10 Affordable PR and Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses
10 Affordable PR and Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses
#1 – Building a culture of ongoing content generation
Write whenever you get time; encourage your staff to write one article every week, on any topic related to your service or latest social issues. So if your company is into Financial Accounting Business, you and your team can generate content related to managing finances, tricks that businesses can follow to keep their accounts clean, budgeting and planning, latest federal laws and their impact, and so on. If you are not comfortable with writing; record your thoughts as podcasts. How will this help you? You can use the same content for growing your website, posting articles on the net, offering tips to your clients through newsletters/podcasts, exhibiting your knowledge to your prospects, offering RSS feeds, and overall growing a team that thinks. B2B solutions providers must generate informative content to educate their prospects and customers. All you would need to invest is time, energy, and knowledge.
#2 – Getting local
Marketing to national or international audiences might be tough for an emerging small business as the competition is intense. In such a scenario the best solution is to target the local market and channel your communication to the place from where you get maximum business. Your website should be keyword optimized for your locality and the preferences of that market. Major portion of the content that your company generates should be localized. You may advertise or exchange links with related companies in the same localities. You or your staff can become members and participate in local business communities. Do your best to spread the word locally online and offline.
#3 – Posting articles
Apart from posting self-generated articles on your website, you must also give them out everywhere possible. The first step is to post them on at least 20 popular article websites. Some of the good ones are: www.ezinearticles.com, www.isnare.com, www.amazines.com. You can also find websites that only take articles related to specific businesses. Do some research and create a list that suits your requirements the best and make sure that the websites that you select have high Google Page Rank. You may also take printouts of innovative point-of-view articles and hand them out strategically during events. E-merchants or companies using internet to market their products must utilize this tactic to increase web traffic to their sites.
#4 – Communicating with the media
Any new thing that your company does can be newsworthy if written in the right way. Opening new offices, partnering with other businesses, hiring new key personnel, adding new services to your existing portfolio, new ideas and innovations related to your business, acquiring new clients, and more – all can be transformed into interesting news articles. Write a press release for any news: make it available on your corporate website, post it on popular global PR websites (www.PRNewswire.com, www.PRWeb.com), publish it on your local PR websites, and finally send it to all your media contacts or conduct a press conference if the news is big enough. You may also write feature articles for magazines and newspapers in your domain. If your articles are interesting, publishers would be more than happy to add them. For instance, if your company offers residential and commercial painting services, you can write articles on how to select the right color, different types of colors, etc., and get them published in interior decoration magazines, architecture magazines, home-owners magazines, and their websites.
#5 – Marketing directly and through e-mails
Capture the email IDs and mailing addresses of all the customers and prospects you touch and ask them for permission to send marketing and promotional messages. Do not send messages to people who have not asked for it to avoid tarnishing your brand image. Send immediate follow-up mails to prospects, send service reminders to existing customers, conduct customer satisfaction survey and ask for feedback, send periodic newsletters with quality information, offer seasonal discounts to loyal customers, ask for referrals, send printable coupons, send free samples, and such. Let your prospects know that they can opt-out from receiving mails from you anytime they like and make the opting out process simple.
#6 – Offering live support
You may offer live chat support on your website to help your visitors get the information they are looking for. You can maximize chances of conversion, ensure that no visitor leaves the website without getting sufficient info, get visitor feedback, analyze visitor behavior, and above all project an image of being responsive. You may offer online support to your customers to help them utilize your service in a better way. Use online webinar tools like www.GoToMeeting.com or www.Webex.com for greater interactivity.
#7 – Being an active member of discussion forums
Identify local, national or international forums that are related to your business offerings and become an active participant. Visit these forums as often as possible and post answers to people’s queries, participate in live threads, and start your own topics for discussions. Encourage your staff members to join too. Do not try to sell your service here; just offer radical advice. How will this actually help you? Participating in such forums will establish you as a thought leader among the people of the same fraternity as well as the people looking for solutions in that domain. The corporate website link in all your signatures will also increase your web traffic.
#8 – Blogging for corporate purpose
Blogging has proved its worth in the corporate arena too. Even big businesses are motivating their senior managers to write blogs on various topics related to their vertical expertise. Apart from bringing in more leads for your business, blog also helps in establishing your identity as an individual. By writing useful tips and articles, you can show your knowledge and expertise. Make it mandatory for your team to post comments and articles regularly on corporate blogs.
#9 – Networking on social B2B websites
Join online business networks like www.GoBigNetwork.com, www.Ryze.com, www.Konnects.com, etc.; identify your B2B prospects and offer your advice and services to them. Active participation would definitely build your network and get you referrals too.
#10 – Getting listed
Get your company listed in local web directories like Yahoo! Local, CitySearch, AskCity, AOL’s City Guide, Craiglist, MerchantCircle, Local.com, Froogle Local, Yellopages.com, and such. Some are free while some charge a nominal fee for yearly or lifetime listings. Having your details listed at such places will increase the probability of your prospects finding you when they need your service.
You don’t need a huge budget to implement these tactics; all you need is a bit of dedication and a systematic process to ensure apt execution. With the right display of knowledge your small business can appear like a big professional organization and help it soar. All the best!
10 Affordable PR and Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses - To learn more about this author, visit Gourab Nanda's Website.
