You’ve heard the political soundbite about how small businesses are at the heart of the American economy. But that’s not just feel-good talk. It’s actually true.
There are roughly 28 to 30 million small businesses operating right now in the US. Over 75% of these are small enough to be run by just a single person. However, the other 25% employ around 120 million people. Now, consider the fact that there are 206 million people in the US who are part of the working-aged population. This means that around three-quarters of the workers in America either own or work for a small business.
Big businesses may get all the news stories, but small businesses make the economy work. So if you’re a small business owner, you’re in excellent company! There are millions of people just like you trying to make their own way in life. But why is small business ownership so popular? Here are the top three reasons according to Guidant Financial:
- 26% wanted to be their own boss
- 23% wanted to pursue a passion
- 19% found an opportunity and ran with it
Of course, we can’t forget about profitability either. The ability to make money on your own terms is a driving force. Profitable small-business fields like mobile businesses (i.e. businesses that go to the customer’s location), freelancing B2B services, and online education can help you earn far more than you would in the corporate world if you succeeded.
However, small business ownership is not always successful. In fact, you have about a 50% shot of making it to five years in business. According to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 180,000 to 250,000 of all small businesses fail every quarter.
Which raises the question: How do you avoid “establishment death”, as the government likes to put it?
What Are The Problems?
Despite the fact that there are so many niches and industries, most small business failure is not due to something related to the industry. Sure, it’s not impossible, but the reason for failure is much more likely related to something fundamental to business.
Indeed, a lack of business knowledge is a sore point for many passion-based businesses. They love to pursue their passion but lack the education or the desire to do all of the business management necessary to transform that passion into profit. Small business owners, especially first-time owners, are often flying by the seat of their pants.
Another common challenge is cash flow. As the saying goes, it takes money to make money. Without a steady stream of revenue, you don’t have a business. Getting that stream going involves a number of different factors:
- Attracting customers to your business through marketing
- Convincing them to buy from you
- Convincing them to tell others about you and to come back for more business
- Building a solid brand so that you’ll be recognized from the crowd
Does the idea of sales and marketing make you twitch? Unfortunately, it’s a fundamental part of business. Sadly, these parts often get pushed to the back burner in favor of satisfying current customers. A busy business owner may not have any time to do these things even if they wanted to.
If you’re in this situation, in the best case, your customers are regular enough to keep you at a certain level of income that’s enough to sustain your household and your business. But you’d never be able to scale. You’d either run out of customers because you haven’t marketed well enough, or you’d try hiring someone to help with it and not have enough to pay them. This is a business Catch-22 that can keep your operation stagnant.
In the worst case, your business fails. Even if you have regulars, it’s just not enough to keep the lights on and food in your belly. You have to market your business well in order to keep your lead generation up and your regular customers aware of you. If you don’t, well, the results speak for themselves. You put your company at risk and the competition is fierce.
So, if you have to market yourself what’s the best way to go about it?
Digital Marketing Is Necessary
One of the biggest advantages of modern entrepreneurship is that we have the internet to help us market our businesses. We’ve never had an advertising channel with such reach and power before. A business without an internet presence might as well not exist. But why is it so good?
First of all, you have a practically unlimited pool of people to target when you use digital advertising, but you also have access to tools that can show your ads to just the right people. The ability to pair the right ad with the right person is why Google and Facebook make so much money. If you do it right, customers will come!
Compared to traditional advertising methods, digital marketing is much less work. You don’t have to go out and spread fliers, shoot commercials every month, or regularly update billboards. If something changes about your business, you don’t have to revamp all of your marketing collateral from scratch. Granted, it’s not completely “fire-and-forget” (a common error), but it’s much easier to make changes.
Furthermore, tracking the effectiveness of your webpages, posts, and ads is super-simple. Both Google and Facebook have free tools that give business owners the data they need to see if they’re getting a return on their investment.
It’s also dead-simple to create a brand online. From building logos to hosting a blog (like ours at Pagewiz), today’s tools make it so much simpler. And best of all? Digital marketing works around the clock. Google and Facebook are always delivering your ads to the right people. Your website is open 24/7/365. The opportunity to generate new leads is always there.
However, just because it’s simple doesn’t mean that it’s easy for everyone. You still have to know what to do and still have the time to do it. Most businesses do end up making a webpage, even if it’s simple. And making a digital ad also doesn’t take a lot of time. But how do you link it all together into a lead generation funnel that works?
That’s What Pagewiz Is For
The glue between your ads and your successful sales are your landing pages. Landing pages are those initial touchpoints between a visitor clicking on your ad and “landing” on your website to learn more. They’re where you make your first impression, make your pitch, and promote your brand.
And that’s what we do for businesses. Pagewiz is a very flexible and easy-to-use tool we created to help small business owners create landing pages that drive lead generation and profits.
Pagewiz has over 100 templates to help you match your exact campaign goals and messaging that you need to increase your lead generation. But we don’t just enable you to make good-looking landing pages. We also have lots of integration, metrics, and A/B testing tools to assist your funnel creation.
For instance, if your goal is to build an email list, you can link your mailing list software and your CRM software to Pagewiz. We will add the information your landing page collects to your system automatically, saving you a lot of time.
In just a few minutes, you can create a landing page. Plus, you can create as many as you like all in one place. This is part of a process called conversion rate optimization, or CRO. It’s rare that you’ll make the most attractive pitch on your landing page the first time. So we give you the tools to make a lot of pages fast and also to test them against one another to see which ones work the best!
And if you don’t know what any of this means or have no clue where to start, don’t worry! It’s okay not to know everything. We have support staff ready to assist you with our tools 24/7, by phone or by live chat.
Start Building Landing Pages
So, to sum up, digital marketing is the key to small business survival. The best way we know how to do it is to combine PPC and landing pages to create marketing funnels that work. This method:
- Saves time and money compared to traditional marketing
- Works when you’re not available
- Is the best lead generation system ever created
- Is easy to tweak and optimize
And we believe that Pagewiz is the best tool to use for creating the landing pages for your funnels. Whether your goal is to generate leads, do promotion, or directly sell to your customers, landing pages are the way to do it.
If you would like to see a demonstration of what a good landing page system can do for your business, visit Pagewiz today to learn more. Stop wasting time worrying about how to market online and let us show you what we can do to make it happen.
Emily Hunter develops content and resources for businesses in all niches, ranging from computer security to retail. She has worked for both national marketing agencies and mom-and-pop stores, learning much about each of them. During the summer, Emily cheers on Carolina Crown and all of the great DCI corps.
