Making Your Small Business Look Big

As a small business, your budget is tight and your time is even tighter. But you still have to compete with larger organizations that have big budgets and even bigger staff. Let’s face it image is everything and if you can’t look big, prospective customers will go elsewhere.

How can you make your small business look big without breaking the bank? Start with these five time and budget friendly ideas. In no time you’ll be competing head-to-head with the larger organizations in your market.

1. Powerful Logo – the logo of your company is often the first thing that someone sees. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but don’t take it for granted. It should communicate the values of your company – strong, dedicated, customer focused, etc – and be on all of your marketing materials

2. Business Cards - Don’t underestimate the power of the business card. It’s often the first thing someone sees when you meet them for the first time and they are you when you aren’t there. Make sure your business cards are high-quality, full-color and make an immediate impact. Distribute them freely to ensure that your name gets out there often. Give a stack of cards to colleagues who will pass them along to potential customers.

3. Professional Materials—Produce high-quality, professional materials for all of your branding and marketing initiatives. All of your collateral materials - business cards, letterhead, brochures, note cards, post cards, giveaways and even return address labels - should all match and make a strong impression. And don’t forget note cards for hand written thank you notes. Because prospects and customers like to review information from home, clear and easy-to-read brochures with product or service information are important. Skip photo-copied fliers on colored paper and shoot for full color glossy materials. Hand them out when you meet with clients or prospects at shows and conferences.

4. Reinforce Your Bransd With Great Giveaway—Stay in front of your customers every day. Look for cost-effective options that have staying power. If it makes sense for your business, items like calendar magnets with seasonal professional sports calendars are a great way to ensure your customers will place your business and contact information in a frequently viewed location like the refrigerator or file cabinet. Also consider holiday cards and holiday promotional giveaways with your name and messaging.

5. High Impact, High Frequency Mailings—Promotional mailings are one of the most cost-effective ways to keep you top of mind with your customers. Look for high-impact, full-color postcards that inform customers of your latest successes or upcoming sales. The frequency of the communication is almost as important as what you say. Mail your customer base twice a month for the best response. If you can segment your database, send smaller print runs of mailings to targeted audiences. You’d be surprised how appropriate mailings can impact the bottom line.

No matter your budget, these simple tips will enable you to look professional and will keep your company’s name in front of your customers.

The Article Source: http://www.fastcompany.com

Small Business Marketing Tips – 5 Ways To Market Your Small Business Online

As small businesses naturally don’t have the necessary resources to launch huge marketing campaigns, they will have to compensate this with resourcefulness and innovation. If you’re running a small business and you’re searching for cost-efficient marketing solutions, here’s how you can use the wonderful World Wide Web to your company’s advantage.

5 Ways to Market Your Small Business Online

Build a Website – You don’t have to pay for web hosting even if you’re running a commercial website just as long as your company can be properly categorized as a small business. Having a company website is the means for prospective customers to learn everything they have to know about the products or services you’re offering. Compared to other online media, a website allows your customers to see and hear about your offer and perhaps interact with you as well.

Know about SEO – Your work doesn’t start and end with building a website. To make your website work as a marketing tool for your business, you need to incorporate SEO - or search engine optimization – elements in it. SEO can help your website zoom to the top of search engine rankings and provide it with all the exposure you need.

In regard to SEO, make sure that you focus on your design and content. Besides needing your website layout to be visually attractive, it must also have easily located links to facilitate navigation. Use HTML as much as possible as this is more SEO friendly than, say, CSS. As for the content, refresh or update it as much as you can because new information will always encourage old and new readers to visit your website. Also, think about the appropriate keywords for your website and use them as much as possible – without committing grammatical errors or ruining the coherence of your content – to delight search engine spiders all the more.

Have a Blog – A blog is one of the most effective online marketing tools today, and if you don’t have one yet then you’re wasting a huge opportunity day after day. A blog allows you to directly interact with prospective customers and almost immediately update them with anything new about your company’s products or services.

To increase the marketing effectiveness of your blog, make sure that you’re writing about one topic alone. This topic must be directly related to your company’s products or services. Furthermore, it must be something that you know and love a lot to enable you to write in a convincing and interesting fashion.

Build Your Network Contacts – Although websites sometimes seem to be creatures of their own right, always remember that a website can’t really operate by itself. It gets updated and achieves success because of its webmaster or owner, and that person should be the one you’re concentrating on getting friendly with. Do your best to build your network by establishing good working relationships with other website owners. This is a give and take situation so be ready and willing to shell out as many favors as you hope to receive. As you become good buddies with these people, you’ll end up exchanging links, and this, by the way, is called affiliate marketing.

Join the Podcast Revolution – Although the popularity of blogs is certainly not waning, that doesn’t mean you have to completely rely on blog marketing alone. There are other marketing fishes in the Internet, and one of them goes by the name of podcasting. Make new podcasts regularly and insert your ads in between. You have to make them short and interesting enough to discourage your listeners from wasting energy just to press the fast forward button.

About the Author

Mario Churchill makes it quicker and easier for you to create profitable business ideas, develop your marketing strategy or start brainstorming on any topic. For a free trial, please visit http://www.ideacenter.com.

What Every Small Business Must Know About Marketing

When it comes to marketing a small business, you have probably made the same mistakes as others, which means you claim to offer the same benefits and services as others in the industry. Here are some tips and ideas for small business marketing.

First off, make it clear what sets you apart from the competition. If you're not even sure, how are your potential clients and customers going to make a decision to choose you over others? In the end, being unclear of what makes you better than the rest is like saying "Just give me your money."

Keep in mind that a long description of your business and what you do doesn't really attract customers. This actually keeps them away.

Many business owners try this way of doing marketing. Unfortunately, their lack of business usually causes them to blame the volatility of the current market. It's not their advertising, but rather, people just aren't in the mood for shopping anymore. But because they are not showing clients what they can offer, no one is finding them.

Take some time and find out what it is about your business that is unique. You need a business concept that is clear and to the point. In fact, put aside any other tasks you need to do for your business and concentrate on this first. It will be well worth it in the end

If you pull it off right, your uniqueness can be very helpful in your overall marketing strategy. So how do you start? A good way to begin is to figure out who the perfect client for you is. Don't be vague about it or think about clients you've had in the past. Instead, put together a profile that shows what your perfect client will look like. Finally, define what success will mean from the point of view of your perfect client.

Next, ask yourself what makes you passionate about what you do. Why are you different than others and why is this good for the clients? Can you do things better, or differently? Are you faster or cheaper or offer better quality? Is there something that just sets you apart from the crowd? Remember, be very specific. This is a key point.

Sometimes a good way to get started is to actually have a meeting with some of your great clients and ask for some advice. Actually, even taking this step and making this type of effort will set you apart from the competition, which is always a good thing!

Now that you have an idea what you can offer the client that is different from everyone else, keep this main theme in all your marketing and sales ideas. Of course, it must truly match up with what you offer. Don't start making promises that just aren't true. If you can't driver , this will ruin your business because customers will just be disappointed that you didn't live up to your promises.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shonda Miles is a business consultant and business coach. Gotta Take Action provides informative articles and advice to women-owned businesses who are ready to skyrocket their profits. Learn more about how to catapult your business success by visiting http://www.gottatakeaction.com for more information.