October 14th, 2018 by Admin

Marketing is an essential element for your business’ success, and we are here to give some simple tips to help you market beyond flyers and brochures.

 

Create a Promotion or Discount Offer: If you are starting up or your business has slowed down, creating an offer or promotion can bring in some new business to you. Be sure is an offer that truly brings value to your customers and something that does not entirely undervalue your services either.

Creating a promotion or discount offer can help those who are undecided, to make a decision and try-out your services so they can see and test what you have to bring to the table.

 

Attend Networking Events: We all know this, but not many do it. People are needed for business, so what a better way to get customers than to attend a networking event.

Better yet, a networking event can bring a plethora of ideas. By only talking to others about what they do and who they are, you can realize how you can best serve your audience and also create long-lasting relationships.

 

Write Guest Posts: Chances are, that if you are in business, you have a certain amount of experience in some topic. What a better way to show your knowledge than to write about it!

While you can start your blog (which we recommend), you can also add value by going to other, perhaps more popular blogs and share your expertise there. Medium is an excellent site for this, and there are plenty of other blogs out there that are looking for people like you to share their two cents and bring value to their audience.

 

Host a Training: Following on sharing your expertise, what a better way than to host a training about what you do! Sharing some expert tips and giving others the power to do what you do can bring clients to you.

Sharing your expertise can give people an idea and sense of how passionate you are about what you do and how well you know your subject. By doing this, many can realize that instead of a do-it-yourself approach, it is best they hire your services. At a minimum, hosting training will bring in value to those around which can help with word of mouth.

 

Use Social Media: Lastly, but not any less important, social media is a big way to market yourself. All of these topics above can benefit and be used as part of your social media campaign.

You can connect with your audience faster and constantly with social media. You can use to promote your blogs, your training, your promotions and even to continue to communicate with those whom you have connected at a networking event.

The best part about social media is that you can get a quicker response about how you are sharing your message and if people find value in it. It can also help you learn about your audience and how that audience reacts to you.

 

There are many more ways to market your business, but we think these five can give you a great head start and help you grow your business today. We would love to hear from you about how these have helped your business succeed.

Posted in Small Business Improvement Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 18th, 2014 by Elma Jane

As a small business, you may have ignored Facebook, but it turns out that by not having a presence on Facebook, you could be missing out on a huge business opportunity. The social networking site has a huge influence on what products and services people buy. More specifically, Facebook significantly influences millennial shoppers’ opinions of small businesses, including their decisions to purchase items not just online, but in-store as well. Nearly 60 percent of consumers ages 18 to 29 engage with Facebook ads at least once per week before buying an item in-store from a small business. Additionally, 62 percent believe Facebook is the most useful social media outlet for researching small businesses before visiting a store in person. That’s considerably higher than the 11 percent who feel the same about Twitter and the 12 percent who believe Pinterest is the best site for researching small businesses. Overall, 59 percent of millennial consumers visit the Facebook pages of small businesses at least once a week. To succeed both online and offline small businesses must first understand consumers’ online-to-offline shopping behaviors and invest at least a portion of their digital marketing dollars into the right technology and tools to create precisely targeted, relevant and personalized experiences.

The true value of Facebook, doesn’t lie in simply driving likes and adding new fans. It lies in using personalized content to convert digital hunters into loyal, repeat in-store buyers. The study discovered that by increasing the deals they offer on Facebook, businesses have the potential to make an immediate impact on their bottom line. Nearly 85 percent of the shoppers surveyed said local deals and offers on Facebook are important in their decision to purchase an item in-store. Forty percent of those surveyed said they think Facebook offers that can be redeemed in local stores are most likely to influence their decision to visit the website of a small business. With so many consumers constantly turning to Facebook when making purchasing decisions, business owners especially those in the restaurant, spa/beauty and education industries need to come to terms with the fact that Facebook is a highly important marketing tool that needs to be actively attended to and not just something they check in on every now and then.

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Small Business Improvement Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,