Small Business Marketing
"The Top 10 Strategies To Market Your Small Business"
by Peter Geisheker,
CEO, The Geisheker Group, Inc., (920) 592-9595
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1.
Write and distribute a press release at least 4-times
per year. The media is always on the lookout for a great
story (particularly your local media—newspapers, radio
and TV stations), so write one for them. If you are not
familiar with how to write and distribute a press
release, I highly recommend that you download the
excellent FREE ebook
Trash Proof News Releases by Paul J. Krupin. This
ebook will give you all of the instructions you need for writing a press release the media will love. |
2. Join a business referral group.
Business Network International
(BNI) is one of the best business referral groups in the world and it is very affordable. Join and watch your business take off!
3. Use free resources to build targeted prospect lists and then hit the phone selling. Your local library is a great free resource for building prospect lists. Many libraries have a subscription to
ReferenceUSA, which is an online business list service. Through your library account, you should be able to access this database for free. According to the ReferenceUSA website, “The ReferenceUSA database contains, in module format, detailed information on more than 12 million U.S. businesses; 102 million U.S. residents; 683,000 U.S. health care providers; 1 million Canadian businesses; and 11 million Canadian residents.”
4. Learn how to sell using consultative selling techniques. What
is consultative selling? In a nutshell, consultative selling is asking your customer questions to uncover their problem or need to see if your product or service can help them. The Book,
SPIN SELLING by Neil Rackham is
quite possibly the best book ever written on consultative selling and is a must read for business owners and sales professionals.
5. Create a powerful money-back guarantee. The leading reason why people don’t buy is they are scared of making a mistake and being stuck with something they don’t want or that does not work.
When selling to a business this is twice as critical because making a poor buying decision could cost a person their job. By providing your customers with a powerful money-back guarantee, you remove their risk and you make them feel much more secure
about buying from you. When you remove your customer’s risk in buying from you, you remove the biggest obstacle in making a purchasing decision.
Create a powerful guarantee today.
6. Understand that advertising is salesmanship! When you write a sales letter or create an advertisement (print, radio or TV), that advertisement must sell just as a salesperson would sell. When creating your ad, go through the process of what you would say to a potential customer if they were
sitting next to you. Tell a story of how your product/service has helped someone. What are the benefits of your product or service? How will these benefits help your customer? What problem does your product or service solve?
Use conversational language and simple words. Nobody has ever complained that an ad was too simple to understand. On the other hand, people constantly complain about ads
that use language that is too complex and/or obscure.
7. Track all of your marketing to see what marketing strategies are working (getting you new customers and
sales and generating a return on investment) and which strategies are not
working (costing you money but not producing results). Every time a potential customer
contacts you, ask how they customer heard about you. Spend your money on the marketing strategies that are working and
discontinue or fix marketing strategies that are not working.
8. Don’t spend your entire marketing budget at once! Marketing works on repetition. The more a consumer experiences your advertising, the greater the chance that consumer will buy your product or service. So, if you have a yearly marketing budget of $20,000 for display advertising in your local newspaper, instead of spending all of your money for one large display ad, spend your money on several small ads that are run on an ongoing basis. The ongoing small ads will generate far more sales than one large ad. Repetition is key!
9. Test different ads. You may find that by simply changing the headline in your ad you can double the response rate. Therefore, try different ads and keep close track of the performance of each ad. When you find an ad that generates an amazing response, keep running that ad until you create a new ad that generates an even better response.
10. Tell customers why you are DIFFERENT. Why should a customer choose to do business with you instead of your competition? Why are you
different and special? Is your product made better? Do you use superior building materials? Can you deliver faster? Do you have a better guarantee? Do you provide better customer service? Do you have better prices? Do you have more products in stock?
Are you open longer hours? To separate yourself from your
competition you MUST tell your customer why you are different and why that difference is a benefit. This must be done in every aspect of your marketing.
BONUS:
Click here to download our free e-book: "How to Write a
Marketing Plan and 100+ Strategies to Successfully Market Your
Business."
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