Every business has to be budget-conscious, but for small businesses, how you balance your budget can make or break you in a given year. Marketing, then, is a tricky proposition for most SMEs. On the one hand, it’s essential to grow your client base in order to accelerate overall growth. On the other, an unsuccessful marketing campaign can lead to extremely negative ROI. As such, you want marketing that gives you good bang for your buck – marketing that you can be confident will bring in new clients.
Edmonton’s Market
We can’t propose to know exactly how your business is positioned in your market, but we do know a few things about Edmonton. For one, Edmonton is big, both in terms of area and population. The population of Edmonton is also growing at an astounding clip – both the Metro area and the city proper are seeing double-digit growth. Parts of the market are highly volatile – interprovincial migration is particularly affected by this, as Alberta and Edmonton tend to lose population to interprovincial migration during economic downturns, with substantial gains during upturns.
What does this mean for your marketing? First, it means that you might find it advantageous to segment Edmonton into its various neighbourhoods and metro municipalities, rather than advertising to the whole of the city. Large businesses can afford wide-scale ad buys, but you’re not Pepsi, and you can’t pay Kylie Jenner to try to convince everyone that world peace would be achievable if they bought your product. By focusing on local niches, you’ll be able to take a piece of the pie from your competitors and expand your business.
The second conclusion we might glean is that sustained marketing efforts are more effective than one-time ad buys. The population of Edmonton is rapidly shifting, so if there’s a way to consistently advertise your product, you’re more likely to grow your base. Word-of-mouth and traditional advertising are still effective, but you might miss out on newcomers.
Data-Driven Marketing
Another consequence of being a small business is that you can’t just spend money on ad campaigns and hope they reach a relevant audience. McDonald’s can – everyone is hungry sometimes, and they blast ads everywhere all the time. You’re going to have to employ a bit more finesse, and that’s where data-gathering comes in.
Optimize wherever you can. In this case, you can optimize by blending data-gathering and marketing together. Create a survey for your customers to gather demographic data; offer an incentive wherein completing the survey gives them an entry to a contest, or a 10% discount, or some other perk. Equip your online store with account creation and email lists; again, you can give perks, deals, and discounts for members. By doing this, you incentivize your customers to provide you with data and you create marketing opportunities; they might tell their friends about the deals you have running, and word-of-mouth is powerful. You might even create social media contests and deals to stimulate users to follow you and tag their friends.
Online Marketing & SEO
Bringing everything together, the solution we recommend for Edmonton small business is online marketing. Now, online marketing can mean a lot of different things. Your website is part of your online marketing – so is your social media presence. How well you rank on search engines is, too. You can also opt for ad buys on Facebook, Instagram, Google, and other platforms.
There are a few reasons why online marketing is so effective, and they all tie in with the points we discussed above. Online marketing is inexpensive compared to traditional marketing, which makes it a perfect option for those with smaller marketing budgets. All of the types of marketing we just described are also targeted. That means that you can find customers based on their location, age, and interests – you won’t be yelling into the void.
Let’s expand for a bit on search engine optimization, or SEO. It’s perfect for the Edmonton market because no matter how drastically the population shifts in a given year, people are still going to use Google to find things. “Mechanic in Strathcona”. “Pizza nearby”. We can optimize your online presence in order to maximize your visibility on search engines.
SEO is also a holistic strategy, which means you’ll be shoring up the rest of your online presence to capitalize on how search engine algorithms work. That means that all of your non search engine-related marketing will also improve. Social media presence, review management, blogs – SEO runs the whole gamut.
The strategy is long-term, shifting organically as people start to search for new terms or as algorithms update. Once you get to the top, it’s easier to stay on top, so SEO pays dividends. Online marketing is an excellent way to see great ROI, and SEO and online marketing go hand in hand.
First Rank specializes in Edmonton SEO services and is only available for a certain number of clients. Call Today.
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