Small Business Marketing: Simple Strategies and Ideas

Published Monday 22 December 2025

Table of contents

• What is small business marketing?
• Know your customers
• Small business marketing strategy for beginners
• How to create a marketing plan
• Build customer relationships
• 21 small business marketing ideas
• Take your marketing further
• FAQs on small business marketing

Key takeaways

• Develop customer profiles and track online behavior to understand your target audience's needs, preferences, and pain points, enabling you to create more effective marketing messages and choose the right channels.
• Create a SMART marketing plan that includes conducting a SWOT analysis, defining your unique selling point, setting measurable objectives, and allocating 1-10% of revenue to your marketing budget.
• Prioritize building customer relationships through word-of-mouth marketing, testimonials, and referral programs, as satisfied customers often become your most powerful marketing channel.
• Implement the Four P's framework by strategically adjusting your product offerings, pricing structure, distribution methods, and promotional activities to maximize sales growth within your budget constraints.

What is small business marketing?

Small business marketing is any activity that drives sales for your business, both now and in the future. This includes more than just advertising.

Marketing encompasses four key areas:

• Product decisions: How you group and package your offerings
• Pricing strategies: What you charge and how you structure fees
• Distribution methods: Where and how customers access your products or services
• Promotional activities: Advertising, content, and customer outreach

Effective marketing follows a three-phase process: strategy development, plan creation, and tactical execution. This approach helps you attract new customers systematically while maximising your limited budget.

Know your customers

Effective marketing starts with understanding who you’re talking to. When you know your customers well, you can create products, services, and messages that truly resonate with them. This saves you time and money by focusing your efforts where they’ll have the biggest impact.

Build customer profiles

Start by creating simple profiles of your ideal customers. Think about their age, location, and what problems they’re trying to solve. What do they value? What are their goals? You don’t need a lot of detail, just enough to bring them to life.

Track online behaviour

Pay attention to how people interact with your business online. What pages on your website do they visit most? What do they search for? This information gives you valuable clues about their interests and needs.

Collect contact information

Gathering contact details like email addresses allows you to build a direct line of communication with your audience. You can use it to share updates, offer promotions, and build lasting relationships.

Small business marketing strategy for beginners

A marketing strategy defines your business goals and the broad approach you’ll take to achieve them. It provides direction before you create detailed tactical plans.

Your strategy answers these key questions:

• What: Specific, measurable goals you want to achieve
• Who: Target customers you’ll focus on reaching
• How: Which of the Four P’s you’ll prioritise for growth

The Four P’s are the core levers you can adjust to increase sales. Each represents a different way to improve your market position:

• Product: Enhance what you offer to better meet customer needs
• Pricing: Adjust costs to improve affordability or profitability
• Placement: Expand where and how customers can access your offerings
• Promotion: Increase awareness through advertising and outreach

Your marketing strategy should focus on which of these levers you will use. You can go for more than one but try not to bite off too much at once.

How to create a marketing plan

A marketing plan translates your strategy into specific, actionable steps with timelines and budgets. It ensures your marketing efforts are focused and measurable.

Your plan includes three essential phases:

• Research phase: Analyse your business, customers, and competitors
• Goal-setting phase: Define specific, measurable objectives
• Action phase: Detail tactics, timelines, and budget allocation

Here are 8 steps to a small business marketing plan:

1. Find your place in the market

A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis evaluates your business’s internal strengths and weaknesses against external opportunities and threats. This assessment reveals where you can compete most effectively.

Complete your SWOT analysis:

• Strengths: List what your business does better than competitors
• Weaknesses: Identify areas where you need improvement
• Opportunities: Note market gaps you could fill
• Threats: Recognise challenges that could impact your success

Run the same analysis on two to 3 key competitors to identify market positioning opportunities.

2. Learn what customers care about

Customer research reveals exactly what your target market values, how they buy, and where they spend time. This knowledge prevents wasted marketing spend on the wrong messages or channels.

Gather customer insights through:

• Direct feedback: Send brief surveys to existing customers
• Informal interviews: have five to 10 casual conversations with prospects
• Observation: Watch how customers interact with your product or service
• Competitor analysis: Study who your competitors target and how

3. Define your unique selling point

Your unique selling point (USP) is what makes customers choose you over competitors. It combines your business strengths with what your customers value most.

Create your USP using this formula:

• Customer need: What problem do they want solved?
• Your strength: How do you solve it better than competitors?
• Proof point: What evidence supports your claim?

Example: "We deliver same-day repairs (customer need) with certified technicians (strength) backed by a 12-month warranty (proof)."

