Five marketing tactics for businesses

There are many tried and proven marketing tactics that even the most time and cash poor small to medium sized businesses can successfully implement to give their marketing a boost.

Here are five easy to implement marketing tactics that just about anyone can implement on a shoe-string budget to grow their business.

1. Give referrals

You have to give referrals if you want to get referrals.

Giving referrals is one of the easiest ways to generate goodwill towards your business and create a mutually supportive network of affiliated businesses. 

Think about all the customers, suppliers, industry bodies and businesses that your business interacts with on a daily or weekly basis and how you can help them.

You’re already doing business with them so you know they are likely to share your values and you have an insight into their product or service.  

Passing a referral within this network is both a way to say thank you to a customer or supplier and signal that you are committed to a mutually beneficial relationship.

Always be asking the question “How can I add value or help my connections?” rather than “How I can sell them something?”.

2. Make it easy for others to refer to you

Always be educating your network on what you do.

Your customers and suppliers can’t refer to you unless they understand your business, what makes you tick, and the value that you add. 

How often are you updating them on additional ways you can assist them? What’s new in your business?

Take the time to tell them what you do; a customer may only use one of your businesses products or services and not understand what you do in every area. 

3. Reuse your content across multiple platforms

While larger businesses might have the resources to produce a range of unique content for blogs, media releases, email campaigns, Facebook and LinkedIn, small to medium sized businesses seldom have the time or money to create unique content.

Instead, develop high-quality content that you can repurpose and can share across all your media channels, rather than devising customised content for each channel. 

Repurposing content across media channels reaches across platforms with the same targeted message.

4. Articulate how you solve your customers' problems

What do you do and how does it solve problems that are specific to your customers?

Make content that is solution based, perhaps as a how-to video, a product review, a news article or a blog post.

Develop your own infographic which tells this story, this is a great resource for your website and for social media.

Provide your social proof by posting testimonials, case studies, customer stories, and videos from those happy customers who you helped. What was the problem they were facing and how did your product or service solve it?

5. Tell your story

What is unique about you and your business? What have you achieved lately?

What is your business doing to give back? People will naturally gravitate to those businesses that give back. Customers have higher expectations of business today and want to be associated with a story that they can believe in.

Celebrating wins and marking business milestones is a great way to reinvigorate your staff and will give your customers the feeling that they are dealing with a growing and progressing company.

Keeping your social media profiles up to date is another ‘easy win’ to telling your story, as is getting an article published or speaking at a conference.

Whilst telling your story rarely results in immediate leads or sales, it is essential for any business wanting to build long-term value and goodwill in their brand. 

Over time, a strong reputation will help convert more of your leads to sales.

Try to implement at least one of these marketing tactics – you have nothing to lose by doing so.

Alternatively, if you need some support in your marketing and content creation, Elevate can hep create a strategic marketing plan to build and grow your business in 2018.  

Contact us now