Despite the great business idea that you are nurturing for years and the immense value that your product or service could offer to your customers, it still must conquer numerous obstacles to survive and come into its own small business. Your product’s value is only as good as it is perceived by your target audience, that is if you have selected your audience correctly. And to portray your product as intended, you need to factor in many variables like its target, price, demographics, competition, the value it offers and so on.
6 Marketing Ideas for Small Business: Consider Following when You Tell Others about Your Business
The task only gets tougher for startups who have to work within the confines of a rather limited budget, resources, and expertise. Let’s go through a bunch of marketing ideas for small business, in addition to few funding suggestions that won’t put a strain on your limited cash resources, rather if everything goes according to plan, they will actually add nice cash flow to your business.
1. Reach-out Locally Even If You Are An On-line Entity
For those startups catering to the local community, they need to take initiatives to reach out and be visible on the ground level, even if the business model is online. Often people assume that being an online entity they don’t need local visibility. Wrong! never make this highly volatile assumption with your startup. It doesn’t matter if you are offering a product or a service, or there are ten other competitors in the market and none are marketing through offline channels, it’s their loss.
Being visible can be as easy as releasing multiple hot air balloons with your business name and getting a state of the art graffiti on a corner stone or a vacant wall. You can even go for customized shades and decals for your personal car while exploring more marketing ideas for small business. The bottom line is to explore and be as innovative as the local laws and rules allow. Being visible locally will direct the most relevant traffic to your small business.
2. Join Hands with Other Like Minded Businesses
Ideally, you should join hands with complementing businesses or even similar minded entrepreneurs. There are incubators that help future entrepreneurs with setting up their business through guidance, shared office space and resources like electricity, internet, and furniture. These will not only save on your costs but will also offer great opportunities to explore and interact with young minds, allowing you to learn from their collective knowledge and experience.
You can then go a step further and initiate or manage events with them, attend seminars, launch orientation programs and arrange giveaways on your complementing businesses. This is one of the best marketing ideas for small business to strengthen your contacts in the local market, generate revenue through your partners and effectively pay off any marketing expense that you have incurred, along with your allied partners. So, it’s a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ strategy, which will cut costs and open doors for a lot of ventures.
3. Making Informative Videos is An Effective Marketing Idea for Small Business
On third of our marketing ideas for a small business list, is informative videos. This is where your newly formed alliance with other young and smart minds will come in handy. So, your business idea is unique and your product offers unmatched value, but people need to be educated about it. The solution is simple; make tutorial videos.
Bring YouTube in your social networking list and collaborate with other businesses to generate buzz, ideas and execute the video right way. Make it short, concise and fun. If done right, it can generate enough traffic that will bring in YouTube revenue as well. Initially, you can go for affiliate marketing and pay already established local channels to promote your video channel and business. Later, you can take a solo flight.
4. Market Your Small Business Through a Killer Business Card
Bring your own personalized touch and finesse into your business idea. Have a colorful, over the top business card that shows you are there to offer something different and are having fun while doing it, so essentially you are living your dream. People tend to easily trust those entrepreneurs who are in the business, not because they have to, but because they want to. I’m sure you are surprised why few people have tried this marketing idea for small businesses; yes, most of them follow a dull, formal style assuming seriousness translates into business.
Truth be told, only those businesses survive the turbulent initial years who have the guts to be different and stand out from the other three businesses in the same block with similar offerings. Ideally, hand your business card to as many people as you can, at conferences, seminars, expos, and emporiums.
5. USe Social Media Channels For an Effective Marketing Strategy for Your Business
Take this as one of the best marketing ideas for small business. Nothing has the potential to bring in bigger traffic and dough than social media. Count on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Reddit, Instagram and others related to your niche. You can go with all, but we recommend choosing the right mix of two or maximum three that are used commonly in your community. Learning from statistical insight is key here. Also, use a bit of cash for Google Adwords and Facebook advertisement; these can be heavily targeted and will help in getting the right audience.
6. Go Crowd Funding to Market Your Campaign
In the age of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, you should not skip the powerful duo. Ideally, you should only go in to generate buzz and have more visibility and international exposure. So, step in with infographics, videos, and prototypes ready. Why? It’s simple! Because the percentage of successful campaigns is rather low, so launch the campaign with a realistic or rather limited target and offer Great payoff. Remember, the focus is on the word ‘Great’ here. Don’t offer measly discounts, be massive to generate buzz and traffic to your site.
You can’t only generate sales through these platforms, but can also get a great hype behind your product at almost no cost. That’s the only tip of the iceberg, you can explore and dig deeper on marketing ideas for small business. Though it will take more effort from you, the rewards will also be sweeter and long-lasting.
Image Source: Pixabay
