Effective Ways to Get Known – Indirect Marketing

I see it so many times with new start-up businesses.  They’ve done the research.  They’ve done the hard work.  They have a great service or product and they’re waiting for customers to come flocking to their door.  Unfortunately nothing happens.  Customers do not grow on trees any more than money does.  If you want customers to buy, customers need to hear about you first.  And to get people to hear about you, you need to get known.

There are various methods available to market yourself and your business.  Each has its own merits and each is effective, especially when you put a little time and effort into ‘making it happen’.  Here are four indirect, yet extremely effective, ways to get to know your customers and prospective customers – and have them know you.

1. Newsletter

A newsletter keeps you and your business in touch with your customers and prospects, ensuring that their memory is jogged regularly – though not too regularly – and your name is kept fresh in their minds.  Newsletters also give you the chance to promote new services or products – or sometimes to educate your customers in a friendly, almost passive way.  Newsletters needn’t be difficult to write, and with a little practice the words flow easily – as with everything, practice makes perfect.

2. Snail Mail

In this high-tech, e-commerce world today, email is all the rage.  However, many of us get overwhelmed by the flood of communications into our inboxes and we don’t get round to reading the ‘non-urgent stuff’.  It’s easy for us to ignore the list on screen but it’s less easy to ignore the post that arrives through the letterbox.  Even if it’s junk mail we still pick it up, we don’t ignore it.  Consequently, ‘snail mail’ is a great way to boost sales.  Many businesses are hesitant about direct mail – after all, why spend thousands of pounds to get a brochure printed and mailed when you can send the same thing as an email for free?

Whilst emailing is a very effective marketing tool, sending emails only is risky if you want to ensure you reach your target market.  An email can be deleted easily.  A letter, on the other hand, comes through the letter box and has to be opened physically – and then it sits on someone’s desk.  It takes more effort to put it in the bin and get rid of it than it does just to hit the delete key.  And don’t forget, snail mail is something that your customers can carry with them; on the train to the office, for example, or on the plane to read when they have nothing else to do.  It may seem simple, it may seem old-fashioned, but businesses notice a big difference once they start sending direct mail.

3. Prospecting

One of the fundamental strategies for successful business promotion is generating a good prospects list.  Every business needs to have people available and ready to sell to.  Every business needs to be constantly on the lookout for potential customers and prospects to do business with.  Too many businesses fail to capture the many names and addresses that come their way every day.  This is a big mistake!  Whether you are a big business or a small business, you need to look and listen for prospective customers – utilising every physical and electronic method available to you.  Then when you have your list, you don’t have to scratch your head wondering where to spend your marketing budget – you have a ready-made audience just waiting for your special offers and bargains.  Talk to your list regularly and you’ll soon get known to them – and hopefully to their friends and colleagues.

4. Website

One of the challenges of the modern high-tech age is that it is getting harder and harder to get your name out there, especially online.  Back in the ‘good old days’ when the internet was new, you could stick a little box in the corner of your website Home Page saying ‘Sign Up For Free Tips’ and the passing surfers would just sign up.  Nowadays you have to be far cleverer to get those all important names and email addresses.  Instead of a plain little box, you need a specific reason for people to sign up, not just the vague hope of a free tip every now and then.  Try using what’s known as an ‘ethical bribe’ to obtain contact information.  An ethical bribe has to be of value, it has to be relevant to your target audience, and it needs to be easily obtained.

These methods are not complicated or expensive ways to get known.  They are, however, tried and tested effective marketing methods that will get you known, will attract prospective customers, and that in turn will boost your business results.  All you have to do is get started!