5 Small Business Marketing Tips

A few hints on marketing your business on a budget. In no particular order and not "Marketing essentials" or "5 Top Marketing tips"....just some quick marketing advice.

1. Know your customer – Who are you marketing too? If you want to be a successful family pub then don’t start advertising student concessions and 2 for 1 cocktails. Work out a profile or two of your core customers and think about what they would want from you – do some market research!

2. Make full use of the Internet – Whatever your business does, trust me the internet could get you more business. With the introduction of Google Maps whatever your business is it will be searched for online. Most your custom may come through word of mouth or the 20ft sign you have outside your building but is it really worth ignoring those people who search online for you? What about tourists who search for an Italian restaurant on their iphone or the travelling salesmen who needs a new shirt and uses his laptop to find a tailor? There is no business that cannot benefit from having some kind of web presence and there are no excuses these days. You can make your own site for free or have it built for next to nothing.

3. Email marketing – We all hate spam emails but done correctly email newsletters can be a great method of staying in your customers minds and generating new business.  3 – 4% is seen as the average “conversion” rate of an email marketing campaign although this can vary industry to industry and can also be improved upon using various techniques.

4. Don’t forget your existing customers! – W have all seen those ads where a bank will offer great deals to new customers but treats the existing customer badly, well are you guilty of that? It costs a lot more to gain new custom than it does to get more repeat custom. Can you sell other products to existing customers? Could you motivate them to refer you onto others?

5. Be attractive! – No I don’t mean looks, I am talking about making your business one that people want to use. Think about marketing as promoting the benefits of using you NOT convincing people to use you because you want them to. Use offers, emphasise your strengths anything to make people sit up and take notice!

For more Marketing advice just give me a call or request contact via the form on the left of your screen. I am pretty sure i can come up with some idea's for your business!