If you own your own business, any money spent on marketing must lead to more sales. Otherwise it's just a waste. I've found the cheapest ways of marketing have turned out to be the most effective. Using the internet, word of mouth campaigns, public relations and creativity you can grow your business and pay yourself rather than the newspaper and radio stations. It will require a bit of work on your part but that's part of owning your own business.
Making use of your Business Cards
The lowly business card doesn't get the credit it deserves. This mini billboard lets you turn catalogs from suppliers into personalized marketing material with just a staple. Write a small offer on the back of your card and place your cards in books related to your area of expertise in the public library. I've been doing this one for years whenever I'm by the library. A couple of days after people start showing up with my business card. We're able to convert almost a 100% on the first visit. Post them on bulletin boards. Think about what you do, who needs your product and then put your business card where those people will be.
Your Website
Do updates regularly - You have to give people a reason to come back to your site. If your site is static then once they have checked it out a couple of times they see nothing has changed and don't come back. Highlight new products, people's experiences, how-to articles, mixed in with your promotions and sales material.
Make your content about more than just what's on sale - You have to engage people. On my bike shop's website, most of the articles are about how to be a better cyclist not what we are selling. Be a source of good information and people will keep coming back. Have how-to articles, tips for saving money on your product or service, personal stories of how your product is in use benefiting people. You get the idea. In my store we understand that people don't buy a bike to have a bike. They buy a bike to ride. So make your website about the experience and you will find more people buy the bike or what ever it is you sell.
Improve traffic with Search Engine Optimization and Back-links - This just takes a bit of leg work, but taking the time to learn about keywords and phrases will yield big dividends. Do a web search for SEO and you will come up with a ton of sites with good, practical information. Improve you page ranking and you will increase traffic. Have the keywords people are looking for and you will increase traffic. And here are a few ideas to increase the number of back-links to your site: write articles and post them to sites like ezinearticles.com or ehow.com, post on forums with your signature being a link to your website, exchange links with other webmasters.
Email Marketing
Emails is free, getting email addresses is easy (just ask), so why aren't you sending out weekly or at the very least monthly email newsletter. Make the articles interesting so people want to know more. Give them the tools to understand why your product is better. You can put in lots of links back to your website helping get people in the habit of checking out your website. Collect email addresses from customers, have a contest that has them fill out their email address on the ballot, put an email sign-up form on your website. Getting people to willingly receive your email newsletter isn't as hard as you think.
I've run a number of businesses over the last 15 years and made just about every mistake in the book. I've been talked into all sorts of things by ad reps. And the thing with it is all of the expensive media buys I've done have never paid off. Some saw an increase in business but never enough to pay for themselves. While I've done things that didn't always work, I do learn from my mistakes. When I analyzed the things I was doing that worked the best they all turned out to be the ones that cost the least.
I'm going to give you 5 things that you can do that will increase your traffic. In future articles I'll cover tips to increase the number of sales you close.
Word of Mouth Campaigns
Referrals are the life blood of any business. Here's a number of ways to increase the number you get
* Do your job very well. People aren't going to recommend you for no reason. Keep striving to do your job better and that will get you more business. Find out who is thought to be the best and why. Find ways you can do different things better making you unique.
* Ask your customers to refer their friends. You'd be surprised how much you get by just asking.
* Pay your customers to refer their friends. This is like the first but offer an incentive like a discount each time someone refers a friend.
Public Relations
Come up with a seminar educating about your field of expertise. Contact local schools and community groups and let them know you are willing to come in and talk about your subject. We regularly go to schools and do seminars on bikes safety, how a bike works etc. Have an info/prize bag to give out with some coupons if applicable. Do something newsworthy, like raise money for charity in a unique way, create a new way of using a product etc. Then send press releases to the local media, post articles about it on your website, send to your email list, send it out to your Social media accounts.
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