Large-scale marketing campaigns require months of planning, working
and reworking until each little detail is carefully hammered out. But
what if you don’t have the budget – or the time – to launch a massive
marketing campaign?
There are 3 simple marketing ideas you can unveil today to bring in fresh business and encourage former clients to come back for more. With minimal preparation on your part, these marketing ideas can boost your business within weeks.
1. Create a no-nonsense (but understated) referral program.
After each transaction with a client or customer, send them an unassuming questionnaire that reads something like this:
“Thank you for letting us serve you; we appreciate your business and are constantly striving to improve our products and services. Please take a moment to complete and return this short questionnaire to help us enhance your next experience.
What did you like most about working with us?
Are there areas you’d like us to improve?
Please list friends or colleagues who might benefit from our service.”
The benefits of your referral program are twofold: you gain valuable insight into what your customers are thinking and get new leads through peer recommendation.
2. Give something away for free.
This tactic has long been a favorite of professional marketers because it works every time. Select one of your products or services many clients find valuable but doesn’t cost you a large amount of money and set a date for the random winner to be chosen.
The conditions for your giveaway are simple: people must interact with you to be entered. You may choose to have them comment on your blog, post a link to your website on theirs or fill out an entry form they can only find on your site.
Promote your giveaway through press releases, emails, blogs and your website. Word of mouth will spread the news and you have a potentially viral marketing campaign on your hands.
3. Reach out to an untapped audience.
Your clients and customers may find you online when they’re specifically looking for your products and services – but what about the prospects who don’t know they need you yet?
Think about businesses that provide products and services to your clients but aren’t in competition with you. Do your clients drop clothes off at the dry cleaner, get haircuts and stop at locally-owned restaurants? Of course they do – and offering to reciprocate advertising with those small businesses can open doors you didn’t even know existed.
Stop by a local print shop and speak with the owner about leaving your brochures, business cards or other marketing materials on the counter in exchange for embedding a link to his website from yours. Talk to a restaurant owner about putting a poster ad in the window while blogging about how your family always enjoys a great meal in his facility.
These interactions can also get your foot in the door as a service or product provider for other businesses, so it can be beneficial for all parties.
Each of these tried and true tactics work for small businesses because they require minimal effort and investment. After you’ve initiated one, move on to the next – before long, you’ll be wondering how you ever got by without using these 3 simple marketing techniques.
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