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5 Tips for Small Business Owners on Finding & Reaching the Right Audience Within Year One of Launch

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5 Tips for Small Business Owners on Finding & Reaching the Right Audience Within Year One of Launch

Having a digital presence is critical for any business looking to reach new audiences.

SEO, social media, and paid search are three powerful opportunities to get your products or services in front of more customers. But when you’re first starting out as a business owner, expanding your digital reach can feel overwhelming — where to even begin?

In celebration of Google’s International Small Business Week, which is anchored on the UN’s micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises day, we’ve created a resource for micro-businesses that might not have a digital presence yet.

Here, let’s dive into tips from four small business owners on how they initially found online audiences after launching their businesses, so you can ensure you’re leveraging the right digital tools to expand your own reach.

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Plus, hear from HubSpot’s Director of Advertising on getting the most out of Google Ads as a new business owner. 

How to Find & Reach Your Target Audience, According to Small Business Owners

1. Have some broad assumptions about your target audience, and then narrow down.

When you’re first creating a digital presence, you’ll want to start by focusing on some broad, easy-to-identify categories of your target market.

Your team can begin by identifying demographic segmentation for your customer persona. This includes:

You might add geographic segmentation on top of this if you’re only intending on marketing to a specific location.

Along with general customer persona information, you’ll also want to answer the following question: My business helps people who have X pain point. In other words, what challenge is your business solving?

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Understanding your customers’ pain points can help you craft a better narrative of who they are — which will help you target your digital strategies effectively.

2. Analyze competitors’ target audiences to see if your product or service will appeal to similar audiences. 

When finding your audience online, it’s important not to get overwhelmed by spreading your net too wide.

More than likely, your product or service exists in some capacity in the market already. So take a look at what your competitors are doing to get inspiration for your own digital strategy.

For instance, if you see most of your competitors creating ads for YouTube, it could be a sign that YouTube has proven to be an effective strategy in your industry.

3. Implement SEO strategies to create a website presence. 

Once you feel confident about your target audience, it’s time to leverage SEO to increase your website ranking and begin pulling in traffic from search engines.

You’ll want to start by creating an official business website. Make sure the page is SEO-optimized for search: Among other factors, this includes optimized images, responsive pages, and fast loading time.

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Next, create a free Google My Business profile to ensure you can capture traffic from Google search and maps. This is especially helpful for foot traffic — for instance, if you own a restaurant, Google My Business can ensure you show up when someone in your local area searches “dinner places near me”.

One other tip? Create a strong content strategy. Content is the fuel that will ultimately drive your SEO machine.

Chandler Bolt, CEO of SelfPublishing.com and Self Publishing School, told me, “It was a long-term play, but our business really started to take off when we created our blog, launched our podcast, and focused on creating useful content that solved aspiring authors’ problems. Our formula is simple — create the best content on the internet for any topic we write on, and then get as many backlinks as possible for that post.”

chandler bolt on small business best practices

Now, Self Publishing School consistently ranks for keywords related to writing or publishing. A strong SEO strategy ultimately led to tremendous growth for the company and helped them reach the audiences that mattered most.

If your business struggles to find search terms that align well with your products or services, consider how you might partner with more well-established brands to solve for their customers’ pain points, and vice versa. This enables you to access high-intent prospects without relying on SEO alone.

Scott Rogerson, CEO of UpContent, told me, “We continue to build upon content partnerships, and add new ones, to support our customers in addressing pain across their digital channels. It was because of this early approach that we were able to quickly assess which use cases were most valuable and within which industries they were most common. This has now formed the foundation upon which our SEO, social media, and digital advertising strategy are built.”

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4. Explore the social channels that are most popular with your target audience.

HubSpot’s Blog Research found 57% of consumers discover products most often on social media  — and 23% of 18-24 year olds prefer to purchase products directly through social media.

Which means social media is an undeniably powerful opportunity to increase sales.

Plus, social media has a huge audience — over 3.6 billion people use it worldwide. So, regardless of your marketing goals, it’s imperative you create a digital presence on at least one of the social platforms.

If you’re new to the social media world, you’ll want to start by identifying which channels you want to go after first. To do this, you’ll need to determine where your target audience spends their time.

The three top social media channels in terms of monthly active users are Facebook (2.9 billion MAU), YouTube (2.2 billion MAU), and Instagram (2 billion MAU). It’s a good idea to start with a channel with a large potential reach, and then narrow down from there.

Social media can also help you listen to your prospects and customers and learn from them to grow better. As Impulse Creative’s Senior Growth Marketer, Molly Rigatti, puts it, “We’ve found that creating a space where people can ask their questions is much more effective than trying to start conversations by telling businesses what they need to succeed.”

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Rigatti says, “We listen. We listen to our customers’ wants and needs. We listen to diagnose their real problems rather than to prescribe the easiest sale.”

If you’re still unsure how to build your social media presence, take a look at 21 Ways To Build Your Social Media Presence, Like HubSpot Marketers.

5. Leverage Google Ads to increase your reach.

While paid advertising can feel daunting with a limited budget, you can leverage powerful targeting capabilities for a relatively low cost with Google Ads.

To uncover some tips for getting the most out of Google Ads with limited resources, I spoke to HubSpot’s Director of Advertising, Rex Gelb.

When it comes to an effective keyword strategy for startups and small businesses, Gelb told me, “My recommendation would be to start with the keywords that best relate to your core products or services, and branch out from there.”

For instance, let’s say you sell a niche product within a larger category — such as soccer cleats for kids.

“To start,” Gelb says, “I’d bid on exactly that: ‘Soccer cleats for kids’. If that’s going well and you have the budget, then maybe you try bidding on ‘Soccer cleats’ next, and if that works, ‘cleats’ after that.”

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Gelb adds, “Broadening your targeting like this means you’ll get some irrelevant clicks and have some wasted ad spend, but you’ll also get more scale and it’s possible you’ll find that even with the higher customer acquisition cost, you’re still generating a positive ROI.”

Google Ads is an undeniably powerful tool for reaching new customers. In fact, for users who are ready to buy, paid ads on Google get 65% of the clicks.

However, like any effective long-term marketing strategy, Google Ads takes work. As Gelb puts it, “A lot of businesses are looking for ‘tips and tricks’ to try and beat the system, but I’d say 70-80% of Google Ads is using tried-and-true best practices.”

So … what are these best practices? Gelb advises, “Pick keywords that make sense for your business, write ads that are highly relevant to those keywords, pick the correct campaign objective based on your business goals, monitor the search term report, and test, test, test. If you do those things (and read up a bit on match types if you’re not familiar with them), you’re going to be most of the way there.”

rex gelb on small business google ad strategies

Ultimately, creating a digital presence takes time, but it’s worth it. With the right SEO, social, and paid strategies, you’ll begin to see your website and social platforms working for you by pulling in new traffic and leads daily.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, you’re in luck — HubSpot now offers an integration with Google Ads which enables you to grow your pipeline of qualified leads at scale and increase conversions by connecting your HubSpot and Google Ads accounts. Best of all, we’re now offering an exclusive HubSpot offer to Google customers for 20% off your first year of HubSpot, then 10% off in perpetuity. 

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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