Small business marketing, while it can be very time consuming, is a critical component of your business. Regardless of the stage of your business and even if you think it is the best idea ever dreamed of, it is going absolutely nowhere if people do not know it exists. The only way you will get get people calling, visiting and buying from your business is if you tell them about it. Some considerations on how to spread the word are outlined below.

The traditional methods of advertising may not work for you and could be very costly. For example, an advertisement in the local newspaper can cost anywhere from $50-500 (or more) depending on the size, scale and frequency with which the ad runs. This method of advertising is only as effective as the people who notice the ad in the paper. With print media (eg newspapers, magazines, Yellow Pages) fast becoming lower on the priority list for most people looking for content, this advertising medium is becoming less preferred for small business marketing.

These days, many of the ways to advertise your business depend on having a website. In this age of information technology a website is not a ‘maybe’, it is a ‘must have’ for small business marketing. If you don’t have a website, you can be assured that your potential customers are visiting your competitors online. Once you have this site operational, you can use the power of the Internet to drive visitors to it.

Some ideas for driving traffic to your website are to create a blog about the industry your business is in, join a forum, create a press release, upload a video to sites such as YouTube and perhaps most important, generate keyword-rich content for search engine optimization. Don’t be concerned if you don’t know a lot about these tools, there are plenty of people that do, so you can outsource the work. Alternatively, there are plenty of learning materials available to help.

Small business marketing is a lot of work that needs to be conducted carefully with intelligent spending; do not throw a lot of money at advertising without first defining a solid strategy for it. Having a good strategy for promoting your business will help drive the types of customers you want to it and convince them to buy from you.

Until next time
Samantha