Startup Guides > 4 Growth Hacks to Turbocharge Your Small Business

There's good news, and there's bad news, when it comes to marketing your small business... The good news is that as a small business owner, you are the perfect person to promote your product or service. You're knowledgeable and passionate, which are two of the main ingredients in an effective marketer. The bad news is that marketing can take up a lot of your time and money; and extra time is scarce when you're an entrepreneur.

Here are 4 simple marketing 'hacks' that will help boost your small business marketing efforts and make your life as an entrepreneur a little easier:

1. IDENTIFY YOUR STRENGTHS

There are a ton of options for marketing your business - email newsletters, social media marketing, networking events, etc. - which can all attract and retain customers. Figure out what marketing efforts are paying off, whether it's your LinkedIn page or the email sign up list you have on your website, and focus your energy on that.


2. IDENTIFY YOUR WEAKNESSES

Is your Twitter page struggling to gain followers? Are you attending networking events and trade shows and not meeting potential customers? Just as important as identifying your marketing strengths is, be honest with yourself about what isn't working. Don't be afraid to ditch the efforts that aren't resulting in more sales.

3. CREATE AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR

Keeping a blog or social media profile up-to-date can be overwhelming. Customers expect regularly timed, engaging content, and it can often be hard to keep up. By coming up with an editorial calendar, you can plan months ahead and take the guesswork out of creating content.

Try creating a template that identifies your opportunities for each month - e.g., January means New Year's Resolutions; May means Small Business Week; and October might represent the launch of a new product line. Once you've identified these opportunities, you can start making a monthly calendar in Excel that lists out blog articles, newsletter topics, and social media posts that relate to them. Voila... you have an editorial calendar!

4. USE THE 80/20 RULE

While it may sound counter-intuitive, you should only be self-promoting on social media about 20% of the time. People use social media to be social, they don't want to be subjected to your online sales pitch. Posting about things that are valuable and relevant to your customers 80% of the time will not only encourage conversation, it will lighten your marketing load because you'll be curating content rather than having to constantly create it.

Social media promotion services like 40Billion make this easy by broadcasting and promoting your posts to its large network of several million users across the most popular social networking sites for businesses - including Twitter, LinkedIn, 40Billion, and even Facebook. Affordable services like promoted posts and promoted company listings were created for entrepreneurs who want to tap into a growing, active network online without spending a lot of time or money.

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