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Small and emerging businesses are constantly striving to meet their bottom lines and increase profits while struggling with a stringent marketing budget. The budget that is spent almost entirely on building a website, printing business cards, getting listed in yellow pages, and other such bare necessities; leaving very little for real marketing activities. This article contains ten proven techniques to market your business with very little investment. The only thing that can hold you back in implementing these for your business is your imagination.
#1 – Building a culture of ongoing content generation
Write whenever you get time; encourage your staff to write one article every week, on any topic related to your service or latest social issues. So if your company is into Financial Accounting Business, you and your team can generate content related to managing finances, tricks that businesses can follow to keep their accounts clean, budgeting and planning, latest federal laws and their impact, and so on. If you are not comfortable with writing; record your thoughts as podcasts. How will this help you? You can use the same content for growing your website, posting articles on the net, offering tips to your clients through newsletters/podcasts, exhibiting your knowledge to your prospects, offering RSS feeds, and overall growing a team that thinks. B2B solutions providers must generate informative content to educate their prospects and customers. All you would need to invest is time, energy, and knowledge.
#2 – Getting local
Marketing to national or international audiences might be tough for an emerging small business as the competition is intense. In such a scenario the best solution is to target the local market and channel your communication to the place from where you get maximum business. Your website should be keyword optimized for your locality and the preferences of that market. Major portion of the content that your company generates should be localized. You may advertise or exchange links with related companies in the same localities. You or your staff can become members and participate in local business communities. Do your best to spread the word locally online and offline.
#3 – Posting articles
Apart from posting self-generated articles on your website, you must also give them out everywhere possible. The first step is to post them on at least 20 popular article websites. Some of the good ones are: www.ezinearticles.com, www.isnare.com, www.amazines.com. You can also find websites that only take articles related to specific businesses. Do some research and create a list that suits your requirements the best and make sure that the websites that you select have high Google Page Rank. You may also take printouts of innovative point-of-view articles and hand them out strategically during events. E-merchants or companies using internet to market their products must utilize this tactic to increase web traffic to their sites.
#4 – Communicating with the media
Any new thing that your company does can be newsworthy if written in the right way. Opening new offices, partnering with other businesses, hiring new key personnel, adding new services to your existing portfolio, new ideas and innovations related to your business, acquiring new clients, and more – all can be transformed into interesting news articles. Write a press release for any news: make it available on your corporate website, post it on popular global PR websites (www.PRNewswire.com, www.PRWeb.com), publish it on your local PR websites, and finally send it to all your media contacts or conduct a press conference if the news is big enough. You may also write feature articles for magazines and newspapers in your domain. If your articles are interesting, publishers would be more than happy to add them. For instance, if your company offers residential and commercial painting services, you can write articles on how to select the right color, different types of colors, etc., and get them published in interior decoration magazines, architecture magazines, home-owners magazines, and their websites.
#5 – Marketing directly and through e-mails
Capture the email IDs and mailing addresses of all the customers and prospects you touch and ask them for permission to send marketing and promotional messages. Do not send messages to people who have not asked for it to avoid tarnishing your brand image. Send immediate follow-up mails to prospects, send service reminders to existing customers, conduct customer satisfaction survey and ask for feedback, send periodic newsletters with quality information, offer seasonal discounts to loyal customers, ask for referrals, send printable coupons, send free samples, and such. Let your prospects know that they can opt-out from receiving mails from you anytime they like and make the opting out process simple.
#6 – Offering live support
You may offer live chat support on your website to help your visitors get the information they are looking for. You can maximize chances of conversion, ensure that no visitor leaves the website without getting sufficient info, get visitor feedback, analyze visitor behavior, and above all project an image of being responsive. You may offer online support to your customers to help them utilize your service in a better way. Use online webinar tools like www.GoToMeeting.com or www.Webex.com for greater interactivity.
#7 – Being an active member of discussion forums
Identify local, national or international forums that are related to your business offerings and become an active participant. Visit these forums as often as possible and post answers to people’s queries, participate in live threads, and start your own topics for discussions. Encourage your staff members to join too. Do not try to sell your service here; just offer radical advice. How will this actually help you? Participating in such forums will establish you as a thought leader among the people of the same fraternity as well as the people looking for solutions in that domain. The corporate website link in all your signatures will also increase your web traffic.
#8 – Blogging for corporate purpose
Blogging has proved its worth in the corporate arena too. Even big businesses are motivating their senior managers to write blogs on various topics related to their vertical expertise. Apart from bringing in more leads for your business, blog also helps in establishing your identity as an individual. By writing useful tips and articles, you can show your knowledge and expertise. Make it mandatory for your team to post comments and articles regularly on corporate blogs.
#9 – Networking on social B2B websites
Join online business networks like www.GoBigNetwork.com, www.Ryze.com, www.Konnects.com, etc.; identify your B2B prospects and offer your advice and services to them. Active participation would definitely build your network and get you referrals too.
#10 – Getting listed
Get your company listed in local web directories like Yahoo! Local, CitySearch, AskCity, AOL’s City Guide, Craiglist, MerchantCircle, Local.com, Froogle Local, Yellopages.com, and such. Some are free while some charge a nominal fee for yearly or lifetime listings. Having your details listed at such places will increase the probability of your prospects finding you when they need your service.
You don’t need a huge budget to implement these tactics; all you need is a bit of dedication and a systematic process to ensure apt execution. With the right display of knowledge your small business can appear like a big professional organization and help it soar. All the best!
10 Affordable PR and Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses - To learn more about this author, visit Gourab Nanda's Website.
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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John AlexanderJohn has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center. I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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