New businesses are opening everywhere these days, making the current era a great time to become an entrepreneur.
Wait! Do you own a small business and call yourself an entrepreneur?

Or perhaps, the people around you call you so and you love to hear it. But in reality, a small business owner is different from an entrepreneur in more ways than one.

According to a study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the legal status of a business separates small business owners from entrepreneurs. That said, we all want to become entrepreneurs and market our businesses like one.
In fact, there is a lot you can learn from entrepreneurs to boost your business ROI.

Mentioned ahead are 4 tips to market your business like an entrepreneur.

1. Offer What People Want

Whenever I want to buy something online, the first place I search is Amazon; and there are probably others who do this as well. This is so simply because this eCommerce brand offers exactly what people want.

Kristin Zhivago, in her book, Roadmap to Revenue points out that sellers often fail to sell the way customers are buying. According to her, businesses need to follow a “customer-centric” approach instead of following a “company-centric” approach. Zhivago’s advice includes:

• Find out not only what your customers want, but also how they want to buy it through real customer interviews.
• Adjust your product offerings and marketing programs to match their wants.
• Know what the search process of your customers is when it comes to finding your business and align your business model accordingly. Also, follow the same approach for their most desired payment model, for example, one-time payment or subscription.
• Automate parts of your buying process, i.e. don’t make your customers fill up forms or sign in every time they want to purchase from you.

Most importantly, communicate the change within your team as your business starts shifting to a customer-centric model.

2. Blogging Helps

For customers the choices are many but they would get involved with a business that offers them with the best value. Building a blog is the best way to offer value. However, as a business owner you must understand that blogging offers long-term benefits; if you need results overnight think of something else such as PPC marketing, social media advertising, and others.

Let us take a look at some statistics that will show why blogging should be an integral part of your content strategy:

• 60 percent marketers say blogging is their top inbound marketing priority – The State of Inbound 2016
• B2C marketers that blogged for more than 11 times per month got 4X more leads compared to those that blog 4 to 5 times per month.
• The Demand Gen Report, 2016 states that 47 percent buyers viewed 3 to 5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales representative.

Not only does blogging help in driving traffic to your website, but it also allows you to establish authority in your niche. If you have just launched a blog or planning to do so, a great way to establish authority is by engaging an influencer in your niche. An influencer is an influential personality in your niche who has a huge social following and has the power to influence people’s thoughts.

Consistency is the key to successful blogging, so you must ensure that you post high-quality and highly engaging posts on a regular basis. Tools such as BuzzSumo, Quora, etc. will help you come up with unique content ideas.

3. Cater to Evolving Needs

Small businesses often make the mistake of ignoring the evolving market needs and shifts. For instance, Warby Parker, became one of the most popular brands selling eyewear and prescription glasses by offering its customers out-of-the-box services such as “Home Try On.” Customers are allowed to choose five frames of their choice and try them for five days (after the company ships the frames for free). If customers like a particular frame, they can buy it online. The company sends a fresh pair after receiving the order. The company also bears the cost of returning the five trial frames.

Similarly, the owners of BlueStone realized that the need to cater ever-evolving market needs and came up with innovative offers such as 30-Day Money-Back Policy and Try-At-Home service, which are some of the industry-first options. The result – BlueStone is now one of the most preferred online jewelry brands in India.

How about getting a 100-year warranty on the products you buy? Unbelievable, isn’t it? Saddleback Leather actually does this. They offer a 100-year warranty against defects in materials and workmanship. Along with this, the company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. What more can a customer ask for?

In contrast, let’s consider the case of Blockbuster, the U.S. based rental-movie mega-business that shut down in 2013. While we all know how the video rental giant fell, the prime reason for its shutdown was its refusal to acknowledge and accept the major market shifts within the movie rental industry. They were stuck to their business process for too long and eventually lost the market to more dynamic and user-friendly online movie providers. Had Blockbuster purchased Netflix in 2000 for the asking price of $50 million, the story would have been different.

Unlike small business owners, entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for new market opportunities, catering to evolving market shifts. This doesn’t mean you need to pursue every other innovation, but just keep an eye on them. You will not be able to withstand market shifts if you refuse to shift with them. Therefore, make sure that your business is always current with the market.

4. Social Media Still Rocks

There are about 3 billion Internet users and about 2 billion of them are active on social media. By leveraging the social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others you can tap into its massive audience. Moreover, social media offers the easiest and most cost-effective way to market your business. In fact about 81 percent marketers agree they have integrated social media into their marketing strategies. Therefore if you are overlooking social media, you are losing out a lot.

Businesses can benefit from social media marketing in the following ways:

• Gain useful customer insights. Social media generates huge amount of data about the customers in real time, so you can use them to design effective marketing strategies.
• Increase brand awareness and customer loyalty by offering better quality engagement
• Reach out to the targeted audience through highly targeted social ads
• Generate better quality leads
• Improved search results and increased web traffic

A number of brands such as pizza giant Dominos, German supermarket chain Edeka, Dollar Shave Club and others have benefitted immensely from social media marketing. So why are you still lagging behind?

Conclusion

While it is true that being an entrepreneur requires you to obtain a different set of business skills and talents, you can always watch and learn. Take notes from this entrepreneurial guidebook, see which tips suit you and apply them to your small business. With a few strategic changes, you can always market your business exactly like an entrepreneur.