If you own a small business in Greensboro, NC, getting your name out is essential for your business’s success. Whether you’re opening up a new bakery or launching a private practice, you need to have a plan for how to reach your target audience. As you focus on improving your advertising efforts, take a moment to review our top marketing tips for small businesses.

How to Market a Small Business: 5 Small Business Marketing Tips

From researching your competition and setting up a Google Business profile to partnering with local influencers and diversifying your marketing channels, you have lots of ways to improve your marketing strategy. If you want to learn more about how to market a small business, review our top five advertising tips for small businesses below:

1. Research Your Competition’s Marketing Efforts

Before you launch your marketing efforts, it can help to know what your competitors are doing to advertise their businesses and how they’re pricing their products or services. For instance, if you find that they’re selling their product for a higher price than you were planning on, you could make your lower prices a key part of your marketing efforts. You could also evaluate how effective a competitor’s marketing strategies have been, using that information to help you know what you should focus on.

Doing this research can also help you find gaps in your competitors’ marketing strategies. If they’re not advertising to consumers you think would actually benefit from your business, you can start focusing on addressing that gap and bringing in new customers. Alongside helping your marketing strategy, you can use competitor information to create a more successful business plan.

2. Set Up a Google Business Profile

Setting up a Google Business is free and one of the easiest ways you can get your business’s name out in your community. With a Google Business profile, you can make sure your business shows up on Google Maps and in search results.

This profile also allows Google users to immediately see your website, hours, location, and phone number, raising the chance they visit your business or browse your site. Make sure to verify ownership and optimize your My Business account to raise the chance your company shows up higher in local search results.

Since Google states that verified businesses are twice as likely to be considered reputable, an added bonus of a Google Business profile is that it helps you gain credibility quickly. Your Google Business profile also makes it possible to interact with customers who left reviews, showing future users that you care about your customers’ experience. Additionally, you can post photos that showcase your products or services to attract consumers to your business.

3. Make Sure You Diversify Your Marketing Efforts

While going through traditional marketing channels can still be effective, you don’t want to pigeonhole your business into a restrictive marketing strategy. For example, if you only promote your business with physical media, like signs, billboards, and print ads, you’ll miss out on reaching lots of customers who are more likely to be swayed via digital marketing efforts.

When you market your business on social media, make sure you have a diverse marketing strategy as well. Don’t get stuck only using one social media platform or one type of content. Since short video content is very popular right now, you wouldn’t want to just produce written content (e.g., blogs, how-to articles, etc.). Instead, you’d want to pair your written content with video content on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Stories, and Instagram Reels.

4. Collaborate With Local Influencers and Media Outlets

Unless you’re a national brand, it’s probably not worth paying a celebrity or influencer to advertise your products or services. However, collaborating with local influencers can be well worth it, as they’ll give your business credibility with followers who actually live in your city. Before you collaborate with an influencer, make sure their audience matches your target demographic and that the influencer matches your brand values.

Even though legacy media outlets aren’t as popular as they once were, it can still be worth engaging with them. Whether you take out an ad in your local newspaper, do an interview with your news station, or have your CEO appear on a local radio station, reaching out to local media makes sure more people start to notice your business. Additionally, many local media options can be free or low-cost, meaning you won’t be taking much of a financial risk, if any.

5. Put Quality Ahead of Quantity Online

When you’re working on your online marketing strategy, you might be tempted to try to create as many blogs as you can to start getting your business to rank higher. While it’s great to have a strong web presence, many businesses try to off-source their articles and other types of content to LLMs, like ChatGPT, or they try to have one person write more blogs than they can handle a day.

Both options often lead to low-quality work, inaccurate information, and lost trust from potential clients or customers. Search engines like Google also penalize sites that publish low-quality content and have spammy practices, causing these sites to rank lower in search results.

As you drive traffic to your website with original content, focus more on producing a few high-quality, well-researched blogs or articles every month rather than multiple blogs a day. You’ll usually want to stick to blog topics that relate to your business, and it can pay to work with SEO experts who can find the right keywords to target and help you develop a more effective online marketing strategy.

Turn to the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce for Small Business Marketing Advice

If you’re looking for more small business marketing advice in Greensboro, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce can help. We regularly host networking events where new business owners can connect with marketing professionals and other business owners to pick their brains about advertising. Launch Greensboro also includes multiple programs designed to help small business owners develop an effective marketing strategy. With our many resources and network of local entrepreneurs, we’re confident we can support your business’s growth.

