Small Business

3 Quick and Easy Ways to Market Your Business

By Steve Strauss

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If you want your microbusiness to be a more macrobusiness, then you need to do one thing right now: Crank up the marketing. 

The reason is two-fold. First, marketing attracts new people to your business — people who otherwise would not have heard of you. New marketing means new people and new people means new business. 

Second, customers leave – habits change, they move, they found someone better or more convenient or cheaper – whatever the reason, they leave. It happens. The purpose of marketing then is to keep the customer pipeline open so that there are always new customers coming in to replenish those that leave. 

Want to take your business to the next level? You have to crank up the marketing. 

But what we suggest is that you not try just one marketing idea, but that you actually test several new ideas, all at once. It will take bandwidth on your part, yes, but it need not cost a fortune, and the benefit is that you will discover what works. Then you can take the top producing ideas, implement them full time, and use them again and again. 

1. Facebook, Really? Yes, Facebook! 

There are two main ways to use Facebook to grow your small business. 

1) Advertise. 

Example: Chris Meyer is a photographer who decided to try putting some ads on Facebook. And because one of the best things about advertising on Facebook is that you can very specifically target your desired demographic, that’s exactly what Chris did. He placed ads on Facebook that would only be seen by people in his area, aged 24 to 30, whose relationship status was ‘engaged.’” 

How smart was that? Very smart. Over the course of a year, Chris’s $600 ad campaign generated almost $40,000 in revenue. 

2) Create a Company Page 

Having a Facebook Page can also really benefit any business. By creating an interesting, fun, valuable Page, and getting people to like it, you create another way to drive traffic to your business. The secret is to have a Page that is interactive, useful, and has good content. For instance, 

  • “Company news” is boring, but discount coupons are not. 

  • Industry articles are boring, but contests are not. 

2. Create a Winning E-Newsletter for Your Business 

Newsletters are great because they are permission marketing, that is, they stem from potential customers giving you permission to contact them. That is huge. But if you are at all like most self-employed folk, although you get your share of e-newsletters, some never get opened, right? And we all know why: Bad content! Boring content. Irrelevant content. 

Bad content is the main reason not all newsletters are created equal. Great content usually equals a great e-newsletter. Offer great content and you usually have a compelling e-newsletter. 

Even better, creating good content is not that difficult to do. You don’t have to be a professional writer or geeky wordsmith to create valuable content.  Here’s the secret to creating compelling content (from a guy who creates content for a living): Be yourself. Show your passion for your subject. Share the love. What people like to read is something real and authentic, valuable and interesting. 

3. Add Videos to Your Website and Social Media 

People love to watch videos online, and posting videos that people watch is one of the very few ways to get someone’s uninterrupted online attention for a few minutes. That’s marketing gold. 

These are just a few ideas. If you look, there are many more. Try some out, see what works, and then make a commitment to using the best all year long. You will be glad you did. 

©2013 The Strauss Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit TheSelfEmployed to learn more. 

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