Marketing dollars are precious, especially when
you’re a small business.
As a small business you want to use your
limited marketing budget to get the maximum
amount of returns on it.
Growing the cusomer base is the name of
the game.
To achieve the best results follow these
top 10 marketing tips.
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1.
Don”T Advertise Like Big Businesses:
Big
businesses have large advertising budgets that
they use to create brand recognition that leads
to future sales.
They advertise in some of the more
expensive mediums such as television, magazines,
billboards, product placement,
sponsorships (such as Nascar, sports teams,
etc.), newspapers.
As a small businesses you have a very
small advertising budget.
You have to focus on making immediate
sales.
You have to focus on the most likely pool
of customers, lure them to your business and
make the sale without exceeding your budget.
Focus on “no-cost” and “low-cost”
advertising mediums.
They include word-of-mouth, Social Media,
Direct mailing, etc.
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2.
Engage In Collaborative Marketing:
As a
small business with very small advertising
budget you can stretch the reach of those
dollars by engaging in collaborative marketing.
Collaborative marketing is where you team
up with out businesses small or large and share
in the cost of advertising your business.
Learn more about
Collaborative marketing.
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3.
Use Existing Customers:
Use
existing customers to gain new customers.
Your existing customers already know and
trust your.
They like products and service you
provide, hence the reason they keep coming back.
So, why not use them to help gain new
customers.
You can do this by offering existing
customers incentives (such as
discounts,
free products, etc.) for bringing a new
customer.
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4.
Tell Your Own Story:
When
you market your business you should tell your
own story.
People are attracted by personal stories.
You can observe this on an online
e-commerce site such as
etsy.com.
On Etsy.com people sells products that
they make themselves.
They market their products through their
personal story.
As a result their businesses have
experienced rapid growth.
They grew their customer base with people
all around the world.
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5.
Know Your Target Audience:
There is no point in spending scarce marketing
dollars on people who are not likely to buy your
products or services.
Avoid this mistake by knowing who your
target audience is.
Ask yourself, who are the most likely
people to buy my products or services?.
To get to the answer to this question you
have to look at features such as age, gender,
profession, ethnicity, income level, resident
location, marital status, parenthood,
educational level, etc.
It is easy to know what your target
audience is if you know what your products or
services do and who can benefit most from them.
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6.
Differentiate Your Business:
When
you advertise you have to make your business
stand out.
Being different is what gets you noticed.
Find out how other busniesses in your
industry are presenting themselves in their
marketing campaign.
If people are already getting the same
service somewhere else they will need a good
reason to change and get it from somewhere else.
Figure out a way to differentiate your
business from their’s by articulating any of the
following: a better price; a better product; a
better service delivery; better hours; faster
service; complimentary services; a better
location; etc.
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7.
Make An Emotional Appeal:
When
you tell the story of your business (or products
and services) you have to make an emotional
appeal to your potential customers.
People want to know that you care about
them.
When you appeal to them on an emotional
level they’re likely to believe that you’re
catering to their needs.
Instead of saying that buying this car
will enable you to get from point A to point B,
say this buying this car will enable you to go
visit with friends and family whenever you want
to.
You have to figure out what the emotional appeal
is for the product or service that you’re
providing and come up with the right emotional
appeal.
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8.
Market on A Budget:
Don’t start your marketing campaign without a
budget.
Identify the amount of money you can
afford to spend every month then determine what
is the best way to spend that money to achieve
the maximum outcome.
Having a budget prevents you from being
lured into marketing schemes that puts you in
debt.
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9.
Manage Your Online Reputation:
Your
online reputation can kill your business.
Managing your online reputation is now a
critical part of marketing your business.
The Intenet has made it much easier for
customers and competitors to create a negative
image of your business.
Bad reviews travels fast.
You have to counter this by being
vigilant about what is being written and said
about you on the Internet.
You have to dedicated resources to doing
this by doing it yourself, hiring a new employee
to do it for you or outsourcing the task to
businesses that provide this service.
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10. Measure Marketing Results:
There is no point in engaging in a marketing
campaign if you’re not measuring the results.
You have to know how effective the
marketing method is so that you can determine
whether or not you should keep using it or use
another method.
If a method is working, you want to keep
using it and if it is not, you want to switch to
something else.
If you’re using social media such a
Facebook or
Twitter
you can see how many Likes or Followers you’re
getting.
You can use the
google
analytics to see website traffic and measure
the increase in traffic when you use a marketing
method to attract people to your website.
Likewise, you see how many people are
walking into your storefront during a marketing
campaign to attract people to your store.
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