Combining Small Business Offline Marketing With Your Online Marketing

Because so many people make use of the internet for basically anything you can think of, the offline side of marketing efforts is often overlooked. While the use of the internet for putting your business out there guarantees global reach, and visibility, there are many other tactics you may want to try that can give you an added push and of course, be profitable. Making physical connections with people is a vital part of the business building process, and should not be side-stepped when trying to grow your business.In fact, combining offline and online strategies, produces the perfect marriage of forces to drive your business forward.

Make Use of Trade Shows and Expos
You can actually search online to see which trade shows related to your field of business you could take part in. You could split the cost of a display space with another business to minimize your costs.

Even if you decide not to exhibit via a booth or table display, you need to be prepared so that you can garner leads through this medium. Making use of print media through flyers and business cards which you can personally hand to patrons, is a great step toward building your network.

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Volunteer for Local Projects or Causes

5 Key Components to an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

There’s more to your content marketing strategy than your content. You can create as much content as you want. But, it won’t get you anywhere without brand visibility, repeat traffic, social media marketing, and other factors.

The following 5 key components will help ensure that you put your content to good use. When you spend time or money generating content, you don’t want it to be wasted. Pay attention to these 5 components:

• Brand visibility
• Website traffic
• Calls to action
• Multiple channels
• Quality content

Brand Visibility

The first component is brand visibility. This includes awareness and familiarity. When customers see your content, they should be able to immediately recognise it as coming from your website. The easiest way to achieve this is with branding.

Your content should include your branding. This means adding your logo, using the same colour scheme that you use on your website, and making sure that your brand name is prominently displayed.

Website Traffic

You need traffic. Otherwise, how’s anyone going to find your content? So, the next key component of any content marketing strategy is website traffic. This includes referral traffic and repeat traffic.

Referral traffic lets you know that people are linking to your content or talking about it on social media. If you’re not getting any referral traffic, you need to incorporate social media marketing.

Share links to your content on social media. This should help get the ball rolling. 

Calls to Action

Every piece of content that you create needs a call to action. It doesn’t matter if this call to action directs the visitor to a product page or to a lead magnet. The goal is to get them to move onto the next step.

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How to Market Your Service Based Business

What is a Sales Promotion?

When selling a product, marketing usually comes fairly easy. Your marketing campaign revolves around the product for sale and how it can be used.

When you own a service-based business, the marketing may require a different approach. Instead of marketing product features, you have to market yourself and your team.  The good news is, people are always looking for reliable services, no matter the type.  You just need to make sure they find you and not your competitors.   Here are some techniques that will help you accomplish this.

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Connect with Your Own Community

Established local businesses have their own clientele.  And, they may only be able to handle a certain number of clients.  So, if you treat these businesses respectfully, they may refer clients to you when they are at their capacity.  A good way to connect with your community is to be involved with the local Rotary Club or Chamber of Commerce. These associations will connect you with other businesses that welcome assistance from a peer.

Use Social Media and Networking

How To link Your Small Business Email Marketing to a Marketing Funnel

What is a Marketing Funnel?

The idea of a funnel is used to illustrate the process a potential client goes through as they become familiar with your products or services.

Visually, clients enter the funnel at the widest part, the top, then proceed to descend, stage by stage, leaving at the level they lose interest.  What you end up with at the bottom are the final few who have purchased and love your product or service.  These are the clients that will keep coming back

Your goal is to raise the number of potential clients that enter the top and lower the number that loses interest at each stage.

To accomplish this, you will need to have a conversion tactic for each stage.

There are a few different Funnel maps out there that vary in their vocabulary but each basically means the same thing, for the sake of this article, we’ll go with the following terms:

• Awareness
• Engagement / Interest
• Discovery
• Purchase / Conversion
• Loyalty / Retention
• Advocacy

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Using Email Marketing to Get a Client All the Way to the Bottom

Six Tips To Grow Your Instagram Followers

As Instagram continues its meteoric rise in both monthly user base and saturation metrics, it makes sense for small businesses to get on board. Statistics show that engagement rate on Instagram is much higher than either Facebook or Twitter. Not making Instagram a part of your marketing campaign is a mistake your business cannot afford to make.

With that in mind, here are a few strategies on how to grow your Instagram following:

Post Daily

Get into a regular flow when posting to Instagram, but don’t inundate your followers with content. A few times a day is probably the ideal number. Quality content combined with consistency will do more to drive up your number of followers than flooding their feeds will.

Share on a regular basis so you can discover what works best for you and your business. Provide creative, engaging content, and you’ll be rewarded with not only more supporters, but followers that are interested in your content.

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Promote User Content

Market Your Small Business With An Instagram Photo Contest

An Instagram photo contest is a great way to promote your small business while having some fun. A photo contest can lead to new followers while your company is giving back to the Instagram community.

But running an Instagram photo contest isn’t always easy, and can be a bit confusing. Here is a short guide on getting the most out of a photo contest, should you choose to do so.

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Target Your Market

Define your target market before kicking off your photo contest. A contest for families who enjoy camping is going to look a lot different than couples who look for new and exciting places to visit in the city. Determine who you intend to engage with, and gear your contest toward them.

Team Up

Finding a partner for your Instagram photo contest can be a benefit for both businesses. Not only can you gain more followers through this method, but you’ll also receive additional exposure. Most of these types of partnerships require participants to be followers of both accounts before they can enter. Keep things simple though. There’s no need to team up with more than one business per contest.

Avoid Confusion

Make Emails Work for Your Small Business

Cold emailing is not as awkward as cold calling, but it still can be a frightening thing to do. A well-written cold email could be the key you need to get into contact with employers, celebrities, speakers, and just about anyone else you want to contact. You might be trying to reach out to one particular person you want to partner with or you might be trying to sell your product to two dozen people you met at a conference. Either way, cold emails are a fast and simple way of communication.

Grab our free Social Media checklist and free email marketing training here

Unfortunately, it is often very difficult to find a way to get somebody to notice your email amongst dozens of other messages. Most people have countless spam emails in their inbox that they never read and they might disregard your email in the same way. Here are some tips you can use to make cold emails work for you:

Keep it Short and Sweet