When you first start out in
business your budget might be small for marketing (or non-existent) so gaining
that traction you know you deserve can be tough. Here are a few ideas I
recommend to get you started, they’re easy to put together and won’t cost you a
fortune.
Referral systems
Little coupons or referral cards are great to hand out to customers. Once you have sold a few products or services offer your
customers an incentive for spreading the word. Think about what u can spare, can
you discount your product or service easily? Perhaps offer 50% off your next
order if they sign a friend up to spend with you. Offer 75% if 2 friends spend
and offer something free for more. Depending on what your product is decide
what you can give out and what the value of a new customer would be. The higher
your offer the more likely people will talk about you (so don’t even think
about offering 5% - that’s laughable). You may feel like you are being taken
advantage of by some people getting your services for free but try and see the
bigger picture. Yes you may lose some profit at first, give things away at cost
or even less, but you are setting yourself up for higher exposure when you
provide more value than the customer expected. Always let the customer feel
like they got the better deal. It is the oldest trick in the sales book, always
over deliver.
HTML Emails
If you have been diligent and collected
previous customer email addresses well done – you’re sitting on something good!
Newsletter/brochure pdf pages are good for handing out in print format, but as a mail
out I wouldn’t recommend. People receive way too much spam every day, and if
your email requires more effort than just opening the email you can guarantee
they aren’t going to open your newsletter if they haven’t requested the
information.
Instead plant information in the body of the email using HTML (if you don't have a way of doing this yourself MailChimp is free and has bucketloads of great templates!). You only need an interesting subject for people to open it and the
information is ready available in their face. As for subjects; stay away from
spammy headings like “special offer” and “huge discount”, and instead offer
people something specific e.g “40% off your next cut and blow wave at My Awesome
Hair Salon”. Don’t forget to let them know who you are and how you got their
email address so they don’t end up blocking you.
Social Media
Set up that Facebook page with an awesome profile and cover graphic. Mix up posts with
information, offers and deals, funny/interesting industry related posts and
personal stuff. People love to see who is behind a company, your business needs
a ‘voice’ so people can connect - selling is becoming less B2B and B2C but H2H –
human to human.
Social Media is a great free way to get people sharing and talking about your product/services but be ready for negative feedback; it does make it easy for people to share bad experiences they might have had with you. Do not delete them, do not be angry, it’s all part of business - instead find a constructive way to resolve the issue. Everyone has negative feedback at some stage it is how you handle it that shows what kind of company you are to others who see it. Respond to everything – good and bad!
Social Media is a great free way to get people sharing and talking about your product/services but be ready for negative feedback; it does make it easy for people to share bad experiences they might have had with you. Do not delete them, do not be angry, it’s all part of business - instead find a constructive way to resolve the issue. Everyone has negative feedback at some stage it is how you handle it that shows what kind of company you are to others who see it. Respond to everything – good and bad!
Tell your friends and family and get networking!
Share, share, share. Let everyone know who you
are and what you are offering. You’ll find a lot of people are willing to help
out. BNZ hold free networking events on the first Tuesday of every month, so get
along to those and start talking. Everyone is there for the same reason - don’t
be shy about telling people what you do. Chamber of Commerce and BNI are also
networking companies, but you do have to pay to be involved with them.
Give products or services away for free
If you can afford it, sponsor an event. Offer
up products or services to a charity auction. Some places will print your logo
for free or give you a plug at the event, and this can be worthwhile to pick up
new customers. You might be wary about giving away free stuff, but if you truly
do believe you have a great product people need to see it and it’s better you
take the risk than them.
If you’re not big on picking up the phone and
cold calling (I cringe even just thinking about it) then try some of these
safer tactics to gain traction amongst your market. It’s not all about giving
away stuff for free but it’s about letting people experience what you have to
offer without them feeling like they are taking the risk on you, if they love
it you will have found yourself a customer for life who will gladly tell all of
their friends.