Always Be Consistent in Your Marketing
One of the most crucial aspects of branding a small business is that you must be absolutely consistent in your messaging. Every interaction with customers must send the same message. You are ultimately creating experiences for your customers that build emotional attachments to your company.
One of the unfortunate facts of life is that we sometimes have to do things that require us to wait in waiting rooms or stand in lines for hours at a time. Take these opportunities to do a little networking. Start up a conversation with someone else in line and spread the word about your business.
Check your local college or art school for graphic design students who are willing to work for free. Typically, these artists need to create samples of their work to build a portfolio to eventually find a job or paying clients.
How fast or slow does your company make decisions? Rapidly growing businesses have tied the speed of their decision making to their success. There are not a lot of examples that show success from slow or drawn out decisions. Business owners need to be quick, smart and able to change their view based upon new facts.
In the online world, don’t shy away from negative comments; instead, face them head-on. Addressing customer concerns builds trust, helps diffuse a tense situation and can help you win back an upset customer. Even better, it gives your brand advocates a chance to come to your defense.
Ask how they heard about you. It’s important to understand what marketing channels are working. If most of your new customers are coming from referrals, create opportunities for more referrals. If they saw an ad, run that ad again. Always repeat what works.
Pricing your products and services can be complicated. Here’s an easy solution: Offer something a step down (that includes less) and a step up (a premium offering) from your main product or service. You’ll find customers on all ends of the spectrum that will pay the price that best suits their needs and budget.
Reach out to local marketing or design consultants and offer your services in return for a brochure, website work, photography, etc. Make sure what you’re trading is of similar value, and write up a simple contract describing exactly what each person will receive.
If you’re just getting started on social media, pick a site you feel comfortable with and that your business competitors are using. Develop a strategy and use this site to the fullest. Once you’ve mastered this site, then consider branching out. If you join too many sites at once you’ll feel overwhelmed and your post quality will suffer.
Apply from your personal bank. Getting a card from your personal bank can give you a faster approval with your application. If you haven’t yet established your business credit, your personal credit history will be used instead. Applying with a bank that has had you as a client for a long time will work in your favor.
Big businesses advertise to create name recognition and future sales. A small business can’t afford to do that. Instead, design your advertising to produce sales now. One way to accomplish this is to always include an offer in your advertising–and an easy way for prospective customers to respond to it.
Give them a call! Make it a point each week to call five of your best customers and thank them for their business. It will go a long way to connecting you with your customers. And you’ll likely learn a lot in the process and have a better pulse on their needs and wants.
Google Alerts will email you when it finds new mentions of your company. This gives you the opportunity to use the content to promote your business, to ask for a link back to your website or to respond to both positive and negative reviews online.
Get satisfied customers to refer you. A prospect that has received a recommendation to use your business is already half sold. Don’t be shy or embarrassed about soliciting referrals from current clients, especially loyal ones. Most will be pleased to recommend you.
Are a lot of your customers under the age of 29? Research shows that 35% of people under 29 (and 14% over 29) use Twitter to find discounts and promotions. Posting a discount code for your Twitter followers could help create new sales and keep your business top of mind.
When sending an email to your customers, choose one product, service or promotion to be the focus of the email. Then create one call-to-action (click, call, come in) and emphasize it.
If you had to describe yourself in 30 seconds, what would you say? Here’s a great way to start: Write down three things that you do for your clients. Then incorporate those into your answer anytime someone asks, “What do you do?”
Contact some non-competing small businesses serving customers in your market. Offer to publicize their products or services to your customers in exchange for their publicizing your services to their customers. This usually produces a large number of sales for a very low cost.
When marketing on social media platforms, always keep in mind the 80/20 rule. You should spend 80% of your time sharing, answering questions and interacting with others and only 20% of your time promoting your small business. Stick to this rule and you’ll be seen as a true participant, not a pushy sales-person.
What people see in their inbox differs among email applications. An email viewed in Gmail will appear different when viewed in Yahoo! mail or Outlook. To make an impact even before they open the email, keep your subject line within the 40-character limit.
Many employers feel a paycheck is thanks enough. But a simple word of appreciation can go far toward motivating employees. Recognition makes them feel successful and often leads to them working harder. And understanding what motivates your employees can help you with retention and make your business a great place to work.
It’s Critical to Capture Customer Information
If you have a website, make sure you have an area to capture the names and email addresses of visitors. Likewise if you have retail store, have an email sign-up sheet for customers to receive news and special offers.
Even if you don’t initially make the sale, you now have contact information to use in email marketing campaigns.
I’ve put together a list of 5 must-haves that every small business website needs to include. Whether you’re building a website yourself, or have a web designer to do it for you, work through this check list and you won’t go wrong.
1. Contact details.
It might seem a bit obvious this one, but you’d be surprised how many people forget to add their contact details. Not only must you have your contact details–at a minimum your address, phone number and email address–but you must make those details easy to find. Don’t hide them away in the footer. Make the “contact us” page one of the most obvious ones. Because having a website boils down to just one thing: making more sales. And if your website visitors have a hard time getting in touch, then they’re not going to buy from you.
2. Map
A bit less obvious, but a must-have that can make a real difference to the number of leads your website generates. The nature of the Internet is anonymous–we’re all dealing with companies and individuals through a computer screen. And because of this, the Internet is a scammer’s paradise–it only takes a few minutes to build a website and pretend to be a company. So having a map of where you are adds a real reassurance to your website visitors. It turns a virtual interaction into something more solid, and gives your website visitors the peace of mind that you’re real people living in the real world
3. A Lead Capture Form
This is the next step on from adding your contact details. Many website visitors want to know more about your products and services, but are disinclined to give you a call or drop you a line. But they’re quite happy for you to get in touch with them. And in order to make that possible, you need a lead capture form. Think of this as a sales assistant approaching a shopper, rather than a shopper going out of their way to approach a sales assistant. A lead capture form allows your website visitors to leave their details and express an interest in you, without going the whole hog of picking up the phone. And since many people surf the web out of office hours, the chances are that the time that they’re actually on your website is a time when you don’t have anyone to answer the phone. Having a lead capture form allows you to give them more information when it’s convenient for you, and lets them express and interest when there’s no one around to talk to.
4. Photos of You and Your Staff
This is another great way of reassuring your customers about who they’re dealing with. In the same way that having a map gives your web visitors the confidence that you exist, having your photos on the website creates a personal connection between them and you. It’s so much harder to turn away from a face than a computer screen. Having a photo kick-starts a personal relationship with your website visitors, and it makes it much more likely that the visitor will then get in touch. The added advantage is that not many websites include personal photos, so get this right and your site will start to get head and shoulders over the faceless ones around it.
5. Newsletter Sign-Up Form
This option is a good opportunity to warm up future customers. Many people surfing the web for products and services will be in a “research” phase of the buying cycle. They’re not ready to get in touch or start buying just yet, but they are interested in finding out more information. Having a newsletter allows you to start to interact with them before they’re ready to buy. They get the opportunity to “‘taste” your service and personality, without having to commit to buying from you. You can start having a conversation with them, so that when they do decide to buy, that relationship already exists. And as anyone running a successful weekly or monthly newsletter will tell you, it can be the biggest source of new leads for your website. So add a newsletter sign-up form, and start emailing news about your company and industry to those signing up, and the customers will surely come.