Getting noticed is the hardest part of running a small business. If you’ve gone long enough with no website traffic and no people entering your store, it can start to feel as though your business is practically invisible. That’s a serious problem because if you’re not earning revenue, it’ll become increasingly difficult for your business to stay in operation at all. What you need is a way to break through the static a way to get noticed even if there’s already plenty of competition in your industry.
In this article, we’re going to provide some ideas that can help you attract the attention of your potential customers. These can’t-miss promotional tactics aren’t just extremely effective – they’re also surprisingly affordable and don’t require anything other than your time in some cases. If you’re desperate for attention and need to get your small business noticed now, try one of these can’t-miss promotional tactics.
Develop the Best Website Content
Even if your small business only sells products out of a brick-and-mortar store and doesn’t offer anything online, having a website should still be a major part of your promotional strategy because people almost always go online to research local businesses. When people go online to search for your business or for information relevant to your industry, you want them to get the story from you not from a third-party source that you don’t control. You need to have a website that introduces your business to the public and presents an image of trust and professionalism.
Promoting your business through your website isn’t just a matter of putting a few pages online to introduce yourself to the world it’s also a matter of capturing traffic when people search for keywords relevant to your business. Suppose, for instance, that you run a local plumbing business. You don’t just want to capture traffic for search terms like “plumber in (your city)” – you also want to show up when people search for information about specific types of plumbing problems, like squeaky faucets and leaking toilets. If you develop content focused around the keywords that people are likely to search for if they’re interested in a business like yours. It can dramatically increase the volume of business that you receive. Many different types of businesses such as the UK vape shop Cloud City use this strategy to great effect.
Give Something Away
In some cases, a good way to promote a small business is by helping potential customers find you as we’ve just described above. In other cases, though, passive marketing will only get you so far. If you want to get the best possible results, you’ve got to get your business’s name out into the world and get yourself in front of as many eyes as possible. Everyone loves free stuff, and that means one of the best ways to generate awareness of your small business is by giving something away. The more grandiose your giveaway is, the more likely people will be to notice it.
In the United States, there’s a furniture company called Gallery Furniture that runs a major giveaway every year. If Major League Baseball’s Houston Astros win the World Series, customers who purchased mattresses during the season receive refunds. Mattresses are expensive, so people flock to the store for the chance to receive their purchases for free. The store’s owner doesn’t lose money on the promotion, though, because he places a large bet on the Astros at the start of the season. If he wins the bet, the losses from the giveaway are covered. When he loses the bet, it doesn’t matter because the mattress sales cover the loss. If you can find a way to apply a similar strategy to your business, you’ll have a chance to become very successful.
Develop an Irresistible Offer and Promote It Online
If your small business sells products online, pay-per-click advertising on Google might become a very important part of your marketing strategy. In this form of marketing, you choose a keyword phrase that’s important for your business and create a text advertisement relevant to that phrase. You then enter an auction system and bid the amount of money that you’re willing to pay if someone clicks your ad. In most cases, advertising in this way isn’t terribly expensive often just a few pence per click. This is because not every click will result in a sale. Don’t let the low price per click fool you, though; some keywords receive so much search traffic that it’s possible to drain your advertising budget extremely quickly if you aren’t careful.
When you use pay-per-click advertising to promote your website, the trick is coming up with an offer that’s difficult to refuse. You might even consider trying an offer that’s unprofitable because it can sometimes be more lucrative in the long run to earn a new customer than it is to earn a profit on the initial sale. Refine your offer constantly, testing different images, different text and different price points until you determine what has the highest conversion rate. Once you have an offer that’s profitable, advertise it as heavily as you possibly can.
Invite Local Influencers to Visit Your Business
Not everyone who finds your small business will do so by finding your website. Some people will find out about you through third-party sources like business directories. For that reason, it’s extremely important to secure positive reviews on business directories if you can. If people see that your business has a large number of negative reviews, they’ll probably look elsewhere.
Business directories often forbid business owners from soliciting positive reviews. There’s nothing wrong, though, with making sure that local influencers on business directories know about your company. Consider reaching out to the most popular local reviewers on the major business directories and letting them know about your small business. Encourage them to visit and share their thoughts. The first reviews that your business receives will probably be seen by many people. Those reviews are even more valuable if they’re written by prominent local influencers. A good review can go a long way toward helping your business establish a foothold in your community.