As a business owner, you’ve got enough on your plate. It’s no surprise that you often have to make compromises on where to set your priorities.

Marketing is one of the aspects that fall by the wayside and gets put in the “I’ll get around to it” pile.

But what if there was a way to focus on only a few marketing tactics? Tactics that could bring in more customers and sales to your business.

We’ve got you covered.

Using one or all of these tactics will help you concentrate your efforts and improve how you market your small business.

Focus on One or Two Social Networks

Social media is, by far, one of the most effective ways to promote a business. When done right, it gives your business a way to communicate with customers to build trust and increase sales.

Recently, Outbound Engine surveyed over 350 small businesses about their marketing. Close to 40% of respondents said social media was an invaluable resource to gain new customers.

The survey also revealed that over 50% of small business owners consider managing their social media channels to take up way too much time..

And it makes sense.

Managing multiple social accounts is time-consuming, especially when your brand is spread across three or more platforms.

And when running a business, time is your most valuable asset.

If you find yourself single-handedly creating all of your social content, consider focusing on a couple of platforms.

Remember: You don’t need to be everywhere at once.

It’s easier to nurture your audience in one or two places. Plus, you’ll avoid diluting the message because you’re not casting such a wide net.

So which social platform(s) should get your attention?

To figure it out, look at your stats.

Business pages set up on Facebook, Instagram, etc. offer statistics about how audiences interact with your brand. You’ll find out how much engagement your content receives, demographic information, and more.

When you know who your audience is, it becomes easier to tailor your content to them.

For example, you check out your stats and discover that most of the action happens on Facebook and YouTube. You also notice that the highest engagement occurs when you post behind the scenes content about your business.

Use this opportunity to go hard on these two channels and give people more of what they want to see.

And the best part — you’ll free up a few precious hours usually spent managing multiple channels.

Create Branded Lead Magnets

When you’re deciding on different ways to market your company, you’ll want to change things up.

Think of new ways to serve your target market and give them information of value.

One of the top marketing strategies for small businesses includes creating lead magnets. These are (usually downloadable) incentives given to people in exchange for their information.

They also move prospects through your sales funnel.

When you’re able to solve a customer’s problem before they officially interact with your brand, they’ll trust and eventually buy from you.

So what types of magnets can you use to generate leads for your business? We’ve chosen our favorite (and easiest to implement) lead magnet designs to get you started.

Checklists
Easy to create and skim through, lists are a simple way to give customers useful, actionable content. They’re also great to simplify complicated topics into a manageable doc.

Cheatsheets
People are always on the lookout for new life hacks. Cheatsheets walk people through a process and achieve a specific result. We love this one because it’s a great way to show yourself as an expert and share information using a proven strategy.

Templates
Give someone a guide where most of the work is already done for them, and they’ll love you for it. Templates are an outline people can use as a starting point to streamline their tasks.

Video Examples
Sometimes, people need to see a product or service in action. Video tutorials are useful to explain concepts and get the point across better than in text.

Scripts
If you know prospects need a helping hand in putting together the right words, why not give them a script? As an example, you can create one to help someone prepare for an interview or presentation.

These lead magnets are only a small sample of what you can use to grow your business.

So take an idea, put it into action, and see how it works for you.

Embrace the Power of Video

Right now, we’re in the middle of a video renaissance. People are viewing and sharing more video content than images and text combined.

According to statistics released by YouTube and Hubspot, businesses are seeing their biggest growth with video marketing.

So as a small business owner looking for direct marketing strategies, video is one of the best methods to reach and convert customers.

You can use video to explain your services and give people an overview of your products.

Video testimonials are a powerful tool to interact with audiences and build a human connection with your business. People are 64% more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. (Source: Forbes, 2017, Hubspot)

Businesses are only beginning to ramp up their video marketing efforts.

So it’s an excellent time for your business to jump in, reach new markets, and strengthen your foothold in the industry.

