For the average business owner, marketing can be tough. Often times they have their hands tied with running the business, let along marketing it. For that reason, as small business digital marketing experts, we decided to help give you a jump start today and show you how you can start marketing yourself online in ways that are:
- Simple to build
- Inexpensive to run
- Easy to manage
If you found any of these strategies helpful, let us know!
- Start blogging about your industry. Focus on engaging your target audience and building trust by offering a tremendous amount of value in the content you provide.
- Run Facebook ads targeting your audience.
- Have a contest on your Facebook page that involves people sharing your content for a chance to win something.
- Sign up for HARO (HelpAReporter.com). It’s a free service that connects journalists writing articles with experts in the field they’re writing on. Connect with them and get free publicity for your brand. Here’s a great resource to walk you though the “ins and outs”.
- Offer to write a guest column/article for your local newspaper or a well known town blog.
- Start going to networking events or conferences in your industry. Building relationships is the number one way to increase your referral rate. Meetup.com is a great place to start.
- Run a free training seminar discussing a vertical in your industry.
- Sign up for local directories such as Merchant Circle.
- Use Twitter’s search feature to find people mentioning your industry and talk to them.
- Start an email marketing campaign to inform your past customers about new deals.
- Create a rewards program for new customers.
- Create a referral program for past customers.
- Give away free samples to bloggers in your industry for them to write reviews about on their blog.
- Cross-promote your business with another in the same industry but not a direct competitor.
- Learn to up-sell new products or services to current clients.
- Create a press release about a new product, feature, or service you offer.
- Join and contribute to internet forums relevant to your industry. Reddit is a great start. Example: If you own a coffee shop, check out reddit.com/r/coffee to learn more about and engage with your audience.
- Cold call utilizing the “loss leader” technique. This is a strategy whereby you call a prospective buyer and offer them one of your smaller products/services at a very low cost, then after building his or her trust, you up-sell your higher cost products/services.
- Ask family and friends to put out your marketing materials where they work – business cards, brochures, etc.
- Offer free, no-obligation consultations. We even use this one!
- Ask past customers for testimonials to use on your website and marketing materials.
- Ask past customers to write reviews on sites such as Yelp and Google My Business.
- Find podcast’s in your industry and let the host know you’d love to come on to chat.