4. Set clear objectives

SMART objectives ensure your marketing goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. Clear metrics help you track progress and adjust tactics that aren’t working.

Choose metrics that match your business model:

• Sales metrics: Revenue growth, new customer acquisition, average order value
• Engagement metrics: Website visits, email subscribers, social media followers
• Quality metrics: Customer reviews, repeat purchase rate, referral numbers
• Efficiency metrics: Cost per lead, conversion rate, customer lifetime value

5. Set your budget

A marketing budget typically ranges from 1–10% of revenue, depending on your business stage and growth goals. For instance, high-growth businesses that invest in online promotion often generate more than 10 per cent of their sales from ecommerce. Higher investment accelerates growth but requires careful tracking of returns.

6. Choose your tactics

Now decide what moves you’ll make. Remember, it’s not all about advertising and promotion. You might tweak your product offering, adjust pricing, improve placement (distribution). Check our small business marketing ideas section for inspiration.

7. Launch your campaign

Start your campaign and share clear messages with your customers. If you’re sending out communications, put them into channels that will actually reach customers, using images and messages that will appeal. Monitor early results closely and adjust your campaign if you are not reaching your goals. It’s common to adjust your marketing ideas and campaigns as you go.

8. Track results and make adjustments

Measure what happens. When setting your SMART objectives, you will have listed measurable aims for your campaign. Monitor the response (changes in customer behaviour) and check them against your goals. If they didn’t quite work, consider how you can tweak them. Work out what it costs you to tick off your goals.

Small business marketing is about finding the best return for your marketing spend. Focus on tactics that give you the best return on investment.

Build customer relationships

Your happiest customers can be your most powerful marketing channel. Nurturing those relationships encourages loyalty and turns customers into advocates for your brand.

Word-of-mouth and referral business

When customers have a great experience, they often tell their friends and family. This is word-of-mouth marketing, and it’s incredibly effective. Don’t be afraid to gently encourage it by asking satisfied customers to spread the word.

Testimonials and guarantees

Positive reviews and testimonials build trust with potential customers. Ask your best customers if they’d be willing to share their experience on your website or social media. A strong guarantee can also reduce risk for new buyers and show that you stand behind your product or service.

21 small business marketing ideas

Here are 21 ideas to help you put your small business marketing strategy into action. Here are 21 to kickstart your brainstorm.

1. Improve your product or service

One way to sell more products is to make them better. Find out how you can better fill your customers’ needs. A survey is one way to do it. Focus groups or even a few casual chats are other ways. Or if you make goods, maybe go and watch how customers interact with them.

2. Run pricing experiments (up or down)

A pricing experiment could unlock extra revenue. Dropping your margin 25% might be worth it if you double your sales, and it’s a common strategy: one business case study found that discounts accounted for 9.4 per cent of total income. Experiment in the other direction too. If you put prices up 20% and lose only 10% of customers, you’re still going to make more money. Introductory pricing, or entry-level products and services can also grow your sales.

3. Bundle things

Bundling multiple related products or services together at a discount can increase the overall value of each sale and drive up revenue.

4. Work on your fee structure

Businesses can get more sales by helping customers spread the cost of purchases. An instalment plan might encourage more sales. Another option for service providers is to switch from hourly charges to a flat fee. Customers like the predictability of a known charge and, as a bonus, you automatically become more profitable anytime you get faster at your job.

5. Sponsor local teams, charities and events

Communities love supporting local businesses. Especially when that business gives back. Sponsoring an event isn’t just about hanging a banner with your logo on it. The people you enable often want to reciprocate your goodwill.

6. Host events

Put on events for your community of customers and prospects. These could range from product previews to information evenings, depending on what your market wants. Start by asking them what they’d attend.

7. Attend events

Trade shows can be a great way to put your business in front of people who are actively looking for solutions like yours. Use the opportunity to check out the competitors, too.

8. Build a customer database

If it costs you, say, $20 to get a new customer then why wouldn’t you sell to them twice? Or ten times? A customer relationship management system (CRM) can improve the way you engage with customers after the first sale. Use it to record their interests, tastes, needs, and purchase history then pitch relevant new deals to them.

9. Create a loyalty programme

Lots of retail businesses create clubs for their loyal customers, through which they offer discounts, special events, advice and any number of other perks. It can be a great way to make customers feel valued while keeping them engaged with your business.

