This blog post is based on a slide show that I prepared called “Marketing your small business – Low Cost / No Cost strategies available to ALL small businesses”. It is available here if you’d like to see the whole presentation.
Small businesses are generally scared of marketing. Scared of what it will cost. Scared if it doesn’t work. Scared if it DOES work. Scared of not doing it. Here are three low cost / no cost marketing strategies available to small business owners that can alleviate some of these fears:
Branding
- Branding isn’t just for big companies. You and your employees are your brand in the eyes of your client – use that to your advantage.
- Think about your brand – what you do or more importantly what your customers think you do
- Invest in a professional logo – it will be worth it
- Brand everywhere – once you’ve made the investment, bang home your brand in as many places as possible
Inbound marketing
- Information you have about what you do is of interest to other people
- Give people what they want – information, data, checklists, hints and tips, whatever they are searching for and in return get warm sales leads.
- If someone finds you via a search and then contacts you, they have totally pre-qualified themselves and could potentially be your best ever prospect.
Be the expert
- People are interested in what you know – so tell them!
- Promote the educational aspect of your knowledge and people will ask you for help
- Seek out venues that work for you and where your target audience congregates
Does this really work? Over the last two weeks I did five presentations as a “technically-oriented marketing expert” (my phrase, my quotation marks). I met a bunch of great people, I impressed a handful of them (and got a nice recommendation on LinkedIn) and I got to make three proposals to brand new potential clients that I would never have met otherwise. So yes, it does work but just like everything else you have to devote time and commitment to the task and not expect to knock it out of park every time.
Posted by John Tully
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