I’m a small business owner, and I was wondering if anyone can share marketing tips?
February 8, 2010 // Posted in Other - Advertising & Marketing
This entry was posted on February 8, 2010 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Other - Advertising & Marketing (Tags: Flyers, Marketing Tips, Share Tips, Small Business Owner). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Comments (6)
Make friends and influence civic leaders by using local youth groups like scouts to distribute fliers. Pay them a fair price-its a write-off anyways. Don’t spam, rather target your intended market in unique and diverse ways. Maximize your potential for positive exposure at every opportunity, particularly low-cost alternatives to mainstream media ads.
Good luck!
it pretty much depends on the type of business that you are in. If you are in retail (or a service industry) you may want to place some ads (classified for service) in your local papers, just to get your name out there. Try to find any local shows (like a farm show, homemaker show, etc) that you can have a booth at – make sure that the show caters to your clientel though. You should also make sure that you have a website up, and then get registered with all the search engines. Join your local chamber of commerece and BBB and they will do some advertising with your membership. Try to find a leads group – where you get together with a group of people and pass around leads – these are nice, as a lot of times they will limit it to just the one person in each line of business. We sell RV’s so we are on a lot of the industry specific websites (alot of which you have to join/pay a membership for, but well worth it), we also use Ebay and Craiglist. Also, any time we work a show, we do a drawing so that we can gather customers info and we put that in our database so that we can do direct mailings later on.
Good luck! Be creative, don’t do what everyone else does – it will make you stick out more.
Pass out information wherever you go. Depending on your daily routine, ask the people you see to take information via a flier or talk about your business and anything you think they might be interested in. If you run into your insurance agent, give them info to hand out to the office staff. Going to the dentist? Bring them information. Think about how many people you come in contact with over the course of the week. If you set a reasonable goal to hand out a set number of business cards or fliers per week, you have just increased your contact pool with very little expense or effort.
If you are collecting emails, create an e-newsletter like Constant Contact to be sent once a month to update customers on what’s new. Give them a discount if they send you a new customer. Happy customers are a good source for advertising.
It might sound easy…but I have dealt with small business owners for 16 years and I have personally used this method to develop new sales.
100 list:
Make a list of everyone you know….now its real easy to list mom and dad….I am talking about the place you buy grocerys, get gas, take your dry cleaning, buy supplies, cash your check, school you went to or your kids, sports you play or kid in, all of it. Now who runs it or owns it. It is easier to start off with a warm lead….someone you know or somewhere you are already a customer at to start a conversation.
I will give you an example. I was driving thru dropping off my dry cleaning and asked the girl who the owner was. She gave me a name. I called back the next day and asked for “Mrs. Storeowner” and told her what wonderful service Mrs. Employee gave me yesterday. I then say I have been coming here for 10 years and I have always had a good experience…..and then I lead in with…..I just opened “my company” and will be covering your area….tell her how you think your product can help her store or personally….since she has helped you for all these years. I got 43 new clients on this deal, because she just started talking and I learned more and more ways to help her.
Even if you know you can’t help them with your product…tell her briefly what you will be doing as a new business owner in her area and ask if she knows any of the other owners (close to her) where your product could help. You can build referrals from people you know and then use their name as lead-in to new businesses you are unfamiliar with.
Seems simple but it works well…even with family….tell your mother, father, sister, cousin, kids, whatever…..whoever you know what you do and ask if they know somebody….you will network and develop business everywhere you go! Get good service at a restarant give your card to the waitress and tell her “if I can ever help you like you helped me today…let me know” and always ask who the owners name is….see how it rolls!
Good Luck
the important question is “what is your business”. if you are into retailing, you must do the following:
know the product yourself
make a market study
if the product is low priced, sell it to your family and friends and see the response
you should have the faith that it will sell
and god bless you and your venture.
I recommend Direct Response Marketing. You can rent mailing lists of people who have purchased products and services similar to those you sell.
Direct Response is one of the only forms of marketing where you can exactly and precisely track your return on investment.
I haven’t found a business yet that couldn’t benefit from Direct Response Marketing.