The aim of any business is to make a profit but there’s no profit if people do not know about your business. It’s all about increasing the visibility of your company. As a busy owner, you might quickly find yourself in a time and budget crunch with your marketing. In turn you lose opportunities to grow your business.

The good news is that you don't need to spend a lot of time or money to increase visibility for your business. You only need to be smart and selective in your marketing efforts and you will quickly notice the positive impact of these small efforts.

Investing in small efforts to market your new business can help you create a long-lasting relationship with your customers and create a loyal fan base for your products or services. A loyal following of customers will lead to lifelong sales and will help you increase the revenue of your company in the future.

5 Fast Ways to Increase the Visibility of Your Small Business

In this post, we recommend 5 quick ideas you can use to increase the visibility of your small business.

1. Build Your Own Website

A website is the online identity of your business. In the age where the world is moving towards digital, it’s shocking to see how many businesses still ignore having an online presence. Your customers expect you to have a digital presence where they can find more information about you and your products or services.

You don't need extensive coding or technical skills to create your own website. Nowadays, you can set up your website in minutes using tools like Wordpress or Wix which offer free lifetime account and many useful templates which can be customized according to your business requirements.

Creating your own website establishes trust with your customers and adds credibility to your business. A website is available 24x7 and allows your customers to know more about you and your products anytime, anywhere.

In addition to a website, you can also encourage your website visitors to directly connect with you using an online appointment scheduling system. You can use a scheduling system for one on one appointments, for group bookings (like booking for events, workshops, seminars or classes), for reservations, rentals or as service appointment booking when your business offers services.

Integrate your schedule into your own website (this too using a single line of code you can copy) and allow prospective customers to directly connect with you with an appointment on your schedule instead of waiting for them to write you a lengthy email or leave you a message via your website.

2. Invest in Networking

Building a strong business network is crucial to the success of your company. You can increase the visibility of your business by spending some time in expanding your business network.

You can start your networking within your community by reaching out to other local small business owners in your area. Ask them questions about their business and you will realize that both of you face some common challenges in business, irrespective of what business you’re in. In this way, you get an opportunity to share your experiences with new people and learn from the experiences of others.

Remember, when connecting to people listen more and speak less. The key to building strong relationships is to actively listen instead of simply talking about yourself.

Secondly, you can attend networking events in and around your city and meet leaders and potential customers face-to-face. Complement your efforts by reaching out to these people via LinkedIn and other social media.

When you meet a lot of people with whom you want to set up follow-up meetings, you can use your online appointment scheduler and share it on your business card using a QR code (shown below.) This allows your prospect to directly scan the code and instantly book an appointment with you.

Having an online presence is not only great for marketing and branding but can be a powerful networking tool for you. Once a lead books an appointment on your schedule, you can manage their data online without worrying about losing their contact details. The system will also send automated text or email reminders on your behalf to make sure your leads don't forget the meeting. Adopting such automation tools saves you time and effort and maximizes your networking efforts.

3. Do the Right Social Media Marketing

The biggest social media mistake new small business owners make is to set up an account on all social media channels at once. This may seem exciting at the beginning, but as you start to spend more time and effort in growing your business, your efforts in social media marketing can quickly lose priority and fade away.

The best way to tackle this problem is to choose selectively from the very beginning.

a)    Select 2-3 social media channels which make the most sense for your business.

b)    Watch your competitors and ask yourself which channel offer the highest chances of giving you quality leads.

c)    Use free tools like Canva and Unsplash to create graphic content for your social media channels.

d)    Use a free tool like Buffer or Recurpost to schedule your posts online.

It’s quick, easy and effective. You can spend 2-3 days in a month planning on what you want to post this month on your social media channels, and quickly schedule them at regular intervals after creating the content. In this way, you will not have to worry about your channels or about your content.

If you’re worried about creating content, then simply reuse and republish the content posted by others which your audience may find useful. However, don't forget to give credits to the source of content you’re using.

4. Do Content Marketing: Always Audience First

As a small business owner, you want to promote and market your products or services without exceeding your budget. Content marketing helps you reach out to new leads and new target markets without being too expensive.

Content marketing is not just about creating an interest and building a brand for your business but it focuses on providing value to your users and giving something valuable to the audience to build trust. Research done by Demand Metric found that content marketing is not only less expensive than outbound marketing but also generates 3 times more leads.

So when it comes to the small budget, content marketing takes the cake. However, you should be ready to put in time and efforts into publishing relevant content on the relevant platforms. Always keep the sales funnel in mind when working on content marketing efforts. Which stage of the funnel are you aiming at and what kind of content will the customers at this stage of the funnel are looking for, will determine what type of content you want to provide them.

Start your content marketing efforts by guest blogging on reputed platforms. Focus on educating your audience and not on selling your products. If your audience finds value in your content, they will automatically be attracted to discover more about you and your business. Remember, more content can give you access to a broader audience, but if the content does not add value to the audience it will result in wasting your efforts and bringing your brand a bad reputation.

5. Evaluate and Repeat

Too many business owners do not focus their efforts and simply try everything they can to grow their business. A better business strategy is to measure your efforts with the right metrics and repeat the actions which give the best results with the least effort.

Keep track of your social media marketing and content marketing efforts.

Analyze which channels and which backlinks attracted the most customers for your business.

Check the number of appointments made on your schedule after 7 days of networking events.

View your analytics regularly to know what your customers are looking for when browsing your website.

Once you have clear insights on what’s working best, focus your efforts on specific channels that result in getting more business for you, rather than spending efforts on everything that comes along your way.

Our guest author Sneha Mittal works as Marketing and Customer Service Manager with SuperSaaS Online Appointment Scheduling System.

She is a passionate marketer and in her leisure time, she likes to write about food and travel at her blog Mr & Mrs Sachdeva.

You can connect to her via LinkedIn and Twitter.