Small Business Marketing Strategies

One of the problems facing many small businesses is how to market on a very limited budget.  Unlike large companies who may have extensive marketing budgets, small business may have very little money to promote themselves.  How then can a small business compete with larger companies? To paraphrase Sun Tzu in "The Art of War", you will need to play to your strengths and exploit the weaknesses of your competitors.


#1. Make use of free marketing resources. 

• Press Releases are a good way to announce changes to your business and to get the word out about new events.  Writing a professional looking press release increases the chances that a newspaper, radio station, or TV station will run your information.  By the way, after you have written the press release be sure to post it on several of the free internet press release sites. Here is a link to 12 free internet press release sites.
• Search Engine business listings: When Google presents a list of businesses in response to a query it pulls much of the information it uses from Google Places.  For example, if someone enters "plumber in belleville il" Google looks in Places for entries matching this business category and location.  Yahoo & Bing also have similar business directories.  Adding your business to these directories is completely free.
• Many online business directories will accept free business listings, among them are MerchantCircle.com, Manta.com, and Supermedia.com.  These business directory listings give your business more visibility and more opportunities for potential customers to find you.
  

#2. Referrals are free
The best lead you can get is a referral from someone you know who can introduce you to someone they know.  This situation gives you credibility with the potential client and addresses inherent trust issues.  The two best sources for referrals are your current clients and complementary businesses.  By complementary businesses we mean businesses who service the same client base, but who are not competitors.  For example, one complementary business for Real Estate agents would be a Title Company.

#3.  Social media is perfect for business
For B2C businesses Twitter and FaceBook can reach huge numbers of potential clients.  For B2B businesses LinkedIn is the place to be.  On any of these sites be sure to separate your personal postings from your business postings. Also you might want to look at a tool like HootSuite to reduce the work involved in maintaining your social media presence.

Continue to build your business network, use free marketing options whenever possible, and take an innovative mindset to promoting you business on a budget.

Tenby Technologies: Building Internet Business Solutions

Do you have other marketing strategies that are working for you and your business? If so, feel free to add them in the comments below.