Effective SMB Marketing Strategies & Tactics — Palmer Houchins // CallRail

Quotes

• “The evolution of the digital marketing landscape really empowered a lot of SMBs to take a much more active role in marketing their businesses and the availability of a lot of marketing tools that we have now.” - Palmer “So what I am hearing is that there is some good news that the playing field is more level at the access to effective marketing channels. On the flip side, there is an incremental level of complexity as you are launching multiple different types of campaigns.” - Palmer “Those ones who are mindful of building a brand and name recognition are more into having an active social presence. As these businesses mature, I think you’ll start seeing them get active to more PPC tactics.” - Palmer “I think the local organic search is a huge area. Google has recognized that and started building out new functionality around that one.” - Palmer “As we move into a world from a search perspective, that becomes more and more zero clicks. It is more important to understand what that landscape looks like from an organic perspective to make sure any business is scoring or essentially ranking where they would like to be. Organic is a huge area of traction.” - Palmer “Making the experience seamless is where I have seen a driver of conversion.” - Palmer It is about understanding the metrics that are using your business and figuring out how to tie those back to your marketing efforts so that you are spending time in the areas that are really moving the needle. There is a prioritization that needs to take place between the must-haves and nice-to-haves.” - Palmer “There’s any number of small things that I think make a conversion that much easier and I feel like they are easily overlooked at some of these SMBs who are challenged for some resources and time.” - Palmer “When you are thinking about optimizing your strategies and tactics knowing you have a resource constraint, you have to understand what you are going to do well. If you are a generalist and you’re great at tinkering and figuring things out, tinker and figure it out, write down what you did and hand it to somebody that you have to pay less.” - Ben “If you’re a specialist and you know that you are going to develop a couple of core skills that are going to help drive your business forward, go do that and then hand the things that you can’t do off to someone else. That’s where your agency relationships come in as well.” - Ben “The playing field is leveling in terms of access to marketing channels. From enterprise to SMBs, we’re able to play with almost all the same tools with very few exceptions. You can market right next to Salesforce or Procter & Gamble on Facebook. Your ads can get as many impressions, you just have to be able to allocate the amount of time and find the right resources to make sure that your investment in marketing is going to be worthwhile.” - Ben “The challenge for the SMB owner is not necessarily about getting to every channel but more about mastering a few channels and making sure that you are making the most out of the awareness that you’re building, about the customers that you’re getting to your website so they eventually do ring that cash register.” - Ben