While larger companies may have a huge budget to play with, your small business can end up struggling to keep up. However, this doesn’t mean that you should despair. A lot of companies manage to grow into successful enterprises from starting out on a shoestring. Ultimately, it all comes down to spending that money wisely and ensuring that you adopt strategies that have the best chance of achieving the level of success that you are looking for. With this idea firmly in mind, the following blog post is all about how you can better market your small business on the budget that you have available.
Sell Your Business Succinctly
The average person has a very limited attention span these days, which means that you have to be even more skilled at summarizing your business and making it seem as appealing as possible. This site tells you more about different marketing techniques. One of the most effective ways of selling your business is by coming up with an elevator pitch. Essentially, this means selling your business in the time that it takes for an elevator to reach the correct floor. Knowing that you only have this limited amount of time is a great way of focusing your mind. You can then use the theme of this pitch in your marketing materials. You can also utilize it if you ever find yourself in a pitching situation with some clients or if you attend a networking event. The ability to grab someone’s attention and hold it is absolutely invaluable in today’s marketplace, so if you can hone this ability, it is certainly worth doing so as much as possible.
Think Locally
While many entrepreneurs have a dream of making it big and being in charge of a multinational corporation, the truth is that you need to start off smaller than this. Providing a service to your local area should be your starting point. Even if you are going to rely on online ads, there are plenty of ways of ensuring that these are targeting locally rather than putting them out to a national audience. Also, you shouldn’t underestimate how useful it can be to use traditional advertising techniques. People still want to be involved in their local communities, and if you give them the opportunity to do this, they will certainly be grateful for it. A nice way of getting involved is by sponsoring a local event or charity. This way, you are giving something back to the community, and you are also demonstrating that you are a caring business to the wider public at large. Another advantage of starting out locally is that it allows you to profile your ideal customer, and you can get a nice idea of who is responding well to your business and who is not.
Analyze Your Data
These days, marketing is all about data. With the prevalence of the internet, you have access to the inner workings of people’s minds more than ever before. It makes sense that you seek to understand this data and utilize it in creating the perfect strategy. Of course, you can learn to do this yourself, or you always have the option of hiring an agency that has the necessary skills and knowledge to take care of it for you. The great thing about data analytics is that you often don’t have to spend huge sums of money on it, but you can find out so much useful stuff.
Learn How to Network
While many entrepreneurs are great at coming up with ideas, they are often not so adept at selling themselves. Therefore, learning the art of networking can prove to be invaluable. Nowadays, a lot of networking is done online, and this style of meeting up with people is a skill in of itself. Ultimately, it is all about practicing and putting yourself out there as much as possible. A lot of people get sick of networking as it is a grind, but when you start to see results, this can provide an enormous sense of satisfaction. When you attend a networking event, you need to try and mingle with as many people as possible. Give them the elevator pitch that we discussed above. However, you also need to learn how to listen as you never know the ways in which you could work with another business further down the line. At the same time, you still need to remember the main reason that you are there and be assertive if someone simply won’t stop talking.
Set Up a Loyalty Scheme
One of the tried-and-tested ways of marketing a business – whether large or small – is to introduce a loyalty scheme. It could be a stamp card system through which you reward someone after they have made a certain number of purchases. Alternatively, you might want to reward customers via a points system. Customer loyalty is one of the most valuable things that you can generate in a business. This is largely down to the fact that returning customers will often spend more than new ones as they are already familiar with your business and what you have to offer. With a loyalty scheme, it is easy to tell how successful it is, and you can always make adjustments to it further down the line as and when required.
Generate Customer Referrals
People tend to listen to referrals from friends and family members much more than generic marketing messages, so if you are able to get people to do your marketing work for you this can go a long way towards ensuring that you run a successful company. In the first instance, if you want to get positive referrals, it is simply worth asking for them. This is generally easier if you run a business that places itself in the heart of the local community and generates a positive reaction among people. Another way that you can generate referrals is with a specific scheme. Usually, this works by offering some sort of reward to the referrer and referee – usually a free gift or a discount code of some description. Of course, if you can ensure that a positive word of mouth message is spread, this can go a long way to doing a lot of your marketing work for you.
Master Email Marketing
A lot of companies engage in email marketing, and it is certainly one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, but it still proves to be one of the most effective. To start off with, you need to grab your customers’ attention, which is generally done through an effective subject line that makes them want to click through onto the email itself. You then need an email that has been well-designed, using some eye-catching and attention-grabbing words. However, this can prove to be a difficult balancing act to strike. First of all, you don’t want the email to appear too ‘spammy’ as this can cause it to disappear into the wrong folders. Also, you want to ensure that you don’t annoy people too much as this can cause them to unsubscribe – meaning that you have lost them from the mailing list forever.
Utilize Social Media Effectively
A big part of social media marketing is opening up a dialogue with your customers. You also want to encourage as many likes and shares as you can possibly attract. When you are deciding which platforms that you want to target, you should choose the ones that are going to be the most beneficial to your company. For example, if you run a more visual brand, you are going to attract greater attention via the photo and video apps such as Instagram and TikTok. The majority of businesses go for the classic social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but don’t underestimate how useful the newer ones can be. Also, you need to come up with a clear content strategy that details everything including the times when you are going to put up new posts and the actual content itself. If you are constantly trying to make everything up on the spot, this can end up being a much more difficult way of gathering a following. You also need to measure which posts are attracting a great deal of attention, and which ones are not appealing to people in the way that you would have hoped.
Use Coupons and Discounts Effectively
Customers are much savvier than ever before and are always on the lookout for a great deal. Coupons and discount codes are used by everyone – including the bigger retailers. So, use them wisely to attract the type of following that you are looking for. Ensure that you calculate them into your profit margins so that they don’t cause a negative impact on your business finances.
Even though you are on a tight budget, the above tips and tricks can prove to be invaluable in marketing your business effectively.
