Marketing can be expensive, but it’s necessary if businesses want more visibility. If you’re in the process of creating your own small shop and would want your business to grow in the future, then you have to build momentum online and in-person. Even if you are on a shoestring budget, there are some small ways that you can gain brand awareness and build a bigger customer base every day.
Businesses, regardless of the size and niche, should prioritize their marketing efforts because this enables them to educate and engage with customers. The right marketing strategy can also become a business’s edge to stand out from the competition and attain long-term success in the industry. To ensure that your business benefits from marketing, implement the following strategies for your company:
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Branded Promotional Items
One of the best ways to get your business out there is by creating promotional items, such as t-shirts or personalized pens. These can be given away in-store, at events, or included with purchase. These can also be used as giveaway bags for social media contests. While it may seem costly, you can generally order these items in bulk and have them on hand for whatever giveaways or incentives you want to create.
When giving out branded promotional items, make sure that the information about your business is printed on the item. If you’re going to give out personal pens, for example, have your business name, logo, and contact number printed on the item. This way, it’ll be easy for the recipient to remember and contact your business if these pieces of information are visible to them whenever they use the pen.
Create Iconic Business Cards
Wherever you go anywhere as a business owner, you may be given an opportunity to network, share your products, or talk about your experience as an entrepreneur. These are great opportunities to share a business card. You should always have a few of these stashed away in your wallet to hand out when the opportunity arrives. It speaks to your professionalism and gives them a way to contact you. In addition, business cards show off your branding so it sticks in the mind of your new contact.
For you to effectively use business cards as part of your marketing efforts, make sure that you design them properly. For starters, you should follow basic design principles such as working at 300dpi for the best image production and keeping all of your key copies at least 5mm from the trim edge.
Set UP Every Social Media Channel
This is a completely free way to market your business, but it does take time. To get started, you can think of the social networks where your audiences are most active. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest come to mind, but if you are in a B2B market, then LinkedIn may also be one of the social networks to try.
Social networks give you a free way to publish all kinds of content, whether it’s promotions for your business or a blog that shares your expertise in the industry. You can share pictures, videos, live streams, anecdotes, your company’s history, contact information, and online stores. Best of all, business pages on social media pop up high in search results on Google and Bing.
Once you have built a following, you can start sharing more, and if you ever need more social reach, you can always add a little budget and promote or advertise your content to larger audiences. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn have advertising managers that allow you to target new audiences based on location, demographics, online behavior, and interests.
When using social media to market your products and services, avoid creating too many profiles at once. Remember that the success of social media marketing heavily depends on the accuracy of the content published. Creating social media profiles will be useless if you can’t exert time and effort to maintain it for years.
Build Your Email List
Did you know that you can add a “sign up” button to your business Facebook page? You could like this to a landing page with an email subscription sign up or whatever kind of lead form you choose! Email marketing is the best way to reach customers on a private channel right on their phones. Most people check their email multiple times per day whenever they look at their inbox, while it can be tricky to stay on their subscribe list, you can send educational and entertaining emails directly to your subscribers to keep them interested in your products.
Email marketing is especially good to set up if you have a blog and an online store. You can easily send people directly to your content, products, and promotions with a simple message. There are also new email services that allow you to set up automated programs to welcome new subscribers or auto-responders when they purchase something. You can send additional information, shipping and tracking, or other offers.
You can also offer trials, discounts, and giveaways via email marketing as well. IT could open a whole new way to get more customers and orders by offering an incentive to get friends to sign up.
It’s also the best way to re-engage with customers who signed up but didn’t purchase or who made a first-time purchase and then never returned. You can send a promotional offer to get them to make a new purchase.
Start Marketing Now
Contrary to popular belief, marketing your company doesn’t always have to be expensive nor taxing. There are actually many ways on how you can market your company, most of which will only require your creativity and consistency.
If you’re clueless about how and where to start marketing your company, this article can be a great guide. You can start implementing one marketing strategy at a time or implement several at once to see which works.
