Promoting your small business is important...no, actually it’s essential to your success.
But where should you start? Do you need a marketing director with 20 years of experience, or could a college intern do the trick? How much money is needed? Do you need a full time designer on staff?
These are all questions that should be swirling around your head as you begin to think about promoting, marketing and otherwise advertising your business.
Here are three simple areas to focus on as you get started.
1) Website
While it seems obvious, many companies neglect to give their website the attention - both through design and user interface - that they should.
This is your first avenue for self-promotion, and can either be a driver of sales, or something pithy and throw together, as if an afterthought. If you’re in the second camp, it’s time to make some changes. Where do your eyes go first when you get to your home page? Is there an immediate call to action-- and if there is, does it reflect your top priorities (i.e. sign-up, purchase, etc.)? Your website should be bright, compelling and draw customers deeper in to learn more. Tease them with surface level information about what you do. The longer a potential customer spends on your website, the greater the likelihood that they will convert and make a purchase or sign up.
Your website also should link to your blog. Be sure to include relevant and highly searched SEO keywords so you’ll rank higher on Google’s search!
2) Email Blasts
While some strategists argue that email is going away, the numbers seem to say otherwise.
Just check in your inbox to see. Bet there’s a lot of companies trying to sell you things, right? It’s telling that presidential campaigns rely heavily on email blasts to get both money and votes. Sending marketing emails effectively is another matter altogether, however.
The more personal, relevant and “human” looking and sounding, you craft your message, the better. While only an estimated 10% of marketing emails are even opened, that’s better than none at all. Email blasts are inexpensive, immediate, measurable and direct.
Read more from Business Review Canada