TUTORIAL: Starting A Small Business Tutorial

Before you start marketing a product, it helps to create an ideal customer to who you want to reach with your promotional material. Once you have your ideal customer, you have a plethora of techniques to pick from. Most of these are low or no cost methods (sometimes called guerrilla marketing) and you may use each one at different stages of your business cycle, or you may utilize them all at once from your business/inception. We’ll look at seven of these techniques in more detail. (Do you have what it takes to work in this fast-paced field? This article will help you determine if marketing is for you. Refer to A Career Guide For Marketing Majors.)

Hooray for Free Advertising

When you build a business, the first thing you want to secure is a customer base. With a decent printer, an answering machine and an average computer, you can put together a fairly extensive advertising campaign without having to pay for space.

1.Flyers

This is the carpet-bombing method of cheap advertising. You find an area that you would like to do business in and you distribute flyers to all the mailboxes within reach. Your flyer should be brief and to the point, highlighting the services you offer and providing contact information. Offering free appraisal, coupon or discount never hurts.

2.Posters

Most supermarkets, public spaces and malls offer free bulletin board space for announcements and advertisements. This is a hit or miss method, but you should try to make your poster reasonably visible and have removable tabs that the customers can present for a discount. Make each location a different color so that you can get an idea from the tabs where the most leads are being generated. If there is one area that is producing the majority of your leads, you can better target your campaign (flyers, ads in papers catering to those areas, cold calling, etc.)

3.Value Additions

This is one of the most powerful selling points for any product or service. On the surface, value additions are very similar to coupons and free appraisals, but they are aimed at increasing customer satisfaction and widening the gap between you and your competition.

Common value additions include guarantees, discounts for repeat customers, point cards and referrals rewards. Often, the deciding factor for a person picking between one of two similar shops is whether he or she has a point card or preferred customer card. You don’t have to promise the moon to add value; you just have to state something that the customer may not realize about your product or service. When you are making your advertising materials, the value additions should be highlighted.

4.Referral Networks

Referral networks are invaluable for business. This does not only mean customer referrals, which are encouraged though discounts or other rewards per referral. This includes business-to-business referrals. If you have ever found yourself saying, “we don’t do/sell that here, but X down the street does,” you should make certain that you are getting a referral in return.

When dealing with white-collar professions, this network is even stronger. A lawyer refers people to an accountant, an accountant refers people a broker, a financial planner refers people to a real estate agent – in each of these situations, the person stakes his or her professional reputation on the referral. Regardless of your business, make sure you create a referral network that has the same outlook and commitment to quality that you do.

As a final note on referral networks, remember that your competition is not always your enemy. If you are too busy to take a job, throw it their way, most times you will find the favour returned. Besides, it can be bad for your reputation if a customer has to wait too long. (Are your shoulder’s wide enough to carry a company’s reputation? See The Marketing Director’s Pitch.)

5.Follow-Up

Advertising can help you get a job, but what you do after a job can often be a much stronger marketing tool. Follow-up questionnaires are one of the best sources of feedback for how your ad campaign is going. Why did the customer choose your business? Where did he/ she hear about it? Which other companies had they considered? What was the customer most satisfied with? What was least satisfying? Also, if your job involves going to the customer, make sure to slip a flyer into the nearby mailboxes, as people of similar needs and interests tend to live in the same area.

6.Cold Calling

Unpleasant? Yes. Important? Yes. Cold calling, whether it is over the phone or door to door, is a baptism of fire for many small businesses. Cold calling forces you to sell yourself as well as your business. If people can’t buy you- the person talking to them- then they won’t buy anything from you. Over the phone, you don’t have the benefit of a smile or face-to-face conversation – a phone is a license for people to be as caustic and abrupt as possible (we are all guilty of this at one time or another). However, cold calling does makes you think on your feet and encourages creativity and adaptability when facing potential customers.

7.The Internet

It is dishonest to pretend that the Internet is a cohesive whole for marketing – like a community hall you can put up a poster in or a section of the highway were you can buy billboard space. However, it is difficult to overstate the importance the Internet has on marketing. The previous methods of marketing have not changed in the last 50 years. The Internet has been born and evolved rapidly during that same time frame.

It is nearly unthinkable that a company, even a local café, that does not have at least a website with the vital details such as location and hours. Not having a site means not having a point of access for the growing number of people who Google first when they want to make a buying decision. Creating a social media presence (Facebook & Instagram page, Twitter account) and the need for good SEO can appear overwhelming. However, technology has evolved to the point where WordPress – just one example of a free HTML editor – can meet all these needs.

Bottom Line

More than likely, you will find that the conversion rate on marketing is very low. Even the most successful campaigns measure leads – and converted sales from those leads – in the 10-20% range. This helps to shatter any illusions about instant success, but it is also an opportunity for improvement. Do you want a company to buy your product? Give them a presentation showing how it will benefit them. Do you want someone to use your service? Give them an estimate or a sample of what you will do for them. Be confident, creative and unapologetic – people will eventually respond. (Understanding how to manage business credit is the key to obtaining small business loans. Check outThe Small Business Jobs Act: Make It Work For You.)