As a busy business owner, you’re unlikely to have endless time and resources to spend on marketing, so what you execute needs to really count. Focus on these five strategies for maximum bang for buck.

A survey conducted by US email marketing company Constant Contact has revealed the most effective marketing techniques for small businesses. Even though the study is perhaps biased to email marketing, the overall results are consistent with what I believe works well for soloists.

Here are the top five marketing strategies for small businesses according to the survey, and the percentage of respondents who found these strategies effective:

1. Email marketing – 83 per cent

2. Website marketing, including both content marketing and SEO – 71 per cent

3. Face-to-face interaction – 68 per cent

4. Social media – 49 per cent

5. Events – 41 per cent

These results show some interesting trends, which may change the way you think about and conduct your marketing activities.

If you are actively trying to promote your business, you will likely have a website, and you probably undertake some form of email marketing and social media activity. These are relatively straightforward and low-cost ways to market your business and, done properly, they get results.

However, from the survey results, it appears that combining face-to-face interaction with online marketing techniques is the most effective way to market a small business. Who would have thought that this traditional marketing approach would trump social media?

It is worth noting that other more traditional forms of marketing, including offline advertising and outbound calling, ranked much lower on the scale, along with pay-per-click advertising, direct mail and public relations. However, they are still effective, in my opinion, when combined with some of the other techniques noted above.

Here is how an example of how using a combination of the top five marketing strategies works in practice:

I am a consumer looking to install new solar panels in my home. My friends tell me it’s a good idea, but I don’t know much about solar panels.

I use Google to find out more and come across Company A, which has an interesting blog covering the topic. (Website marketing).

I like what I hear from Company A, and have a look on their Facebook Business Page to see what others are saying about them. (Social media). Still impressed with what I read, I sign up to receive updates from the company. (Email marketing). Being a busy person, I run out of time to make an enquiry.

However, in the coming weeks, I receive an email from Company A, inviting me to a free information night (event) on solar panels. While I don’t have time to attend, I take them up on a free consultation in my home to learn more about what they do (face-to-face interaction). From that point, the sales process kicks in.

As a soloist, there are many ways to market your business; however considering what techniques will give you the best return is critical. A well-thought-out, integrated marketing strategy using these top five methods can really boost your business.

Story by Jo Macdermott, Flying Solo, Story source: www.ninemsn.com.au

Social media is important: through it, you present an image of your company or brand, with the goal of positively influencing brand perception in order to attract and convert. The image you present in social media should therefore be just as well thought out as the image you present in any of your other marketing activities.

Would you invest resources into a major trade show and turn up with a trestle table and some flyers? Would you place a press advert without including a call to action, your web address or your company logo?

It might sound crazy, but an awful lot of businesses get on the social bandwagon simply because their competitors are doing it or because they think they should, with little or no regard at all to what they want to achieve from it, let alone anything resembling a clear strategy.

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Marketers are well aware that social media is a double-edged sword when it comes to word-of-mouth. Not only does it give rave reviews and glowing recommendations a chance to be seen by millions, but it also does the same for negative feedback. How to best deal with negative buzz online is a perennial question.

Some companies are confident that their customers use sites like Facebook and Twitter to complain about them, according to a September 2011 survey by feedback management software provider MarketTools. But nearly half of companies surveyed think their customers don’t comment or complain about their products and services online, and almost a quarter did not know whether their customers did so or not.

While it’s possible that some business-to-business companies really don’t have to worry much about customers turning to Twitter to vent their frustration, for consumer-facing firms, the probability seems high, raising the question as to whether executives are aware enough of online complaints.

MarketTools also found that while a sizeable number of marketers respond to customer complaints on Facebook or Twitter at least some of the time, many leave questions and negative feedback completely unanswered. On Twitter, 29% said they responded to such feedback seldom or never, while 17% said the same of Facebook.

Consumers may not be happy with this frequency of response. Research tends to show that social media users want businesses to answer them, and that an interaction with a company representative online can defuse negative feedback sometimes simply by offering attention.

But a new report from Vocus and FutureWorks principal Brian Solis throws a healthy dose of skepticism on the supposed correlation between popularity and influence. The report—provocatively titled “Influencer Grudge Match: Lady Gaga versus Bono”—surveyed 739 marketing and communications professionals who work with influencers to gauge their perceptions of what makes an influencer.

A surprising 90% of respondents answered “yes” when asked whether there’s a big difference between popularity and influence.

Nearly the same percentage, 84%, believed that there was a correlation between an influencer’s reach and his or her ability to drive action. This indicates that respondents made a clear distinction between popularity and reach, and regarded the latter as the key that determines a person’s influence.

The survey did not define any of these terms, so it was up to the respondents to interpret them. From the results, it’s apparent that respondents regarded popularity as the sheer number of contacts on a social network and reach as the ability to actually communicate meaningfully with some number of those contacts. As one respondent put it, “A person can have only a few contacts and greatly influence just those few.”

Asked which type of social network participant would have the most measurable effect on an outcome, 57% picked someone who has “a handful of fans/friends/followers that are tightly connected,” versus 8% who picked someone with “millions of fans/friends/followers with little or no connection.” Quality over quantity.

Despite this data, many marketers are on a seemingly relentless quest to beef up their own social network profiles and reach users with lots of friends and followers. In the Vocus-Solis study, 57% of respondents said they’d be willing to pay for an influencer to help them “drive actions or outcomes.”

Further, Twitter recently unveiled its Promoted Accounts platform, which allows marketers to essentially pay for access to users based on the sizes of those users’ networks. Quantity over quality.

And an eROI study of social metrics tracked by US marketers found that two-thirds tracked changes in the numbers of friends, followers and fans. More qualitative measures such as reach of messaging were much lower on the scale. Again, quantity over quality.

Story by Paul Verna, Senior Analyst

Social media marketing has been around for several years, and as marketers begin to converge on best practices and use the channel in more uniform ways, it is emerging that their top goals are brand awareness and cultivating customer loyalty. Conversely, customer acquisition through social media is less important.

A July 2010 survey of US marketers by the Direct Marketing Association and COLLOQUY found that brand awareness was the most popular objective of social media efforts, followed by customer growth and loyalty.

A July eROI study similarly showed brand awareness was the top goal of US marketers using social media, and business-to-business (B2B) marketers reported the same to BtoB magazine and Business.com. In April, search marketers surveyed by MarketingSherpa cited increasing brand awareness and improving brand reputation as the two objectives for which social media marketing was most effective.

The DMA and COLLOQUY also looked at average marketer spending in various areas of social media marketing and how it changed over time. While marketers started out in 2008 spending similar amounts on branding, customer loyalty and customer acquisition, by 2009 customer acquisition budgets had failed to grow as quickly as the others. Customer acquisition budgets more than doubled twice between 2008 and 2010, but they still lagged behind the even more dramatic growth of spending in other areas.

The report noted that customer acquisition is a more important goal for smaller companies, which often use social media as an inexpensive marketing channel. Those companies are devoting budget to gaining new customers through social media, but by definition their budgets are small. They are overshadowed by large companies who have chosen social media primarily as a venue for cultivating customer loyalty and spend more heavily in that area.