Remember: This doesn’t need to be a large-scale production — unless you have the budget for it. With a mobile phone, a tripod, and your product or service in action, you can quickly produce a video and start engaging with viewers.

Repurpose Your Existing Content

Do you already have a wealth of blog content on your website? Now is the time turn it into something new.

People consume content across different mediums. You can use blog posts, case studies, etc. and repurpose them as other pieces of content.

The goal is to choose well-performing content and make it work harder to market your business.

So what else can you turn your existing content into?

eBooks
You noticed that visitors coming to your site find a particular blog post valuable. Expand on that content and create an in-depth eBook. These can serve as lead magnets, or if the information is especially helpful, you can charge for it.

Email Course
For blog posts walking readers through a step by step process, you can turn it into an email course. As part of the campaign, each email engages the reader and creates a conversation which helps them accomplish a significant result.

Infographics
You have valuable content, but it’s well, complicated. Reduce complex topics to visually appealing, easily understood infographics. These work well on social channels and for guest posting on other websites.

Videos
Written case studies translate well into video testimonials. People respond to and quickly build trust with others who share similar experiences. As we mentioned before, video is an impactful way for businesses to connect with their audience.

Repurposing your content creates flexibility in your marketing because it saves you from scrambling for new ideas. You can reuse what is already working for your business.

Use HARO to Take Advantage of Free Publicity

Who would pass up the chance to be quoted by some of the largest media publications in the world?

Not you, of course. You don’t have to look far for free publicity.

Journalists often need expert sources for their articles. HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a free resource where journalists request material from authoritative sources.

Using HARO, your business has the potential to reach thousands, if not millions of readers. Plus, you’ll set yourself up as a thought-leader for a few minutes of work.

Once you sign up, you’ll receive three daily emails (morning, afternoon, and evening) with topics from journalists.

If you don’t want to pour through the master email with all of the categories, you can opt only to receive emails related to your industry.

Once you find a topic you can contribute to, you’ll respond to the request. There’s some etiquette involved with submitting to HAROs, but once you master it, the results can be incredible for your business.

As a marketing tool, HARO is a fantastic free resource for any small business looking to spread the word.

Conclusion

“80% of your success comes from 20% of your efforts.” (The Pareto Principle)

Instead of becoming overwhelmed by your marketing, focus on a few tactics at a time. Choose the ones that are the most enjoyable for you.

Tactics you can stick with.

Marketing is only as difficult as you want it to be. Using even a couple of the tactics mentioned above will set you on the path of improving your small business’s marketing.

So how do you plan on using these tactics?

Street art provokes. It inspires and makes you think. We experienced this recently when walking past Peachtree Center in downtown Atlanta and we came across “Symphony” — Atlanta’s largest mural and the latest project from Living Walls, an Atlanta-based nonprofit.

To hear the Living Walls team describe it, their mission is to “promote the power of public art as a social and economic engine, providing an artistic workforce to create healthy, sustainable urban spaces for the city of Atlanta.”

We like them because they work with local and international artists. But we love them for fearlessly confronting social issues and encouraging change.

And how do they go about doing that? The group has facilitated over 100 public murals featured throughout metro Atlanta. They’ve also stretched beyond Atlanta’s borders to bring the Living Walls message to Miami, South Africa, Rome, Barcelona and Moscow.

But ATL is where the heart is for them. And as people infinitely proud of the city we live in, KEYLAY wholeheartedly supports Living Walls’ mission. And we admire what they’ve been able to accomplish from a branding perspective.

In case you didn’t know, KEYLAY founder and principal Kyle Strahl got his start creating murals. His first was as a high school student when the school commissioned him to create a mural for their stadium. He later dabbled in occasional mural projects as he sharpened his design skills in college and on into the start of his career. So murals are in the DNA of KEYLAY.

Sometimes you can find Kyle strolling the neighborhood where our office is located looking for something to inspire the next great design project. It helps that it’s just a 10-minute walk and then BOOM! “Symphony”!

