Marketing Your Small Business in 2017

by ​Zachary Jarvis, Guest Contributor

The world is constantly changing, which means that marketing is constantly changing too. It’s important to keep up with the times, but it’s also important to not neglect some core elements just because something new and shiny has come along.

What Makes Your Company Stand Out
Firstly, you need to know your business. Marketers can throw around phrases like ‘Unique Selling Points’ and ‘Core Brand Values’ and it’s easy to think that these are only things that apply to large companies. Simply put, you need to know what makes your company different from all the others and what you take value over other things. 

Say that you decide to run a burger van. You could decide that you wanted to use only locally sourced products, from the meat, to the bun – and even the lettuce – that’s your unique selling point. When you think of your core values, you may think of words like ‘fresh,’ ‘local’ and ‘responsible’. 

Or, you could try to be Instagram famous, and come up with a burger that has rainbow cheese, or is served between two slabs of breaded mac n’ cheese rather than a bun (yes, those things do exist). This time the core values may be ‘innovative,’ ‘fun’ and ‘unique.’ You’re still a burger van – although you might use the phrase ‘food truck’, but your USP and core values would be wildly different. 

Many small businesses skip this step. They decide to run a burger truck because drunk people need burgers. If you haven’t defined a brand, don’t panic, it’s easy to do. Think about what you do well – what you do better than anyone else – and define it. Think about words that people associate with your business and write them down. Choose the best ones. 

What's The Big Deal?
Why is this so important? Well, it makes using the tools that are now available for both small and large businesses much easier to use. Not only does it help your business stand out in the marketplace, it also allows you to be consistent across all your marketing. Let’s think about our local burger van. By choosing core brand words like ‘local’ and ‘fresh’, you can make sure that you use these words or these ideas in your tweets, your Facebook posts and captions for your Instagram photos. You can even use them to help take pictures, of things that are local and fresh. You can even look for people who have shown interest in other fresh foods in the local area. 

It can also give you a design direction. You can probably already imagine that the ‘Instagram Famous’ and ‘Local Fresh’ burger vans would have very different logos, and their websites would both look very different. They would also be recognisable – the ‘Fresh Local’ van might use pictures of nature and even have a wood panelling look to the website. The ‘Instagram Famous’ site may have lots of emojis and hashtags. In both cases, the look of the website helps to reinforce the brand’s core values. Consistency across messaging is key. 

In 2017, Social Media Marketing is a hugely powerful tool. Using Admanager on Facebook, for example, you can target people in some very specific ways. Not just the age and sex demographics marketers are used to, but location, income, marital status, home ownership and even the device that they are accessing Facebook on. You can even track a user across the various devices they are using. You can also change your message based on these factors, making your marketing more relevant to the people you are trying to reach. 

Rather than just having an ad on the right-hand side of the News Feed, you can be in the News Feed, on other websites your customer’s use in banner ads, on Instagram and even in the apps and games they play on their mobile phones. You can even change your message based on their history with your company, sending them a different ad or offer if they have bought from you before or just sneaked a look at your website. 

This might seem like a lot of things to create, but if you have a solid brand and visual language, Facebook will automatically reformat your ad and put it where it needs to be seen. Also, the more interesting your ad is to your potential audience, the higher the rating Facebook will give it, which can make your ad spend cheaper if you use the auction tool. 

Have A Social Media Strategy
There are also features like check-ins, auto play videos, image carousels, instant messaging and streaming Facebook Live video. Outside of Facebook, there is Twitter, Snapchat and new innovations coming along almost daily. If you can use these tools to reinforce your brand and work for you, that’s great – but don’t feel you have to do everything. Make sure the things you choose to do, you do well. 

In 2017 the core of Marketing remains the same: know your business and know your customers. Once that core is established, there are so many opportunities. You can interact with customers around the world, in real time. You can more easily find people who are likely to love your business, and develop real relationships with them. Rather than building a shop, small businesses can now build skyscrapers – but that’s why it’s more important than ever to build a strong foundation.


Zachary Jarvis is a Digital Marketer with one thing on his mind: Results.
Uninspired by the never ending talk of ‘vanity metrics’ in the world of digital marketing, Magnate was founded - the ‘Social-First’ marketing agency. On the very rare occasion he isn’t watching Step Brothers in his spare time - you’ll find Zachary in the thick of social platforms, learning what makes us tick. This is driven by a fascination (perhaps a slight obsession...) with market trends and consumer behaviours.