How Can You Market Your Small Business at Low Cost?
Many small businesses have a good, high quality product or service to offer but they fail to get off the ground because they aren’t able to successfully get the word out about what they have to offer. No matter what you’re offering, you have competition from others who are offering the same thing or something very similar.
That’s why you need to put effort into marketing. Marketing may include hiring someone to put strategies into place to ensure that you show up highly ranked in search engine results, appear all over social media and target exactly the audience that you want to be exposed to information about what you are selling.
Alternatively, you can do a lot of the marketing yourself in order to make your company’s name known and engage with potential customers.
Regardless of whether you’re planning to take on the marketing as part of your role in the company or just temporarily to get things started, here are some of the basic steps that you can take to make your business as popular and successful as the #1 Vegas PlayCroco Casino.
Doing your own marketing isn’t something that you want to keep as a long-term plan if you want your business to grow. But it’s a great way to get things off the ground. If you’re starting out to market your own business, here are some of the basic things that you should work on:
Marketing Plan
Too often, small business owners try to do their own marketing in a way that reflects their belief that, doing something, anything is better than doing nothing. That’s not always true. You can do a lot of damage if you start out presenting your company in a way that may reflect badly on the company in the long run.
Start out by creating a marketing plan. Put down your goals on paper so that they are clear to everyone – you, your staff and your potential customers. A good marketing plan should include
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* Statement of the brand’s unique selling proposition
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* Market research
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* Identification of target audience
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* Pricing
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* Unique selling proposition (what makes your product or service unique)
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* Distribution methods
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* Sales strategies
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* Advertising and promotional strategies
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* Plan for managing transactions with customers
The business plan helps you consider what your goals are, what your message should be and who you want to hear your message.
Media
Now you have to decide which media you will be using to send out your message. Businesses today need a website which is your window to the world – the website displays your product and service in a way that explains what you have to sell and why people might want to make a purchase.
Once you have a website up and running you will want to refer people to that website via your marketing. Some of the most basic and low-cost ways of doing that involve social media and marketing. These two strategies are known as low-cost and high-impact techniques which make them extremely cost-effective.
Facebook is probably the most effective social media tool for advertising. Facebook has 2.80 billion monthly active users of which 1.84 billion visit the site on a daily basis. In the US 86% of marketers use Facebook for advertising.
Most businesses create a Facebook Page where businesses share business information such as address, contact details, descriptions of goods and service being offered, customer reviews, etc. The business can connect with potential clients and customers via the Page and this is all for free.
Marketers can promote their Business Page via their own Facebook profile, ask friends to share the Page on their own profile pages or promote the business via paid advertising.
Videos are an extremely effective way to get your message across but if you try to do it on your own, the videos can come off as unprofessional and put people off. If you’re going to make video content, it’s best to invest some money had have it done professionally.
You can get a lot of marketing mileage out of free features which allow you to connect and interact with your audience. You do, however, need to be aware of each platform’s idiosyncrasies. If you’re posting on Facebook, it’s suggested that you post frequently.
Twitter posts need to be short while Instagram posts should have visual content. If you’re marketing via email, make sure that your emails conform to the laws of each country to which you are sending the emails, including giving options to opt-out of the emails or following restrictions on who can receive such messages.
You can also creatively put your business out there by running events, sponsoring or partnering with local groups or charitable causes, etc.
Whatever you do, you need to produce quality content that will keep your name and your image at the forefront of potential customers’ minds.
You can save money and time by repurposing content. The same information that you put up on your Facebook Business Page can be tweeted out to your followers on Twitter, put up as an infographic on LinkedIn, added to a video blog on your YouTube channel, etc.
Doing your own marketing isn’t something that you want to do long-term because at some point, it’s a good idea to turn to a professional who can take your marketing efforts to the next level. But you certainly have enough tools at your disposal to get started in getting word of your product or service out to the public.