Sneha Mittal — July 3, 2019 — July 3, 2019
Are you a business owner who wants to grow your business but doesn’t know much about marketing? Do you want to attract more customers to your business? Do you want a quick checklist of things you can do to grow your business?
This post is the fourth installment in the 10 part series which takes you through the basics of small business marketing.
Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide Overview
The 10 part guide is divided into the following sections:
- Naming, Logos & Branding
- Your Product / Service
- Marketing Planning Basics
- Online Marketing
- Promotions
- Pricing
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Grow Your Network
- Customer Focused
- Physical Evidence
- Teaching
In this article, we share some quick tips to effectively promote your business without spending a lot of money. You can quickly increase your reach by creating promotions for your business.
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Add an effective call to action button
What good are your products and services if nobody knows where to find them on your website? You can urge customers to take action when visiting your website with an attractive call to action buttons. Some examples of call to action include “Buy Now”, “Hurry! Limited time offer”, “Try it now” and “Read More”. See here for tips on CTA microcopy.
With an effective call to action text, you generate a sense of urgency in the mind of the customer which then results in better conversions. A successful call to action has three main features which are the placement on the website, the design of the button and the text used on the button. You can play around with each of the features to see what works best for your business.
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Create a promotional video
Although a promotional video is a popular way of promoting your business, many small business owners shy away from the idea. The attention span of customers is growing smaller, and hence a promotional video can help you attract more customer attention with fewer efforts.
Nowadays, many affordable options available in the market who can make the video for your business. A promotional video can help you reach a broader audience. It’s a one-time investment which is also long-lasting.
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Create your personal booking system
If your business offers services to your customers then a great way to promote business is to get an online appointment booking system. It works great for sales teams, individual lawyers, driving instructors, repair professionals, etc. who offer individual services and for session booking services like yoga classes, coaching sessions, tour operators, B&B homes who offer customers to book a session with them or a particular resource.
The system allows you to set your availability, monitor booking statistics, send automated reminders and notifications, integrate it into your website, accept online payments, sync with personal calendar and set cancelation policy.
You can customize your booking schedule with your colors and logo, customize booking forms and share the system with your staff members. Another great feature of the system is that you can coordinate multiple schedules automatically with the system which saves you a lot of manual efforts, hence, resulting in improved revenue.
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Claim your free Google listing
Google my business is a free tool by Google which allows you to manage how your business appears on Google Search and Google Maps. You can claim your free Google Listing and customize your business details like business name, location and business hours. You can add photos for your business and monitor and respond to customer reviews on Google. It’s a great way to improve the discoverability of your business.
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Free Business Listings
A simple and easy way to reach more customers is to claim free business listings on multiple websites like Yelp, Yellow pages, Bing Places, Foursquare, Yahoo Local, etc. You can research the internet to find the directories where your competitors are listed and ensure that you’re also listed on the same websites. Many websites allow you to create a free account and add your business information. Listing your business on multiple websites will also help your SEO efforts.
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Offer free trials
A free product trial can result in a win-win situation for both you and your customers. While you invest your money in giving out free product trial, your customers invest their time in learning more about your product. When you offer free trials you’re showing your customers how your product/service works instead of telling them about it in a speech. Experience is always a great way to reduce aggressive selling efforts and increase customer satisfaction. A great product will sell itself and attract more customers with word of mouth marketing.
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Start contests
Contests are a great way to generate buzz about your business and increasing your fan base online. You can engage with your customers with interesting contests. Here are the steps to design a contest for your business:
- Decide what’s the aim of your contest. The aim could be something like increasing Facebook followers or reaching more people.
- Finalize your budget for the prizes and decide how many prizes you can give away in that budget.
- Next, build your contest. Think of an interesting idea which people would like to talk about or something which may also help your business. For example, if you’re a yoga studio you may ask people to tweet about “Yoga is important because…”.
- Once you’ve finalized your contest details, create your promotion plan. Do you want to limit the contest to Twitter or is it a contest in print media or do you want to use multiple platforms to promote the same?
- Once everything falls into place, decide the basic ground rules and the timelines for the contest and create creatives around the contest.
- You’re ready to conduct the contest. Once your contest is over, measure the results to see your ROI (return on investment).
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Respond to reviews
Irrespective of whether the review is positive or negative, reviews are an important part of your business. The majority of customers search for business information online, and a few negative reviews may hinder your progress. Hence, it is important for you not only monitor reviews but also build a 2-way communication via reviews by responding to them. This will tell your potential customers that you care about your business and their complaints are being heard.
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Use occasions
Festivals and occasions are an outstanding opportunity to promote your business and reach a wider audience. You can select a few target festivals in the year, and conduct marketing activities around those areas. You can set up booths in festivals, setup product demonstrations, connect with people to answer their queries and try to engage them in conversations. You can also conduct fun and interactive activities or sponsor some smaller activities during the festival. Don’t forget to collect customer information and reach out to them later to tell them more about your business.
If we missed out on any quick and effective small business promotion ideas, please let us know in the comments section below!
This post was originally published on Just Creative.
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