When we’re online, we tend to take mental notes of how our competitors are doing. These may not be our direct competitors, but there still our competitors nonetheless. Other marketers are doing the exact same things that we are.
Some marketers make it really big while others seem just to trudge along. What’s the difference? I know it’s not luck. If that were true, then online success would be seemingly random.
Since it’s not, we might want to take a look at what some of our more successful colleagues are doing that we are not. Now, I don’t claim to know every single secret, but I do know that if you’re not using these four ways to market your business, you’re wasting your money!
Let’s get started.
1. Create Local Awareness
The first thing you can do is create local awareness. By going through the effort of doing a little offline marketing, you can gain coverage in your local newspaper, possibly trade magazines and even other websites. All these can increase your name recognition and let people know you are. All of these methods carry the benefit of gaining new customers.
Instead of hiring some expensive PR firm, as a new startup, you would be better off doing it yourself. There are all sorts of reasons to spend money. Spending money is really easy. The question is can you do this without spending money?
2. Utilize Email Marketing
Email marketing is free – assuming that you got your email server all set up with your website host. The point is, you’re not being charged by the email. Email marketing is horribly underutilized. People look at spam mail and think to themselves, “I don’t want people to see my communication as spam.” This leaves people in an awkward position of assuming that people spend more time ignoring emails than they do reading them.
The truth is, emails do get read. Email marketing does work. If you don’t do it the right way, you might as will be slinging mud at the wall, just to see what sticks. Hone in on your audience and provide information worth reading.
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3. Utilize Social Media
Did you know that over 84 percent of businesses STILL don’t use social media? They see social media as a waste of time. All that would be true if you wasted your time on social media. However, if you utilize the power of social media to reach your audience, you could be creating entire campaigns without spending a dime. Facebook accounts are free. YouTube accounts are free. Utilize both of those as they both have different audiences. Oh yeah – and Twitter. Twitter is also free. There is more, but you get the idea.
4. Leverage Your Own Customers
Leverage your own customers. There’s no better social proof to gain an authoritative stance then to stand on the shoulders of your customers. Satisfied clients provide a more potent business marketing tool than any article. It’s real social proof that you deliver on your promises and that your promises are worth paying for – it can’t get any better than that.
Am I saying that you should quit what you’re doing and completely redo your overall marketing strategy for this year? Absolutely not!
All I’m saying is that you work hard. Your time is valuable. Your money is valuable. Your effort is valuable. Two of those things, your time and your effort, are irreplaceable.
Marketing a small business is critical to its success. There’s no shame in marketing. Now I’m not saying that you need to go off and utilize unethical methods to get your business in front of people. In fact, I’m saying just the opposite. You can use white hat techniques, such as these four that are completely free, and get honest customers. Isn’t that what you’re in business for to begin with?
Nobody starts a business says to themselves, “I’m going to be mediocre.” No – instead, they go into business because they want to stand on the shoulders of giants. Are they expecting to replace icons like Steve Jobs? Of course not. That’s not the point. While we are all competitors, we are also all colleagues. Marketers have this “unwritten code” that we follow. We have certain rules we won’t break. We do our best to influence each other in positive ways. We don’t ever try to look better than somebody else by putting them down. That doesn’t make us look better. That makes us look worse.
Even if you’ve already mapped out this entire year and every campaign you plan on launching, add these four methods in there. They won’t cost you a dime.
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