Promoting your business is key and you will, no doubt, have various ways of doing it. But what we often find is that once a business is established there often is a tendency to rely on the same old methods, after all, if it’s not broken why fix it? But this is false logic, why? Because most businesses could always do with more sales and more opportunities. The obvious exception is where it’s an extremely small business, such as you are working in a sole-trader, individual venture and you are already working at a capacity level.
Piggyback Marketing
Piggyback marketing is an ingenious way to get some free exposure. What this involves is where there is a large event happening near you and this always brings fringe benefits to the local community we’re told. But the price of association with a major event can be steep if taking out official adverts or sponsorship. But that’s where piggybacking comes in, you can use social media hashtags to comment on the event and promote links to yourself. If your premises are nearby then get posters or adverts out. Even getting your staff to leaflet the crowds can be really effective.
Guides & Tutorials
If you offer a product or service that people are interested in for whatever reason if you can offer online guides on related subjects then it can help get traffic to your product or service. A good example would be if you sell lawnmowers then you can do a guide on garden maintenance.
Make it Visual
When doing any online promotion one thing that’s always being said is that the more visual the message you are posting is then the more engagement it is likely to receive. So if you Tweet or post on Facebook then your post is going to be more easily missed if it is a bland few sentences of text. Include an image or photograph to show what you mean. One way of conveying a lot of info in an instant is to use infographics, these are pictorial diagrams that show lots of facts at once. You can even look at making video content, this has the advantage of not only holding the viewer’s attention but if it’s interesting enough then you can get more info across, video is easier than ever to create there are some great online services such as Promo.com out there.
Referral Schemes
Who knows how good your products and services are better than your customers? Not anyone really and if you have a history of satisfied customers then it’s important to take advantage of this. One way is to encourage happy customers to leave online reviews, this not only allows other people to see how real-life customers have found you to deal with but it also is good for boosting your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and getting more exposure via Google and the other search engines. But you could also give your customers an incentive to refer their friends and family to you, this could be discounts, giveaways, and even cash back if they do this, all you need to do is create a reference number to give them to pass on to their friends.
Host an Event
If you can host an actual event then you can get people physically in the door and once they get a chance to meet you face to face then you have a much better chance of persuading them that you are a trustworthy outfit. The event could be as simple as an information day or it could be a family fun-day or other event.
Social Media Giveaways
We all know the power of social media. It can be a great advertising and sales opportunity, and we all know it’s even a place where you can network, digitally, and expand your contacts. But one specific way of using it to reach new people and, most importantly, potential customers, is to use it to offer exciting new promotions. It’s not just the usual dry and boring posting up of an ad showing what you can do. Consider a giveaway competition, the advantages of this are numerous, firstly you can showcase what you do, secondly, you get a huge increase in followers as the participants have to like and share your page to enter. The only cost is that of the prize, but if you get hundreds or even thousands of new followers then it’s a small price to pay.
This is an article provided by our partners network. It does not reflect the views or opinions of our editorial team and management.
Contributed content
HedgeThink.com is the fund industry’s leading news, research and analysis source for individual and institutional accredited investors and professionals
