10 Powerful Tips for Marketing Your Small Business

I love Marketing.About.com. It's a great resource for all kinds of ideas for every kind of business. Here's a great article I found by Ann Marie Rubertone: 10 Powerful Tips for Marketing Your Small Business.

1. Print your best small ad on a postcard and mail it to prospects in your targeted market.

2. No single marketing effort works all the time for every business, so rotate several marketing tactics and vary your approach.

3. Use cross promotion to market your business.

4. Answer your phone in a new way.

5. Add stickers and handwritten notes to your print materials.

6. Send a second offer immediately to first-time customers.

7. Use newsletters to focus your marketing on repeat business.

8. Host events.

9. Exchange services.

10. Enclose special offers and promotions in your outgoing mail.

Read the full article here.


Virtually Yourz,
Dana Neuts

What is marketing?

If you asked 10 people what "marketing" means to them, you would likely get 10 different answers. You'd probably get a mix of advertising, branding, promotion, public relations, social media, business development, planning, marketing mix and more.

In my mind, marketing is all of the activities and tools that a person or company uses to promote its products, services or ideas. It should include all of the items mentioned above and so much more. So the next time you think about marketing and the tools available to you, don't limit your thinking to one aspect of marketing. Think of the entire gamut of possibilities, and you'll find a wealth of tools and opportunities available to you.

Virtually Yourz,
Dana Neuts

Use e-mail marketing to get in front of your target customer

One of the best ways to reach out to your target customers is to gather their e-mail addresses. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you can collect addresses by asking customers and visitors to sign a Guest Book at the counter. If you have a website or a blog, you can collect e-mail addresses there using a database or other e-mail service (I like Your Mailing List Provider) to capture the information.

Then, add e-mail marketing to your marketing plan, and send out regular e-mails to your customers. This can be weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly or whatever frequency works for you. The key is to send something memorable or useful and to send it regularly. At the same time, make sure you give your customer the opportunity to update his or her e-mail address or to opt out if they don't want to receive e-mails from you any more.

Ideas:

Monthly coupons or promotions
Creative ways to use a product or service you offer
Promote events or company news
Holiday or gift-giving reminders or ideas

Utilizing e-mail marketing is an easy-to-use, affordable way to get in front your target customers. Need more ideas or help getting started? Please e-mail me. I can help!



Virtually Yourz,
Dana Blozis