“Bigger is better.” Or is it?
There’s a lot of emphasis out there on doing big things to get big results. The marketing world is no exception. Just look at how much money businesses pay to advertise during the Super Bowl!
That’s all fine and good if you have a lot of time and money at your disposal. But if you’re a small business, most likely, you don’t have the resources.
That doesn’t mean you can succeed. Instead of going large, you can go Tiny.
Tiny Marketing Actions, that is.“Marketing should not be a gigantic tidal wave of activity followed by two months of eating Ben and Jerry’s and watching Netflix, because you’re just so tired from all of it,” says Pamela Slim.
Pamela is an author and business coach who routinely whips up recipes for Tiny Marketing Actions that “help people grow their small businesses using simple, repeatable marketing tactics over a longer period of time.”
“You get [your sales pipeline flowing] by taking two tiny marketing actions today. Then two tomorrow. Then two the next day. And so on. And in a short period of time, in what sometimes feels like magic, opportunities begin to knock on your door,” says Pamela.
Here are five Tiny Marketing Action recipes you can apply to your small business today.
1. Find and reach out to potential business partners
Getting customers on your own can be challenging, so why not collaborate with other businesses to help grow each other’s customer bases?
Pamela calls such businesses “PB&J partners.” Because even though these businesses don’t compete with yours, their products and services complement yours well— the way peanut butter goes with jelly.
The benefit of developing PB&J partnerships is that when your business partner gets a new customer, they can recommend your services.
Possibly with some special perks, too. For instance, customers who buy Lowcountry Harvest’s candles can get 10% off when buying a plant from Rock N’ Roots Plant Co. And similarly, customers that buy a plant from Rock N’ Roots Plant Co. can get a discount on Lowcountry Harvest’s candles!
Other examples of PB&J partners include:
- Fitness coaches and fitness clothing stores
- Law firms and accounting firms
- Florists and greeting card designers
Once you’ve identified potential PB&J partners, contact their owners and start discussing collaborations!
2. Consolidate all your web content into one page
As you expand your business’s offerings and social media presence, you’ll start to put out content and products in a bunch of different places.
For example, you might have:
- Accounts on each major social media platform
- A Spotify podcast
- An Etsy store
- Digital product sales pages on Gumroad
- A Patreon membership program
Help your audience discover all your content and offerings by consolidating them all into one page. From this page, people can conveniently view what you’ve put out on each platform, then decide what they want to browse in more detail.
Platforms like Linktree and Linkin.bio make it easy to set up one-stop pages of links without writing any code.
For example, take a look at how Sophie Conran has added a Linktree link to her Instagram account:
And clicking that link leads users to a neat page of places they may want to check out.
3. Re-introduce yourself regularly
Re-introducing yourself may seem like a weird thing to do. You’ve already introduced yourself and your business once, so why the need to do it again?
This could be for reasons such as:
- Reminding people of what you do. People may forget what your business offers as they get on with their lives. Re-introducing yourself helps remind them of your products and services, so they can approach you (or refer others to you!) when the time is right.
- Introducing yourself to potential new customers. Over time, more people may have gotten to know about you—only they don’t know what you do. So take the time to fill them in! We’d recommend doing this especially if you had a social post or two go viral, and you now have dozens of new followers.
As for how to re-introduce yourself, try taking a leaf from Erin Halper’s book (or LinkedIn post, to be precise):
4. Send appreciation notes to people you admire
If a friend, mentor, or thought leader in your industry has changed the way you operate your business for the better, write them a note to let them know!
When they read your note, you encourage them to keep doing what they’ve been doing—and they may go on to inspire even more people. Here, we have a Twitter user expressing their thanks to James Clear for writing a book, “Atomic Habits,” which helps readers form positive habits:
Also, don’t be discouraged if the person you write to never writes back.
Even though your appreciation notes are addressed to someone else, there’s a second main beneficiary of these notes—and it’s actually you.
That’s because as you write your notes, you solidify your thoughts on what you’ve gained from that person. You can then apply these learnings to grow yourself, and your business as a whole.
Receiving a reply to your note is only the icing on the cake.
5. Teach what you know
Demonstrate your expertise by sharing educational content related to your business offerings. When you do so, customers will learn that you really know your stuff—and that they can therefore trust you with their needs!
In this retail email marketing campaign, the RTRO film camera app has shared a short tip about adjusting your camera frame rates to change your video’s look:
On which platforms can you teach your audience? Your social media accounts are great places to start, as each post is perfect for sharing one bite-sized nugget of wisdom.
Alternatively, impart your knowledge via your email list. Doing so lets you track how subscribers interact with your emails, then send follow-up emails based on the tips they’ve engaged with more.
Get started with email by exploring our wide range of small business email templates, then customizing them in our beginner-friendly editor.
Time to get cookin’!
As we’ve seen, you don’t need to invest a lot of time or money into huge marketing campaigns to get your small business off the ground!
Even Tiny Marketing Actions, when carried out consistently and diligently, can have outsized impacts on the success of your business.
Still hungry for more retail marketing tips? Then chow down on these Gradient blog articles:
- Put together a solid market research strategy with these 5 tips
- 4 ultimate ways to boost your retail sales using seasonal marketing strategies
- 5 ways retail digital signage can boost your store operations
You can also stay updated on the latest small business marketing and design tips by following our Instagram account!
