Small businesses usually find it difficult to drag their account from the red to the black.
Consumers are usually not aware of your existence or of the services that you deliver.
If they happen to be aware, they might be a bit skeptical to leave a more established business to try out yours.
Expert Melissa Haywood gives a handful of tips on how you can successfully market your business services.
1. Dot the Is and cross the Ts on your professional image
Invest in training internal staff to be ambassadors for your company and create exceptional customer experiences.
Professional image begins with employee presentation and includes marketing materials, and when perfected, conveys the image of a confident business.
2. Build the customer into the marketing cycle
Give direction to the day-to-day running of your company by developing a marketing action plan that focuses on customers in each step of the buying cycle.
From building awareness to encouraging referral, build customer call-to-actions into your business plans for a marketing approach that will lend growth to your business.
3. Think about customer retention initiatives
To get more traction from your campaigns, set up an automated email newsletter tailored to each of your customer segments.
Email automation is simple to set up and yet an extremely effective way to convert prospective consumers and engage past customers for repeat business.
4. Take every opportunity to network
Turn to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other key social media tools to engage with networking groups within your industry.
Attend local networking events for the opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs and win over the target market and your dream consumer.
5. Build your online rep
With it being more important than ever to build brand recognition online, social media offers the ability to build meaningful relationships with your customers.
Whether it be reposting positive testimonies on your social media pages, or recognising posts and tweets: like, follow, and share user generated content.
These simple interactions are more authentic and effective than any forced
advertising campaign, as you are letting actual customers do the marketing for you.
Melissa Haywood is the Head of Vistaprint Australia.