Learn more about Launch Greensboro today. If you have any questions about the ways we can help you improve your marketing efforts, please contact us.

If you’d like to start a business in North Carolina, it can be overwhelming to think about, especially if you’re not even sure what type of business you want to start. Once you know what steps to follow, however, starting a business in North Carolina isn’t all that difficult, with the state very friendly to entrepreneurs (NC has a 2.5% corporate tax rate, the lowest in the country!).

Whether you’re looking for a new business idea or want to know what you should do to launch your business, review our guide to starting a business in North Carolina.

What Is a Good Business to Start in North Carolina?

Small business entrepreneurs have lots of exciting opportunities in North Carolina. If you’re still trying to decide what your business should do, review the following business types that are perfect for entrepreneurs early in their careers:

• Moving Company
• Professional Services (e.g., doctors, architects, engineers, dentists, geologists, and social workers can all start a Professional Limited Liability Company).
• Bed & Breakfast
• Recruiting Agency
• Virtual Assistant Business

Regardless of the type of business you start, you’ll be in the right state to do it, as CNBC has named North Carolina one of the top three states to do business in for five years straight.

Do You Need a Business Plan to Start a Business in North Carolina?

Small business entrepreneurs need a business plan before they launch their company in North Carolina. This type of plan will give your business a direction to follow, guiding your business’s growth and helping you meet challenges. A detailed business plan should include the following information:

• The product or service your business plans to offer
• The amount of funding you have, where that funding is coming from, and how much it’ll cost to launch and run your business
• Your business’s primary competitors
• The target audience of your business and how large that audience is

Does a New Business in North Carolina Need a Business Name?

Before you register your business, you need a name for it. The best business names will let customers know what your business does while also being unique enough that the name doesn’t get lost in the crowd. You’ll also want to look up competitor names to get a sense of naming conventions in your industry and how professional-sounding your business’s name needs to be.

Once you have a name, you need to do a business name search to make sure someone else doesn’t already have the same name. You can conduct your search here.

Where Can You Receive Funding From a New Business?

If you have enough personal savings to launch your business and fund operations for a stretch of time, you’ll likely want to stick to those funds so that you can retain full ownership and control of your business. However, most small business entrepreneurs will need funding from outside sources. Besides personal funds, you can receive funding from the following sources:

• Family and Friends
• Small Business Loans
• Outside Investors (e.g., other entrepreneurs and venture capitalists)

How to Register a Business in North Carolina

Once you’ve decided on a small business idea, have a name, and know your funding sources, it’s time to register it. During registration, you’ll need to decide whether your business is a Sole Proprietorship, Limited Liability Company (LLC), a C corporation, a Nonprofit, or a Doing Business As (DBA). Each option has different benefits and requirements, so do your research first and talk to other business owners before deciding.

Next, you’ll officially register the business with the North Carolina Secretary of State. When you register your business, you’ll need to file paperwork that contains information about basic business details, the business’s name, and the registered agent.

How to Start a Business in North Carolina After You Finish Registering

Once you’ve finished registering your business, you’ll need to follow the rest of North Carolina’s requirements for launching a business. Based on nc.gov’s page on starting a business, new businesses must do the following after registering:

• Obtain necessary licenses and permits
• If applicable, apply for sales and use tax number
• Apply for an Employer Identification Number
• Prepare for any applicable taxes
• Obtain insurance
• Comply with regulations (E.g., OSHA, ADA, and Environmental Regulations)
• Arrange for business financing
• Open a business bank account
• Protect your business’s intellectual property

What Should You Do After You’ve Launched Your Business?

Once you’ve launched your business and have started its operations, one of the best ways you can continue to improve is by working with your local Chamber of Commerce. For instance, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce is dedicated to serving small business entrepreneurs in Greensboro, NC. Some of the ways the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce helps business owners include:

• Small business classes
• Networking events
• Mentorship opportunities
• Small business advocacy
• Talent development resources

Join the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce

Launching a business is incredibly rewarding, but it can also be stressful if you do it alone. The Greensboro Chamber of Commerce understands the pressures on small business entrepreneurs, and we have a lot of resources to help. Whether you’re interested in taking a small business class or are looking for entrepreneurs near you in Greensboro to network with, we have you covered.

Learn more about our entrepreneurship programs and other entrepreneurship resources today. If you have any questions, you can call us at (336) 387-8301.