Promote Your Small Business - Top 7 Ideas and Tips

Spreading the word about your small business is one of the ways to make it succeed, even on a low budget. While focusing on your target audience as a key point of all your promotional efforts, you should think of the ways to engage them and use that engagement to your benefit.

Instead of shamelessly promoting your business without providing value to your customers, your strategy should answer your audience’s question “What’s in it for me?”

Here are a few ideas to help you make your promotional efforts effective and worthwhile. 

Build an email list from your social media followers

Small businesses use social media to promote their businesses, with 61% of small business companies which actually invest in promotional campaigns. 

Social media is a great way to make your company visible to a larger audience and to get the word of mouth going. Still, there is a catch. 

If you want your promotional efforts to have a long term impact and influence your sales, use social media with the main purpose of building your email list so that you can market your products and services in your customers inbox. Having direct access to your customers is of crucial importance.

Make it local

To make your small business successful, you have to make it highly visible to your local audiences. 

Stats show that 46% of all Google queries are searching for local information, while 86% of your target customers will try to find a business location using Google maps.

 One of the main objectives of your promotional efforts should be a high ranking in the local searches, so make sure you’ve provided correct and consistent NAP details in all relevant online directories and claimed your GoogleMyBusiness listing. Optimizing your content to include a geo-targeted service page and maps with your location is a must.

Support a cause

One of the ways to make your business visible in your local community is by supporting a cause both you and your customers find valuable. It can be a 5K charity run you will choose to sponsor or a funding event for a pet shelter.

 By supporting a cause, you can take part in the life of your community, and use this opportunity to send your marketing message to your customers, as well as to promote the values you want them to connect you with.

Ask for referrals

Referrals are the best way to reach potential customers, so make sure to ask happy customers to give you one, without too much hassle on their side. You can send them a referral link via email, for example, or ask for recommendations on your website or even social media. Also, provide your customers with a  reward for their engagement, such as a discount for your products or services, or a free sample. 

Giveaways

Generally speaking, people love giveaways and freebies, and you can give your prospective customers something to be happy about and promote your business at the same time, without breaking the bank. Let’s say you’re running a small business in Wellington, for example, and you want to reward your loyal customers with suitable products, like water bottles with the name of your business or keyrings with your logo. You can check great promotional companies such as Fast Promotional Products NZ that are offering high-quality merch which will fit your marketing needs. 

Use networking

Don’t forget about the power networking can have. Use every opportunity you get to promote your company but keep in mind that the best promotion you can have is never too salesy and pushy. 

If you’re a member of the Facebook group in your niche, make sure that other members and the group itself can benefit from your input – offer a piece of useful advice or a relevant instructional video. 

This way, you can build a reputation and authority in your niche, and your prospects will reach out for you when they need your products and service, as well as recommend your company to their own personal and professional networks.

Start a blog

Whatever digital marketing strategy you choose, be sure that you provide your prospects with high-quality content which they will like to consume. 

One way of doing this is by starting your own blog, where you will post about the topics informative, useful or relevant to your prospects. You can include infographics or educational videos on your blog too, as visual content is much easier to grasp.

Nowadays, there are many different ways to promote your small business, and you can use these ideas as a part of your overall marketing strategy. Although these are straightforward and seemingly simple, you can greatly benefit from implementing them persistently.