All year round, consumers purchase goods and pay for services to live comfortably – and within their budget. This means businesses must come up with unique ways to promote their brand, products and services to meet customers’ needs.
With the right social media advertising techniques, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools, and relevant digital content, any small business can stand its own – even in the midst of major competitors. If you run a small growing business, here are 5 proven marketing strategies and ideas to help your brand succeed.
Discounts and free giveaways
As a small business, you might fear giving out your products for free or half price. But this has proven to be effective for most brands you can think of. It must not be done weekly or monthly, to avoid customer expectation. Instead, it could be on Christmas day, Valentine’s Day, a day commemorating the launch of your business or a product. You can ask your consumers to drop comments on your page or tweet you what these days mean to them. Then reward the best replies. This gives them a notion that you respect their feelings and that way, they’re likely to recommend your brand to other consumers; thereby driving traffic to your site and generating leads.
Partner with a big non-competing brand
As a small business, it’s good to collaborate with larger businesses that have a big customer base – so long as they aren’t competing in the same niche. For example, if you run a business that produces and sells customised vehicle rims, you can partner with a car manufacturing brand. This way, when people purchase cars from the bigger brand, they can get to see the quality of your product. This will help promote your brand, establishing reliability.
Be active on social media
The importance of social media to business brands these days can’t be ignored. With over 2 billion active social media accounts worldwide, your customers will also expect you to be active – especially to make purchases or answer queries. When they’re certain of how reliable you are (online), these loyal customers will repost and share your content for other people to access and benefit from. This leads to increased sales, profit and online presence.
Organise or sponsor small online events
Organising an event online – especially via your social media accounts – makes interaction between you and your customers better. It could be a beauty pageant, a quiz, a “first to like” competition or anything creative and engaging. Prospective clients are also likely to take part, in that way helping to boost your consumer base.
Do something nice for loyal customers
Make your loyal customers feel special once in a while. You can take them out to lunch, send them gifts, give them exclusive discounts during purchases or even make personalised products for them. This helps build a long lasting relationship with them and they will indirectly promote your brand via word of mouth, recommendations and online content sharing.
