze your search queries for insights

WordStream for PPC allows you to manage your budget efficiently and effectively. With more relevant ad groups, you can attract more customers. And with higher click-through rates, you’ll earn higher Quality Scores, which lowers your bid price and improves your rankings and visibility!

No Time for PPC? Leave It to the Experts

Our goal at WordStream is not just to help you attract more paid or organic traffic; we strive to help you generate more quality leads which you can cultivate to transform into sales.

As a small business advertiser or owner, you have a lot of balls in the air. If you’re struggling to control costs and realize ROI from pay-per-click marketing, you may need a helping hand to break through the challenges you’ll encounter while creating and implementing your small business marketing plan.

WordStream can help! Our team of Google AdWords Certified professionals can guide you through the learning curve for PPC, give your account a needed tune-up, or even take full control of your AdWords campaigns, making sure you get the maximum return on your PPC investment.

• Learn more about WordStream Managed Services