Small businesses need to be focused on marketing at all times. Even if you have a full client roster or you think you have enough customers, you must keep marketing. But marketing doesn’t just consist of banner ads and selling. It consists of so much more. If you are stuck with the same old marketing ideas, take a look at how you can make your marketing better with these strategies.
1) Develop Your Elevator Pitch
When people ask you what you do – whether you’re in an elevator, in line at the grocery store, at the doctor’s office with the kids or at a business event – it’s important for you to be able to explain to the people asking what it is that you do in a succinct way that invites more questions.
An elevator pitch isn’t just a 60-second monologue; it’s more like learning different ways to answer the same questions based on the audience you’re speaking to, so that they leave understanding what you’re about.
2) Get Involved Online and Offline
Get out from behind your computer and get involved in offline events. Go to meetings, business events, and conferences. In addition, participate in tele-summits, webinars, and social media. But do it all in a proactive, involved way that advances your business goals.
Before doing any event, online or off, ask yourself which goal being involved in this particular activity helps you achieve. Then, base your participation and how you communicate with people at the event on reaching that goal.
3) Develop Relationships
Finding a person to collaborate with is a great way to improve your business and find new ways to market. By creating short-term joint ventures with individuals and companies who market complementary products and services to the same audience, you can expand your reach exponentially. Don’t form these alliances willy-nilly. Each venture and each relationship needs to have its own goals involved which align with your overall marketing goals.
4) Write a Book
You’re smart and you know about your niche. You either know how you became successful, or you know a lot about a particular subject that you can share with others. Writing a book, and getting it published today, is a simple process. All it’s going to take is time. Be sure that your book has an ultimate goal aside from making money. It’s not likely book sales alone are going to make that much. But a book used as a marketing tool to sell other products and services can help increase your net worth substantially.
5) Speak in Public
Once you’ve written a book, you can leverage it to engage in public speaking events. Find events that are attracting your target audience and simply go tell them your story. Create a “one page” to market your speaking and subject matter to event leaders.
At first you may need to do some events free (get permission to record it) and later you can actually make quite a living out of public speaking if you desire to go in that direction. If not, the act alone can be a great marketing strategy.
6) Give Your Opinion
Find ways to get your name associated with expert status. Use the service Help a Reporter Out (http://www.helpareporter.com/) to find people to pitch your articles, speaking, and answers to and who will use your quotes in stories. The more you’re quoted, the more you will become known as an expert. You can do the same thing with targeted and focused guest blogging, expert panels, interviews and more.
7) Ask for Creative Testimonials
Go straight to your current customers and clients and simply ask them to write, record or make a testimonial for you. You can even have a contest to make it more interesting. For instance, “Create a meme about how awesome my widget is, share it with friends, get the most votes, and win a $100 dollar gift card to use towards my services.”
8) Break the Mold
If you really want to differentiate yourself from the crowd, find a way to break some rules. You don’t have to be unethical to push boundaries and break rules. Many people believe they have no right to take a leadership role without having first been a follower. That’s insane, because you can be a leader without having been a follower. If you are good at what you do, there is no reason you have to punch any cards or push any particular buttons in any particular order to be at the top.
Being creative in marketing means stepping out of your comfort zone and doing something different than you are currently doing. If you’re not doing something new every quarter at least when it comes to marketing, you’re not really trying.
