Techssocial | What are the smartest things you can do as a small business owner to grow your business? First, develop a comprehensive marketing plan. Second, build your brand. Third, consistently advertise your business. And fourth, develop long-term relationships with your customers.
Naturally, there are many other ways to promote your business but don’t overwhelm yourself with doing too much. Start with these four promotional methods. You may not even need more.
Create Your Marketing Plan
Think of your business plan as a living document—something that you keep revising and updating as you learn more about your industry.
Take your time. Develop it slowly, carefully, methodically. As you develop it, you will get an increasingly clear understanding of your competitors and customers. Based on this understanding, you will come up with practical marketing strategies and tactics.
If you’re just starting your small business, create your marketing plan. If you’ve been in business for some time, update your marketing plan. When you find interesting marketing ideas online, you can simply capture web page images and text with a note-taking app.
As you develop your marketing plan, you’ll get numerous ideas on how to expand your product line and how to improve the services you offer. You’ll also get a more accurate understanding of your niche, refine your understanding of your target audience, and write a better unique selling proposition, or USP.
Check this out: 5 Highly effective marketing tips to help any small business
Build Your Brand
Although there are many ways to build your brand, the fastest way is to hire a public relations company to do the heavy lifting for you.
A PR agency will educate the public about what your company has to offer. It will implement projects to get your products and services into the news. Since PR people have developed relationships with trade magazine editors, they can quickly publish articles and press releases about your company.
Advertise Your Business
Consistent advertising will help get the word out about your business.
You can advertise either online or offline, or you could try an integrated marketing approach and advertise both online and offline.
Offline advertising might include radio, Yellow Pages, billboards, car stickers, newspaper ads, and local cable TV commercials while online advertising might include advertising on Facebook and LinkedIn, placing Google pay per click ads, and buying advertising space on relevant websites. To ensure that your advertising works, follow these two guidelines:
1. Hire an advertising expert for the media you are using. It takes considerable copywriting skills to make an offer appealing.
2. Test your results to make sure that the advertising is working. If it isn’t working, tweak your ad. If this still doesn’t work, then try a different medium.
Check this out: How to Reach More People with Visual Marketing Strategies
Develop Great Customer Relationships
While good customer service and sending greeting cards and coupons in the mail to your list of customers are some good ways of developing customer relationships, there is nothing quite as effective as email marketing.
If you have a website, you can create an opt-in form and offer visitors a free digital gift for their email address.
If you have an office or storefront or you exhibit at trade shows or conferences, then you can also create a sign-up form that people fill in to stay updated on your latest offerings.
Email works because it’s an inexpensive way to send out a regular newsletter. You can add more functionality to your emails with social sharing buttons and audio and video links.
If you have a small business, you must take the time and spend the money to market it. Don’t simply rely on walk-in traffic because you have a good location or on word-of-mouth business because you’ve been in business for some time.
Sagar is HR at techssocial.net. He has been writing last 3 years on different blogging sites. He has also helped small businesses to gain their ranking.