You are owning a small business, you will face the challenge of promoting yourself with a small budget to appeal more customers. To be rise above the noise of other businesses and their local advertisement, canny small businesses must hire the most efficient techniques to be found and to close the deal. Look at some of those techniques here to find out the most effective way to promote your small business at the lowest cost and maximize the effectiveness.
Yellow Pages
Once upon a time, every business paid for inclusion in the big yellow book. Today, things are different. Many people recycle this mound of yellow paper the instant it’s delivered to their door. Instead, a listing one the directory’s website, with a link to your own website, is becoming the favourite purchase of small business owners.
A web directory listing gives your business website some authority for search engines. It tells Google, Bing and Yahoo that your website represents a business in your classification and generally boosts the performance of your website in search results.
Your Website
It’s important to have a website for any business. Rather than spending on fancy graphics and features, ensure that your site has been optimised for search engines and usability. Content is king, so take the time to create plenty of copy about what you do.
Don’t try to cram everything onto a single page. The home page should provide an overview of what your company does, with optimised title tags, description and keywords. It’s also worth listing the different products or services you do on the front page, using H2 or H3 tags. These tell the search engines that content tagged H2 or H3 is a heading and therefore more important.
Social Networking
Whilst you may not use or even understand social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, many of your existing and prospective customers use these sites on a regular basis. Some people spend hours ever day using social networking. By incorporating the use of these sites in your marketing, you enable people to share information about your company and in particular, to recommend it.
The average Facebook user has 130 Facebook “friends”. By creating something that your customers would want to share with their friends, you are creating the opportunity for your customers to tell 130 people about your company. This is great advertising that costs nothing.
Vehicle Graphics
If you have a vehicle, even one that you don’t use in the business, consider having vehicle graphics applied. Website addresses are easier to remember than phone numbers, so with a short, eye-catching message and a link to your website, your vehicle can be an effective advertisment used to drive many new prospective customers to your website.
Leaflets
Leaflets are cheap, with some outrageous value-for-money deals out there. When developing a leaflet or flyer strategy, remember that often a single leaflet is not enough. Pizza delivery companies know this, which is why they typically deliver a menu every month to their surrounding neighbourhoods. Repetition is the key because flyers are often looked at for a second before the recipient decides whether or not to act on the information and to keep the leaflet.
The smart business owners know this and they add a direct-response mechanism into their leaflets, perhaps to provide prospects with more information or to offer a free sample. Leaflets that encourage prospects to begin a relationship with the company without spending any money therefore have the greatest return on investment.
Cross Promotion
When starting out in business, you may not have a client or prospect list at all. This is where it makes sense to partner with another company which complements your products and services. For example a new sign making company could partner with their accountant to offer their services to the accountant’s clients. As the client base builds up, the sign writer can then promote their accountant to their sign customers. What businesses do you know that you could cross promote?
Steve Bradshaw helps small businesses with their marketing, building effective websites and showcasing them with a local business directory
Many small businesses and new business owners are unaware of the major benefits that appearances at trade shows and industry-specific conventions have to offer, or that a display rental service can make the challenge of putting together an exhibit much easier. If you think this marketing tool may be for you, here are a few basics you should know.
The benefits of appearing at trade shows and conventions are numerous, and can help a struggling company both add loyal customers to their base, and improve the bottom line. A number of small businesses in the United States do a large portion of their business through exhibiting at these large sales-oriented events, but for many, the expense associated with putting together an attractive and eye-catching display is too prohibitive to make attending these events a viable option. One possible solution for small business owners that could use the type of boost given by a trade show exhibition— without the up-front investment— is to work with a display rental service.
Renting has distinct advantages over purchasing, particularly for small business owners that may be attending their first event, and need to experiment with a few different styles of exhibit before determining what is most successful. In addition to being less expensive, about one-fourth to one-fifth of the cost of buying a display outright, a rental offers the flexibility an inexperienced exhibitor might need. In some cases, all the business owner needs to do is create different custom banners to give the display a completely different look using the same setup. Many find this versatility to be of great advantage.
In particular, companies who have budgetary restrictions that only allow for exhibiting once or twice a year are likely to benefit from renting the necessary equipment to put together an impressive display. At the same time, the company will only need to pay to have custom-printed graphics or merchandise produced, making it appear as if much more time and money has gone into the exhibit. This allows a business the opportunity to maximize their marketing potential, and, as a result, many can then afford to expand their budget to include more than one trade show.
Not every display rental service is the same, so it is important to shop around and take note of the rental company’s reputation for professionalism, prices, selection, and the level of support they offer once the display is in your hands. Especially for companies that are new to the world of trade shows, some type of support is absolutely essential, as one thing or another is almost guaranteed to go wrong at some point in the process. With support and experience, it is easy to come up with creative solutions for minor problems, but those new to exhibiting can certainly find these glitches overwhelming and much more limiting than they need to be. Choosing a display rental service that is not just interested in making a sale, but also in seeing customers succeed, can play a large role in a company’s success.
When trying to find display rental, there are many excellent choices available. For more information please visit http://www.display-rental.com/