Nobody will buy a product/service they’ve never heard of. They’ll also not buy from a company they know nothing about. This is why you need a good promotion strategy to help you grow your company.
Some businesses use more than one strategy, while others may employ different strategies for different promotional purposes. No matter what product or service you have to offer, a solid set of promotional methods can help get your name heard, while opening doors for communication in the future.
That said, here are 7 strategies you can use to let people know about what your business is all about.
Social Media Marketing
Promoting your business over social media is a must! There’s no other option. Instead of considering whether you should get on social media, what you should be asking yourself is how much money and time you plan to dedicate to get more social media followers and foster relationships with customers and leads.
To get started with social media marketing, choose which social media platforms to use. Consider which social media channels your target customers use most often and which ones provide the benefits that will allow you to reach and engage with your audience.
Once you know which social media platforms you’ll be employing to connect with potential customers, you should consider what kind of content you’ll post as well as how often you’ll do so.
To monitor what has been posted and where, get a social media calendar. It’s vital to make and share various kinds of content on your social media pages, from useful third-party articles to videos and branded images.
Content Marketing
Content marketing refers to the creation and distribution of valuable, consistent, and relevant content to entice and retain customers and encourage profitable customer action.
Content marketing is different from paid advertising in that it largely targets long-term results. The payoff is usually low initially, but the long-term, definite increase in visitors, customers, and leads can single-handedly support a business.
However, content marketing is far from easy and requires every aspect to be done properly, for example:
- Quality content
- Content optimized for readers
- Content optimized for SEO
- Relevant topics
- Consistent content production and promotion
Content isn’t limited to articles and blog posts. It also includes videos, online courses, podcasts, and various other media which can provide information to people.
If you’re considering content marketing for your company, make sure you’ve got the resources and time needed to get started with no initial return on investment, and then do some research. Too many companies today are just squandering resources creating poor quality content with no return on investment, now or ever.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO for short) is one of the best promotional methods for small businesses. By making minor changes to your website and creating content that emphasizes relevant keywords, you should be able to work your way up the search engine rankings. The higher your business ranks on search engines, the more opportunities you’ll get to increase traffic to your website.
SEO is particularly essential for small business as customers who’re looking to buy products or services locally often turn to their cell phone to find local businesses. By optimizing your content and site for local SEO, you’ll increase your odds of appearing in local search results. Also, it’s important to make your website mobile-friendly, which means it can be accessed and navigated easily on any mobile device.
To improve your small business SEO, you can begin with a website audit. If you don’t know how to do it, you can use an experienced SEO expert. The audit will help you understand where your website stands in terms of SEO. It’ll examine your on-page search engine optimization to determine your site’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of SEO. This includes your content as well as site structure.
SEO is essential, but it may be a little challenging, especially if you’ve got no in-house expert that knows how to optimize your website for search engines. Thankfully, this is something you can very easily outsource to an SEO marketing firm.
Email Marketing
This is one of the leading promotional tactics for small businesses. Customers are unlikely to buy from you when they visit your website for the first time. That’s why it’s vital to find ways to contact those customers once they leave. Once you’ve got their contact info, you can cultivate the leads with email marketing.
Before you begin designing and executing email marketing campaigns, find a way to get the contact information of your target audience. A lead magnet is one great way to do this. It’s a compelling offer you can give to your site visitors in return for their email. This could be a special asset like a whitepaper or eBook, a special promotion, or an invitation to a presentation or webinar.
Speaking of presentations, overhead transparencies from Filmsource are an amazing option to visually present your information. Be sure to try them out.
Once you’ve got an email list, you can start creating targeted campaigns that let you build authority and cultivate relationships with customers and leads. For best results, divide the email lists so you can send extra offers and targeted content to your audience. For example, you can create a list of leads with similar characteristics or customers that are currently buying from you.
When it comes to email marketing content, different kinds of messaging exist that you can offer in your email list. Customers often like to get sales information and promotions via email. Through email marketing, you can also send valuable and targeted content such as your blog posts, infographics, eBooks, and any other kinds of marketing material you’ve created.
Email newsletters are equally an effective to get the attention of your customers while informing them about your latest offers.
Work With Other Businesses
Teamwork is always better than flying solo, and pooling resources with another company can help you achieve things you might never accomplish by yourself.
It’s always best to target businesses in your area, even if your clients aren’t local. Your aim is to devise a complementary program that benefits both of your business.
Here are a few examples of joint ventures:
- A beauty therapist can offer free pedicures to a hairdresser’s clients.
- A coffee shop can offer free vouchers to the customers of a plumbing company.
- A PPC agency might team up with a contact research organization and refer clients to one another.
- A marketing firm could team up with an accounting company to recommend one another’s services during the onboarding of a new client.
When it comes to partnering with other businesses, the sky’s the limit. Simply find crossover in your customer base and that of your competitor, and then find ways to use that crossover in a way that benefits you both.
Implement a Loyalty Program
To increase your sales fast, you should try implementing a loyalty program for your customers. In fact, over 82% of customers are more likely to buy at shops that have customer loyalty programs.
The best news about this promotional strategy is that you can increase your sales without having to gain new customers. Your aim will be to get your current clients to spend more.
Your loyalty program should aim to achieve two things:
- Increase the average purchase amount
- Increase purchase frequency
By achieving these two goals, you should be able to boost growth through sales.
Your loyalty program can be something as common as a punched card. On their 10th visit, you give the customer a gift or something of the sort.
Or you can design a system that’s a little more elaborate. Implement a loyalty program with different spending tiers. This will help you reward the highest spending customers.
The best method to keep track of this program is through a mobile app or customer profile.
Video Marketing
Video is arguably the fastest growing form of online marketing and one of the most interesting as it’s more entertaining and eye-catching to viewers than still images.
And the best part is that YouTube allows you to do video marketing for free. Marketing your business on YouTube is a great way to help prospective customers connect with your brand.
Creating a quick video of what your business is about and then putting it on YouTube will give you a great sales tool you can post on your homepage or share in emails to potential customers. Moreover, the video is likely to receive decent visibility in search engines.
And don’t promote your business with just a quick overview video. Try posting tutorials, how-to’s, or educational style videos in your YouTube channel to get found by potential customers.
The Bottom Line
Today, there are countless avenues and platforms on which to promote your business. However, the best way to promote your business is to identify which platforms will maximize your effort while working with a budget. Take these business promotion strategies as a basis for finding your own.
With lots of hard work and a bit of luck, you’ll be well on your way to getting more solid leads and growing your bottom line.