7 Popular Marketing Techniques For Small Businesses
7 Popular Marketing Techniques For Small Businesses
Before your business starts marketing a product, it helps to create an ideal customer who you want to reach with your promotional materials. Once you have your ideal customer, you have a plethora of techniques to pick from. Most of these are low cost/no cost methods (sometimes called guerrilla marketing) and you may use different ones at different stages of your business cycle, or you may utilize them all at once from your business' inception. We'll look at seven of these techniques in more detail. (Do you have what it takes to work in this fast-paced field? This article will help you determine if marketing is for you.
Hooray for Free Advertising
When you build a business, the first thing you want to secure is a customer base. With a decent printer, an answering machine and an average computer, you can put together a fairly extensive advertising campaign without having to pay for space.
1. Flyers
This is the carpet-bombing method of cheap advertising. You find an area that you would like to do business in and you distribute flyers to all the mailboxes within reach. Your flyer should be brief and to the point, highlighting the services you offer and providing contact information. Offering a free appraisal, coupon or discount never hurts.
2. Posters
Most supermarkets, public spaces and malls offer free bulletin board space for announcements and advertisements. This is a hit or miss method, but you should try to make your poster reasonably visible and have removable tabs that the customers can present for a discount. Make each location a different color so that you can get an idea from the tabs where the most leads are being generated. If there is one area that is producing the majority of your leads, you can better target your campaign (flyers, ads in papers catering to those areas, cold calling, etc.)
3. Value Additions
This is one of the most powerful selling points for any product or
Before your business starts marketing a product, it helps to create an ideal customer who you want to reach with your promotional materials. Once you have your ideal customer, you have a plethora of techniques to pick from. Most of these are low cost/no cost methods (sometimes called guerrilla marketing) and you may use different ones at different stages of your business cycle, or you may utilize them all at once from your business' inception. We'll look at seven of these techniques in more detail. (Do you have what it takes to work in this fast-paced field? This article will help you determine if marketing is for you.
Hooray for Free Advertising
When you build a business, the first thing you want to secure is a customer base. With a decent printer, an answering machine and an average computer, you can put together a fairly extensive advertising campaign without having to pay for space.
1. Flyers
This is the carpet-bombing method of cheap advertising. You find an area that you would like to do business in and you distribute flyers to all the mailboxes within reach. Your flyer should be brief and to the point, highlighting the services you offer and providing contact information. Offering a free appraisal, coupon or discount never hurts.
2. Posters
Most supermarkets, public spaces and malls offer free bulletin board space for announcements and advertisements. This is a hit or miss method, but you should try to make your poster reasonably visible and have removable tabs that the customers can present for a discount. Make each location a different color so that you can get an idea from the tabs where the most leads are being generated. If there is one area that is producing the majority of your leads, you can better target your campaign (flyers, ads in papers catering to those areas, cold calling, etc.)
3. Value Additions
This is one of the most powerful selling points for any product or