Production on the mural started a week into 2019 and was finished just in time for Super Bowl LIII in February. The mission of the mural? To connect the communities that coexist throughout Atlanta.

Paris-based street artist Hopare chose three faces to depict that message, giving fans in town for the game a new spectacle to take in while they were here — yes, football fans love art, too! Of course the mural remains for all to enjoy way beyond the Super Bowl.

We wondered what went into deciding on those three faces to represent a city. What colors to use? What look should the faces be giving?

We find ourselves in a similar spot with the various projects we work on for our clients. What font to use to convey the emotion the client wants to produce from their customers? What colors to use to make something stand out just right? What type of material to use on our packaging projects to make them tactile, attractive and stand the test of time?

Living Walls often does projects that recognize Atlanta’s unique place in the civil rights movement. Parisian artist, J.R. was commissioned to recreate historic photographs of the movement in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

We love the description Creative Loafing gave of how J.R. puts the murals together with the help of his trusted team in 2013.

“J.R. … climbs the frame of a three-story scaffold, maneuvering around its bars and through each landing’s hatch like it’s a jungle gym. JR’s preferred medium is wheatpaste, essentially gluing a paper image to a wall. His team of assistants follows one by one, quickly filling in the levels below him. The 30-foot-by-40-foot black-and-white photograph is unfurled in long strips, slowly revealing a trio of young men carrying signs, one of which says, ‘NO MORE HUNGER.’”

The final product can’t come together without the team working together, which obviously set off bells in our minds when thinking about the team it takes to make our clients’ projects come to life.

It’s projects like J.R.’s that make us love Atlanta even more.

Living Walls hold an annual conference that unites streets artists and scholars from around the world to engage in a discourse about public spaces. There has been some dynamic work produced as a result of the conference over the years.

New York-based artist LNY created a mural on Pryor Street during the 2011 Living Walls Conference that saluted the fallen World Trade Center towers. The two people in the mural are inspired by the volunteer assistants who helped him put the project together, according to WABE.

Also in 2011, Spanish street artist Escif produced a six-story-tall mural showing a red fire extinguisher with the inscription “Emergency Only” at the bottom and yellow stars of the Chinese flag at the top.

Again during the 2011 conference, another Spanish artist named SAM3 painted a 15-story-tall mural depicting someone who appears to be praying. It’s meant to express the sense of hopefulness and a full heart, according to WABE.

Argentinian street artist Franco “Jaz” Fasoli used part of his time in town during the 2013 conference to create this mural on a building on Flat Shoals Avenue.

And during the 2017 conference, New York street artist Tatyana Fazlializadeh created a mural depicting Estrella Sanchez, a local transgender activist and immigrant, holding up the transgender flag.

We go to plenty of conferences around the country as part of our work at KEYLAY, and we always hope to leave a mark in those cities that people remember like the artists at the Living Walls Conference do in Atlanta.

So what’s next for Living Walls? It’s a project tackling something that has reached epidemic proportions in Atlanta.

The city has the fifth-highest number of new cases of HIV infection in the country. So Living Walls wants to create a mural to bring attention to the epidemic, while also spur a dialogue that will hopefully create change — and a reduction in infections.

Living Walls already has funding for the HIV/AIDS mural. They’re now working with the city to figure out a partnership that will make it come to life. Living Walls plans on having community conversations around HIV/AIDS at different spots around the city before debuting the mural this summer.

Are you in the Charlotte area? Living Walls just debuted a new mural project called Ladies to the Front. The four-mural project celebrates and honors the women, sisters, mothers and daughters that help build and sustain communities. Three different groups of students from three different backgrounds brought their voices into the conversation to inspire the content of each mural.

As you can see, Living Walls has successfully branded themselves as an artistic organization committed to enacting social change.

Did you like getting to know Living Walls? Keep an eye out on our website and social media channels for future scoops on other organizations, companies, brands and events in the city that we love that are making waves in design and branding.