Keeping a small business recognizable and successful cannot be done without some unique promotion. Today, a range of business promotional strategies are available; from traditional, print materials, to word of mouth and dozens of digital marketing techniques. Nevertheless, only the ones that really make you stand out will make a difference.
In this article, John J. Stone our guest writer recommended 5 promotional strategies for small businesses.
Special, personalized campaigns
As consumers are becoming more and more demanding, businesses have to follow suit. It usually means that it is necessary to develop special, personalized promotional tactics. Of course, such a delicate approach should be applied only on first-class customers, whose purchases or collaboration with the given business are above average. For instance, sending a special coupon for New Year or a referral discount for every new client those customers bring to your company are great promotional moves. Creating personal attachments will keep the old customers loyal and trigger the attention of new clients.
Multifunctional business cards
At one moment it seemed that the business card would vanish, as one of the first victims of omnipresent digitization. However, it is alive and operational in the process of advertising different businesses. Still, today a business card must be enriched with the website and e-mail addresses. Also, some businesses put a QR code on their business cards, too. It gives an impression of a cutting-edge business that follows digital trends. Some companies print special vouchers on their business cards and distribute them in the street, which attracts new customers to their premises.
Simple hits stronger
Advertising has to be concise, but striking. Rattling endlessly about the reasons why your product is the best one on the market is pointless. Buyers do not have time for such litanies. Instead of complicated and pretentious ads, keep your messages simple. If you think of the most popular taglines from Coca-Cola, Nike or Adidas (“Always”, “Just do it” and “All in”, respectively), it is obvious that they want to grasp as much attention as possible in a second of time. So, small business promotion should look up to their big, multinational fellows to pick up interesting ideas about creative business slogans.
Huge potential of online promotions
Smartphone and tablet users represent a completely new set of potential clients. The places where they should be targeted are definitely social media. Younger adults and teenagers are online almost 24/7 and most of that time they spend on Facebook or other more or less similar media. That is why creating profiles on social networks is a business-friendly decision. It does not require any huge investments and the return could be surprisingly high.
In addition, your presence in social media should be mentioned in every print or video ad you create, as well as in e-mail newsletters you send to your customers.
Promotional merchandise lives
Similar to business cards, at one point promotional merchandise was on death bed; or it was only perceived that way. However, people’s habits are stronger than current trends and today many businesses realize how important lighters, mugs, T-shirts or umbrellas are for promoting their products. With the help of those business promo items people establish a special kind of kinesthetic connection. At the same time, all of them can be incredibly useful. Also, they serve as portable ads for the business that distributes them, given that they have printed their logo and brand name on those items.
Sometimes it seems that creating a first-class product is much easier than making people buy and use it. The strategies we have recommended here can be performed by business owners and their teams, without any special professional help. They are affordable and easy to perform, which makes them suitable for every business owner at the beginning of his or her business quest.
John J. Stone is an Editor at BizzMark Blog . He is a business consultant and always on the move and keeping up with the latest developments in technology.
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