5 ways small businesses can increase their reach

When it comes to marketing your business, there is an infinite number of ways to go about doing this. But we can all use some inspiration and guidance when thinking up ideas to increase the reach and influence of our business within our market.

The challenge small business owners usually face is not always having access to the money or resources to grow their business and therefore have to be innovative in how they go about doing so.

I want to give you some guidance and share five ways you can grow the reach of your business.

1. media contributor

2. paid media

3. brand collabs

4. Google business

5. YouTube as a search engine

Let's break down each of these five strategies.

Become a media contributor

The media houses in your country are always looking for content and a new story. If you are creating informational content about your industry on your social channels, you can start to reach out to the media houses to become a contributor. Contributing allows you to get reach, address industry topics and help to build your brand as a leader in your niche.

Think about the top pain points in your niche that your consumers are facing and those should be the topics you aim to publish when you get the opportunity to contribute on the media’s platforms. Don’t wait for them to discover you, start reaching out to contribute, even if it’s on a one-submission-per-month basis.

Paid media

Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter ads etc are all still very relevant. Now, as a small business, you may not have the necessary funds to hire someone to do the ads for you but my recommendation is to take a free Facebook or Google paid ads course. Jump on a platform like HubSpot Academy, Google Digital Garage or Facebook Blueprint, and take any one of the free courses on ads so you at least have a basic understanding of how to run ads for yourself.

At that point, even putting a few dollars into your ads can go a long way, rather than having no understanding of how it works and just hitting the “boost post” button with no idea as to how these powerful tools work.

You also want to focus on creating ads around informational content and not your posts that focus solely on promoting your sales. Run campaigns around content that informs people how your products/services help them get rid of a pain point or achieve a desire. Educate and inform!

Brand collabs

Make a list of companies that you can partner with that are bigger than you. Look for brands that have a similar audience to you and put out content or even do events in the space. Reach out to them and see if you can create a partnership to create content or even if there is an event that can be created in partnership with them to grow your industry.

When I had my Tech Brand Droid Island, I created the Shutterbug Photo Walk Event teaching people how to use their smartphones for photography.

Huawei and bmobile jumped on board because of similar interests in their audience. Collabs don’t always need to involve money: find low-barrier entry points to get started collaborating with other brands.

Google business

If you do not have a website, you should be maximising Google Business. Set up your profile with your phone number, location(s) or service areas for digital businesses, and opening hours. Google Business will allow you to list your products, photos, videos, events, updates and much more and all of this content and info shows up on Google Search and Google Maps – a great way to increase your reach for free.

Getting your customers to leave ratings and reviews on Google Business gives you the added benefit of Google pushing your business higher in the search listings.

Start a YouTube channel

The thing with social media is that all of the content created on those platforms stays on the platform. It does not show up in a Google Search.

However, YouTube is a search engine. For all of the video content you are creating on TikTok, Instagram, or LinkedIn, you should be dumping all of your videos onto YouTube so that your videos can begin showing up on Google Search results.

Nobody goes to your social media page and scrolls back months looking for information. That’s what Google is for.

Put all of your videos onto YouTube and YouTube Shorts for those TikTok/IG Reel videos. Focus on leveraging YouTube as a pathway to showing up when your audience is doing their research on Google.

If you put these five strategies into practice, you will be able to grow your brand's reach and establish yourself as a leader in your niche.

Keron Rose is a digital strategist who works with Caribbean entrepreneurs. Learn more strategies by visiting KeronRose.com or listening to the Digipreneur FM Podcast.