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If you are reading this it's because you are ready to take your business to the next level. Marketing is an important part of running your business. If you want your sales to grow then you will need some form of marketing. Let's get started with some tips to help you grow your business.
There are many ways to market your business. We will go over some of them today. You have Online Marketing and Offline Marketing. You should be using both us these methods. In 2019 both are just as important as the other.
Online Marketing consists of social media marketing along with Online Videos, Digital Banners, Emails, and SEO. We are moving more and more into online marketing especially with the take-off of eCommerce. Now there is no need to have storefronts like in the past.
Offline Marketing consists of word of mouth, flyers, Custom t-shirts, billboards, radio stations, television commercials, promotional items such as car magnets, ink pens, stickers and more. Offline marketing is still very important in today's society. Somethings are dying such as the phonebook and some others but offline marketing will always be here.
You need to know who your customers are. You do not want to wast advertising money reaching out to someone that has no plan on using your service or products. It would be a waste of resources. Ala your time and your money.
If you are selling a product something as simple as a red hat out your store in Los Angeles. Let's say the hat is an L.A Dodgers hat. How would you go about selling this product? If you have just a $100 advertising budget. Let's say I was using Facebook to try and sell this hat. I would first set up a Facebook campaign and target People that live in the Los Angeles area. Why? Because I just said our store is in Los Angeles so let's pretend that we are not shipping items. Second I would target people on Facebook that like the L.A Dodgers. Third, I would target people whose favorite color is red.
Now what we did by breaking the niche all the way down we have a better chance of selling the hat by targeting people that would actually be interested in the hat. This is knowing who your customer is. The same thing goes for SEO or offline marketing. Disney land is most likely not going to send me an advertisement telling about there 1 time special this weekend. No, they would send this postcard to someone local that can make it there within a couple of days.
Social media marketing is targeting your customers on social media websites and advertising your small business to them. You are either trying to sell them products or services. Maybe even subscriptions to information.
If you are participating in social media marketing you definitely need to be using all of the above channels for marketing. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are King. You can either market your business for free on these sites and they also have paid ways. You should be using both ways for your small business.
The first thing that you will want to do is sign up for a business account on your social media platforms. This is perfect for your small business because now you are taking it to a more professional level instead of using your own personal account to communicate with customers.
After you create your small business account you will want to get followers on your page. If you are using facebook you will want likes. This helps to get your content to your customers if they are following you or like your account.
You need to post content and not just any content. Think about it, you don't want to just post spammy sale items. You want to post things that can help your customers and post some photos. Maybe post funny pictures of your crew at work. Make your company sociable. Make your customers feel part of the family.
Engage with your customers. Like and comment on customers post. Ask everyone how their day is going. Be social on your Social Media account. This way your customers will think of you over the other 1000 people that are offering your customer the same exact thing that you are.
Social media marketing comes naturally to me. I find it easy to post on social media and get products and services to who needs to see them. One thing that can happen when marketing on social media is that whichever account that you are using can kick you off their platform. So never put all your marketing eggs in one basket. We had an issue when using Pinterest. Pinterest suspended our account permanently and when they do this they do not answer the emails or tell you why they kick you off. Facebook when temporary stop you from liking and commenting and sharing if they feel you are doing one of the actions too much. I can understand their concern to want to stop spam and make money off their platform by selling you ads but this is frustrating when you are trying to market your business.
First thing First is you will want to use a professional email account. Your Google account is nice but from a customer perspective, they may think that it is unprofessional if you are emailing them from an email like Dave342test@gmail.com. You will want your email address to be something like Test@needtshirtsnow.com. That way you have your business name in your email instead of google or yahoo.
Also, you will want to build up your Customer Email list. You can do this in a number of different ways. You can ask customers on your social media accounts for their emails to send them more information on your business. Or you can build up a customer email list by offering customers an incentive. Have you ever noticed that when you are on some websites they offer you something in the lines of 10% off if you supply your name and email address?
Personalize your Email Signature. You can put nice links to your social media accounts and links to your website. You can also put something there that gives customers the opportunity to rate your performance. All these different things add up to the perfect email experience. I like to attach videos and promotions to our email signature.
If you are sending out weekly or daily specials I do not recommend that you send them from your own IP Address. Especially if your customer base is in the thousands. You will find that all your emails will go to the spam folder. That is something that you definitely don't want to happen. This happened to us once and that problem last for years. You can use email software like Mail Chimp or another email service.
Do not Spam your customers with advertising emails for your small business. This can get extremely annoying. Take the time and send an email maybe once a week or every 2 weeks. Send Follow up emails to make sure that your customer was happy with the product or service that they received. You can keep in contact and send great emails without spamming.
Use Infographics in your emails. People love visuals. Want to take it a step further? Use infographic videos in your emails. Attach a video or post a link. If you are trying to show your customers whey they should use your service instead of another infographic are great for this.
You need to have also Subject lines. Make it irresistible to not click on. If you have a boring subject line no one is going to even open your email. Get straight to the point. If you are having a 50% off sale. Let them know in the Subject line.
Content Marketing is creating content so that you can engage with your customers and generate leads.
Content Marketing is what we are doing right now. We are blogging writing to you a potential customer about how you a small business owner can get new tips on marketing your small business. Why do we want to help small business owners like your self? Because business wears uniforms. That's right, you or your employees will most likely wear custom t-shirts at some point to market your business. You see how we are building on our relationship.
If you are blogging and producing content and sharing that content on your social media then you are content marketing. Content marketing is important for small businesses online because it keeps your website relevant and it also helps your customers out. We spoke about email marketing earlier. Now, what if you applied the same strategy and shared your new blog post with your customer directly to their email. Rember we spoke about who is your customers? Let say we narrowed it down and only sent this blog post to small business owners in an email. Also, blogging is fun. If you find your self-learning and talking about certain things all day why not write them down and make some money off of them. If you would like to learn more about blogging take a look at our article How To Start a Blog.
So if you have a small business I am sure you already have your website put together. Not its time to use that website and target some of your customers by writing blog articles. Just make sure that your information is that you are providing is helpful for your audience. Did you know blogging also pays? You can use blogging to generate more money for your small business marketing budget. Just sign up for Google Adsense and get started. Read our other article How To Make $100 a Day Blogging.
Guerilla Marketing is a form of marketing that is kind of dramatic. Let's just say we had a giant t-shirt above our office that is up like a flag and it says your design here. It's not that expensive to do but it will make everyone stop for a second to look. Another example of Guerilla Marketing is when Bounty the paper towel company put large items knocked over around New York City and they advertised that they could clean up these massive large spills caused by these dramatic sized items. Guerilla marketing is often cheap and effective.
So we went over a lot of valuable information about how you can market your small business.
We learned that we must first learn who our customer is. Then we must come up with a strategy on how to promote our services or products to them. After we retain them as a customer we offer them information through email to help them out. We also follow back with emails to make sure that our customer is happy with us through email marketing. Now its time to Come up with a strategy and put it into action. Let's make our businesses grow.
If you have any comments or questions or concerns please let us know in the comments below.
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