1- Social Media links in your e-mail signature.
By including a link to your Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and
Twitter sites at the bottom of the signature file in your e-mail messages, you
can spread the word about your business every time you hit the Send
button. We suggest to our clients to use
Social Media religiously to promote their company and get more clients. The cost is nothing but a little thought
power.
2- Use the back of your business card.
If you don’t have a huge marketing budget to advertise in
print, radio or television please read on. The back of your business card is
most under-utilized marketing piece that you own, and it's almost free. By
featuring a photo of yourself, a picture of your product, a ‘give-a-way’, or a
list of services or products, you turn your business card into a powerful
marketing tool. At networking events it is a great conversation starter, and it
also allows you to convey important facts about your business during those
precious seconds when you have someone's attention.
3- Revamp your website.
OK, you probably spent a fortune building a website, and
let’s not forget about those monthly maintenance fees. There is no need to re-build your website, but
it is time for your website to have a low cost facelift. Rather than spending
more money (again) to redesign your home page, try creating a series of
low-cost "landing pages" to test different ads and offers for your
products and services. Remember, your website is not a brochure. In fact, most of your traffic today comes in
through the back door and through blog postings. Be sure that your site is easy
to read for people browsing the web through their computers, and more
importantly, through their iPhones and BlackBerrys.
4- Position yourself as an expert.
Nothing builds your brand faster than free advice. Whether
you're a landscaper, a handbag designer or a dog walker, your expertise will
have customers knocking at your door offering to pay you to help solve their
problems. The key is to give away ‘something’ of value to build an audience.
Once you find out what works, go out there and replicate it. One client, a
restaurant, regularly tweets about: new menu specials, special events, and limo
services. They continue growing their clientele
on an on-going basis.
5- Swap lists with Strategic Partners that have similar
demographics.
There's no reason to pay big money to buy a mailing list
when you can get sites that attract a similar audience. For example, a site that publishes a
newsletter about women in finance used this technique to build a list of 50,000
subscribers. They did lots of ‘trades’ with Strategic Partners that cost them
nothing out of pocket. The key is to
create great content and give it away for free on the web. However, be careful
to respect the privacy of the subscribers whose email addresses are on the
lists you swap, or you may get stuck in a spam filter. To avoid trouble, ask
the Strategic Partner to start by doing co-marketing, simply saying that you
have joined forces and “since you are a preferred customer of XYZ, be expecting
some valuable information from [your business]” Make certain to include a link
to your site that their subscribers can sign up for your newsletter, and of
course make certain you comply with opt-out regulations.
6- Get a vanity phone number.
Just because the phone company stuck you with a random
number when you signed up for their service doesn't mean that you're saddled
with it for life. The owner of Good
Girls Go To Paris Crepes LLC, was looking for ways to bring customers in the door
when she found Ring Ring LLC, a company that provides small businesses with
vanity phone numbers. She picked 1-877-PARISCREPES, and her phone has been
ringing off the hook ever since. Due to
the huge amount of telephone traffic she said that she will never give up that
number– she said, "in fact, that's how people know us". The cost: approximately $25 a
month.
Just because you've found a single marketing strategy that
seems to be working doesn't mean that you should blow your entire budget this
concept. First, diversify your dollars
and efforts by trying several marketing strategies, than test, measure and test
again before trying your next campaign. Google Analytics will measure your traffic
for free and tell you where your site visitors are coming from and which search
terms they're using to find you. Test
every piece of your marketing campaign, once you've found the right formula,
follow it.
The bottom line.
You don't need to have a big marketing
budget to make a big splash. A tweak (or Tweet) here, a tweak (or Tweet) there,
and soon your phone and email will be buzzing with new business.
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