Insights, Ideas, Results
Small business owners may not have the resources to compete with big brand names such as Nike or Coca Cola, but that doesn’t mean that branding is not important to your business. Building a brand is a vital part of marketing your services. Building commercial awareness of your company is essential to growth.
If you are a small business owner you’ll inevitably face the challenge of creating and maintaining your presence in social media. Social media presence is a must to promote your business and stay in touch with your customers. However, people will not find you and won’t follow you in social media if you don’t have regularly updated content – you have to communicate with your customers regularly and find the ways to engage them.
Services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus offer you a great chance to promote your business through social media. You can even do this without a dedicated website as social networking sites offer you a surface to carry your content themselves. You just need to fill these channels with engaging content and this may require some time, and of course, resources.
The times when the Internet was just a haunt for geeks are over. It’s not even a novelty that in today’s world, everything is now online. The World Wide Web is now such an essential and integral part of our world that if the Internet ceased to exist tomorrow, the economy would be brought to a standstill. However, what is (relatively) new is that people are no longer limiting themselves to just passively reading and searching the web. Nowadays, anyone can actively contribute to the Internet and almost everyone does: Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Google Plus – these are just the most obvious examples. Online, the possibilities are endless and if you want your business to stand out in today’s market, you simply can’t ignore this trend.
Every business finds a need to get rid of excess inventory quickly at some point. You may end up with excess inventory for number of reasons. Clothing retailers need to sell remaining winter jackets at the end of winter. You may misjudge consumer preference and buy too much of pink trousers that are no longer trendy. You might even find a need to free up some cash and one way to do it is to sell excess inventory.
These days you are bound to encounter signs advertising products or business no matter where you go. They have taken over the shops, roads, clothing and even toilets. Some people even had crazy idea of putting tattoos on their body advertising a product and getting paid for it. While the last one may be extreme there is no argument that your business sign is one of the most important marketing elements that needs careful attention and planning.
Event marketing is one of the areas that don’t get as much attention from small business owners as other types of marketing. Most business owners are comfortable spending money with advertising on traditional media such as newspaper, magazine, radio, TV or Internet. Advertising on these media does not take much time and effort and is deemed to be proven over number of years.
However, if you are not participating in exhibitions and events such as trade shows, home shows and such you may be missing out on one of the best avenues of putting your business name in front of potential customers who are already interested in your products.
[Read more…]
Next time you go to the mall pay close attention to the bags people are carrying. You will find many sizes and styles. You will find some bags that are just so good that you don’t care what’s inside you will want to go to the store just to get the bag. Do you form an opinion about the content of the package or the business providing the bag based on its appearance?
Such is the power of packaging. Some businesses, especially luxury retailers, pay as much attention to the packing as they do to the products they sell. After all, customers form opinion about the business based on their first impression of the package.
When it comes to promoting your small business, every cent used for marketing really counts. You’ll need to create a presence for yourself in your community as well as cyberspace. That’s where a great digital printing company comes in. Without their help, you might as well hang up your hat.
With thousands of businesses being created daily, it’s hard to set yours apart from the crowd. Without the right tools, no one will know who you are. You’re going to need to create materials that get the word out about your business and the products and services that you offer.
Making an impact on the World Wide Web can be daunting for small businesses. The initial instinct is often to appeal to the largest audience possible online. However, when your brick and mortar business is located in a provincial town, small businesses can benefit better from local SEO than an all-encompassing search strategy. Optimising local search listings can help small businesses increase their online presence with limited budget.
[Read more…]
Some people may not agree, but billboards are still relevant in this age of digital advertising. They offer great visibility to businesses in a very cost-effective way. For one thing, they are always there. People do not have to hunt for them. When designed right, they can catch people’s eyes and make lasting impression on their minds.
Wouldn’t it be even more effective if you could take those billboards and make them mobile so that they can be put in front of the people in multiple places? This is exactly putting the company logo and other brand building advertisements on the clothes people wear can do. This is similar to putting Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories” in people’s news page, except the story moves around and gives exposure in front of hundreds of people.
Businesses can incorporate the promotional logo clothing in multiple ways. The most common is giving T-shirts with your corporate logo to visitors and customers at Trade shows and other such places. You can also ask your employees to wear them while they are on duty. They will probably wear them even when they are not working. No matter how you do it placing corporate logo on clothes provides excellent visibility to your business in addition to other benefits described below.
[Read more…]
