Apart from having to run effective administrative system, managing employees, and the financial aspect of running a business, one of the challenges that face small business owners is that they often don’t have the type of resources that’s at the disposal of big businesses to do their marketing activities.
To ease some of the marketing challenges, we have put together some free tips or ideas that can help you market your product to both existing and new customers as a small business.
So enjoy the ride with us as we introduce these ideas one after the other.
1. Create A Google My Business Account.
As a business owner you wouldn’t want to ignore Google My Business account. Recently I was looking for a Registered Surveyor in a certain locality and I went straight to google to search and whew! I had so many Surveyors from that locality that I wouldn’t be able to find out on my own. I ended up doing business with one of them. If that one Surveyor didn’t take his time to create a Google my business Account the business would have pass on to the one that did. That is the power of the most used search engine in the world – A Google My Business Account put you in the front of prospects that are searching for your products or services and contribute to your business marketing or website ranking well on google search engine.
And apart from help in marketing of your business it also a great way to verify your business credibility.
2. Run A Social Media Contest.
Social media contest or competition is a campaign on social media that encourages your users engagement and participation which will lead to more people becoming aware of your service or product. It is a great marketing idea that if it is well planned could generate a lots of revenue for your business. You could give away some bonuses or a souvenir that you know your users will be interested in in exchange for them commenting or liking or sharing your content with their friends.
Granted, many companies spend a lot of money in hosting social media contest but the marketing dollars you spend in giveaways or freebies don’t have to be extreme. For examples let’s say your a food vendor, you could host an Instagram contest that gave away dips and deserts in exchange for participants liking the post, follow the Instagram account and share with their friends.
3. Sharing Users’ Feedback or Generated content.
User generated content or user feedback is one great way which cost you nothing than to just share it. One advantage of this is that your potential customers are getting unbiased messages from those that has already used your products or services thereby making them trusting you. You could share your user feedback on social platform and other internet channels.
4. Utilize Refer a Friend Scheme.
Customers Recommendations are a gold dust for your business. People are more will to buy from you if you are being recommended by someone they already trust. So you could create a Refer A Friend Scheme that encourages people to refer your services to their friend and family. You could give incentive in terms of discount or cashback for customers who refer their friends in order to motivate them.
A good referral scheme could make you good sales in the long run and create a bus around your business.
5. Attend Networking Events.
Social Media a very good avenue to do marketing but don’t forget also that traditional face to face networking events works as well. These kind of networking events(which are often related to your industry) provide avenue for you pitch your business to potential prospects making the community to be more aware of your business.