10. Publish a newsletter

If you provide a knowledge-based service then you can share some of those insights in a newsletter. A good newsletter can be useful for customers while also promoting your expertise. To be effective, experts recommend a content balance that is 90 per cent service focused and only 10 per cent promotional, which is great small business marketing. You may only need to send three or four a year. They can just be emails if you don’t have time for design.

11. Open more locations

Opening new locations can be expensive, but they may give you access to a whole new market. There are also economies of scale. A second location can often be smaller, with most of your operations based out of the original shop, workshop, or office.

12. Offer delivery

Would people buy more from you if they didn’t have to travel to you? Perhaps you can turn on more sales by offering delivery? It may be a simpler way to open up the placement side of your small business marketing without investing in a whole new shop.

13. Open online

You may be able to extend your reach and trading hours by opening an online shop. Selling online can be a major source of growth, with many Asia-Pacific small businesses expecting to grow revenue from overseas sales.

Retailers can start selling to out-of-region customers, 24 hours a day, without hiring front-of-house staff. Service providers can also find and serve clients remotely. Online can be especially effective if you offer niche products or services that people struggle to find in their area.

14. Partner with other businesses

Approach other businesses about selling your products or services. This is a well-known strategy for makers of products but it works with services too. A house-painting business might sell your landscaping services to their clients. Or a marketing agency might sell your design services.

15. Set up standing orders

Do customers sometimes buy less simply because they’re slow to order? If you sell a product or service that needs to be replenished, then see how customers respond to the convenience of a standing order, where you automatically supply goods and services at agreed intervals.

16. Do a good job (word of mouth)

One of the best ways to get new customers is through your old customers. Meeting and exceeding customer expectations will generate extra sales from your loyal fans, and get you introduced to their friends, family, and colleagues. Nail the basics of good products and services, but also figure out what little extra touches can help make your customers’ day.

17. Ask for referrals

Ask existing customers to refer their friends, colleagues, and business partners. It sounds too obvious to work but it really does, and it’s simple. What’s even better is that customers tend to refer people who are just like them, so good customers send more good customers. You may even offer incentives or prizes for new referrals but you often don’t have to.

18. Ask for a review or testimonial

In the world of small business marketing, nothing beats an endorsement from a real-life customer. Encourage them to post a review on your preferred review site. Even send them the link. If you have a really happy customer, perhaps ask if they’ll give a testimonial for your website.

19. Give free advice

You (hopefully) know a thing or two about what you sell. That knowledge has a value of its own. Sharing your tips and insights can introduce you to new customers, or improve your connection with existing customers.

A plant nursery can share gardening tips, a digital marketer can create and publish advertising stats, a furniture maker can offer advice on wood care. You can do this through in-person information nights, or you can publish insights in a blog or newsletter.

20. Make it easy for customers to find you online

It often helps to have a website (or even just a page) so people can find you online. Register (for free) with Google Business Profile to appear when people search for a local business. On your website, use keywords that describe your specific products or services, and your location as that will help you turn up in relevant searches. Listing your business in local online business directories can also help search engines find you.

21. Dive into digital marketing

You can try a lot of small business marketing ideas online. You can use blogs and content marketing to position yourself as helpful and knowledgeable. You can use search engine optimisation (SEO) to turn up in searches when people are looking for businesses like yours.

Or you can run ads (although you really ought to be selling online for this to work). You can learn more, including the art of running cheap experiments, in our article on digital marketing for small businesses.

Take your marketing further

Marketing means learning and adapting. Research shows that owners of high-growth businesses are more likely to seek expert advice from accountants and mentors to guide their decisions. By starting with a clear strategy and a solid plan, you’re setting your business up for success. As you grow, you’ll discover which tactics work best for you and your customers.

A great marketing plan works best when you clearly understand your sales, costs and cash flow. See how Xero helps you track your marketing spend and measure its impact, so you can focus on running your business. Try Xero for free.

FAQs on small business marketing

Here are answers to a few common questions about marketing your business.

What is the 3-3-3 rule in marketing?

The 3-3-3 rule is a simple way to focus your marketing efforts. It suggests you concentrate on three key messages, for three core audience segments, across three main marketing channels. This helps keep your strategy clear and manageable.

How do I attract customers to my business?

Attracting customers involves a mix of strategies. Start by understanding your target audience and what they need. From there, you can use tactics like creating a professional website, using social media, encouraging word-of-mouth referrals, and providing excellent customer service.

What is the 7-11-4 rule of marketing?

The 7-11-4 model suggests that to win a customer, you should aim for seven interactions over eleven days, using at least four different methods. These touchpoints could include social media posts, emails, website visits, or ads, helping to build familiarity and trust with your brand.