Marketing Ideas For Small Businesses
It is hard finding a good marketing idea for your business. You know it will help your sales, but you need to find one that doesn’t waste money. Here are a few ideas:
- Help out the community. Donate 10% of your profits to charity and let people know about it on social media.
- Offer coupons for trial subscriptions or give away free samples when customers checkout at the register.
- Pick up where your competitors left off and offer them a discount if they ever come back.
- Make your store a public service. If people need to use the bathroom, they have to help themselves. Give out business cards and/or a cheap little pen when they do.
- Have a contest or offer 'free' items for those that come into your business with their kids or grandkids.
- Donate some money to local causes and help in your community on the same day. This is a great example for the local community, and it gets you some publicity as well!
- Offer free advice to those who come and ask questions about personal business issues, like how to get a mortgage if their credit score is low or how much money they should save for retirement before buying an expensive vacation.
- If your clientele is young and trendy, maybe offer 'hype' for school supplies.
- Offer a trade for a service that you do in your store. Do you repair flat screens? Make an offer of the same price and divide the cost with them to cover both of your parts. Ask them to leave when they are done so that you get the finished product back.
- Offer custom made items or something unusual in your store, like a coffee mug with a picture of yourself on it. Pretty cool!
- Host some kind of social gathering such as beer nights or wine nights as a way to give back to your community.
- Create a system for using your store for classes by allowing people to rent it out or take a class.
- Offer free consultations with your staff.
- Display your artwork on the shelves and in the windows. You can even have it framed at the same time if you want.
- If you are set up with social media, hire a marketing firm or local microagency to help publicize your business. They can send out emails to people looking for that type of business in your area, and they will use their connections to get referrals from people who work at local companies that need vendors.
- Edit-email your customers. If you see a customer's email address on the receipt, send them an email thanking them for their purchase and letting them know that you appreciate them as a customer. Try to do this at least once a week if possible.
- Show off your clients in some way by giving people free samples of their product or giving them free advertising to share with their friends. Just make sure that any giveaway is done in such away that your business doesn't get hurt if they don't keep it!
- Create brand awareness by performing random acts of kindness and donating 10% of your profits to charity on social media.
- Create a special deal for your regulars.
- Share some social media posts from your Facebook and Twitter.
- Print up 5 or 10 business cards, then have random people you meet test them out by taking a survey and giving you their feed back. This can be anything from what they like to what they didn't like, or anything else that comes to mind when they look at it. If you don't want to use that idea, give people an incentive for taking them, then ask them to leave the card behind so you can grab quality ones.
- Start a referral system in which your customers will get a discount if someone they refer comes in and buys something worth at least $10.
- Offer wine tastings with your store as a marketing strategy. This is not limited to wine, actually many companies do this very well.
- Offer a certain type of product or service that you are good at, but you are able to offer it at a discount so that people can try it and see if they like it.
- Organize and participate in 'pop up' events in your local community, like a festival or something similar.
- Donate 10% of the profit from each sale to help contribute to a cause that you believe in.