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Are you hurting your business by only marketing locally?

Guest post by: Peter Geisheker

Article Overview: As a small business, thinking in terms of marketing means thinking locally, right? You think of your signage (if you have an office building or store), advertisements in the local paper, and your trusty cold calls. But are you limiting yourself too much?

Are you hurting your business by only marketing locally?

As a small business, thinking in terms of marketing means thinking locally, right? You think of your signage (if you have an office building or store), advertisements in the local paper, and your trusty cold calls. But are you limiting yourself too much?

Especially today, you may find it difficult to bring in more business. Local markets can be a “hit or miss” investment. You may, however, be able to expand your business to a regional or even a national level, without having to invest in tens of thousands of dollars. Just by employing a few marketing techniques, you can expand your market and reach brand new customers.

If you are selling a product, open an online store.

Get yourself a sharp, user-friendly website that you can post products to and offer online purchasing. Other than the cost of design and web hosting, you don't have to pay for much more. The customers will pay for shipping, and you can send your products all over the world if you want to!

With an online store, you then can invest in more targeted and far-reaching sales letters and emails, along with search engine optimization to make sure that your site comes up first when people are searching online for similar products.

By widening your market with an online store, you have the responsibility to drive traffic to the website, just like your responsibility to bring customers into your “brick and mortar” store as well. But convincing someone to visit a website is generally much easier to accomplish than to convince someone to take the time to come down to your store. There are less barriers to eliminate, and you can post the link to your store just about anywhere online for exposure.

If you are selling a service, consider offering consulting or running a blog.

Those both sound like additional revenue streams, don't they? And they can be. But also, they serve as marketing tools. You certainly can charge for consulting through phone and email – advertising the service on your website. But also, you can use consulting as a way to provide value for potential customers and to show them what you can do for them. Creating this awareness and fostering this relationship can go a long way to driving more clients to you.

Running a blog is a similar concept: offer value to your client. It is possible to run and maintain a blog to make money, but the main focus should be to build a community that will want to hire you for the service you provide. Just like with consulting, your goal is to demonstrate your expertise in whatever area you choose, and to use that expertise to translate it into sales.

Taking a business online is getting simpler every day, especially when you have the right people helping you in the process. By doing so, you cast your net even farther and it gives your business the chance to explore new markets – which can be invaluable to the future of your business and its survival.

Many of these options take a little time to get going, but just like with any marketing strategy, once you get it going, it can pay off huge dividends.

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Article Tags: advertisements, blog, brick and mortar, brick and mortar store, cold calls, local markets, marketing techniques, marketing tools, revenue streams, sales letters, search engine optimization, shipping, signage, similar products, small business, tens of thousands, thousands of dollars, traffic



Related Forum Posts
Re: Direct Mail Postcards - [quote="TannyL":fute388m]However it is still harder to advertise an online business with offline strategies...[/quote:fute388m] Really? From what I've read and some of the posts above indicate that offline marketing can really help your online business. It may take some creativity, though. I personally haven't seen any results yet from mailing post cards, so I can't really say if it's been beneficial for me. I like some of the suggestions above. Again, being creative is important. I think you can get a good response from people especially when many are hurting due to a job loss and lack of income. They're searching for alternatives when jobs are scarce.
Re: I think Craigslist is better than Ebay - [quote="Takuya":qrwga8m5]But i agree with you, it's nice having it to sell it locally.[/quote:qrwga8m5] While selling locally is always best, you can still sell internationally via Craigslist and that's why it's better than Ebay. Craigslist has no seller fees (but watch out for PayPal). If a buyer is willing to pay for the shipping cost, then why not sell to them? Just be sure to explain the no refund policy and shipping insurance coverage.
Re: Free Twitter Resources & Apps - We haven't gotten into Twitter. Do you think that could be hurting us? There are only so many things you can find the time to do.
Re: Sales Are Up... Profits Are Down! - Hi David, That's some great insight on how you're dealing with the current recession. I imagine others are hurting in the same way. Alan
Re: Free Twitter Resources & Apps - [quote="mbrand2222":26mhzn0m]We haven't gotten into Twitter. Do you think that could be hurting us? There are only so many things you can find the time to do.[/quote:26mhzn0m] Good question Mary. When MySpace was hot, every business was creating a page... and then Facebook was popular so everyone built a profile for their business... and now it's the Twitter craze... Personally I feel that these social networking sites are only great for socializing and I'm not entirely convinced that they're best suited for business.


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