How do small business's market themselves?

Many here have a small business and I think it would be interesting to share peoples views on Marketing, with all the large corps with there large budgets can afford to blow all of us out of the water, so how do we combat that? How do we get ourselves on the radar?.
What works for you is it PPC, Press Releases, Ads???
Maybe you have a fresh Idea with little or no outlay, can someone else benefit from your knowledge..

Michael

 

[Eagle]

All word of mouth, referals and network presence for me. Works too!

 

When you say networks do you mean online or at network do's.
I don't find do's work for me, the local ones anyway the business's tend to be to small to be able to afford our services.

 

[Eagle]

Online.

I have a full-time day job as a PR photographer so I don't have the time to attend many meetings or do's. The ones I have attended always seem to be full of waffle-mongers and insincere ego-massage. Sure, I've got an ego the size of a football stadium (as do most 'arty types') but I don't let it get in the way of business!

Online networking cuts out a lot of the pretentious crap.

 

[LittleAcorn]

Some things that worked for me are:
- learning what you're really selling (and it's not your product or service).
- know who your real customer is, and act like a giant coffee filter for accepting business.
- know why a customer should choose you instead of hundreds of competitors (after all, why be 'Vanilla' when you can be something memorable?).
- market your differences to attract customers to you

Knowing these things about your own business, and being unique, is what will get people talking and remembering you.

I've barely done any marketing at all, I have a brand new website, and I've got more work than I dreamed I could handle, so it is possible to stand out from the crowd.

(Enough of the food analogies! It's clearly dinner time here!)

 

[Rob Holmes]

When we just dealt with local companies (in 1997 we were just web design and SEO) we attended BNI, got ourselves in a couple of local news articles, used word of mouth (I used to send my clients a wad of our business cards with the promise of a bottle of wine for a referral) and business link. We also had a search engine optimised website that got us in an enquiry a month!

 

[Deleted member 3454]

I have a website and some local customers. I also have an A5 sized poster in my car. I tried a newspaper ad but got a nil response so I won't be wasting my money on that.

I'm curretly working on a press release.

Regards

 

[daveashton]

That is by far, to wide a question because different things work for different products and services and whom they are selling too. If life was that easy every small company would be making lots of money and we would not have a business.

 

[Pete Williams]

I have used PPC which can be effective the only problem is we can't really afford to use a big budget. If I was able to run it all day every day I think sales would grow but I am not able to take that risk at the moment.

I have used ads in trade mags but found them pretty useless as the circulation is not great.

I have a newsletter that I send out via email and this is growing rapidly and we get a number of customers from this.

We have some high rankings in search engines which gives us return on some very specific key terms and this is all about optimisation.

The rest is down to good customer service and word of mouth.

 

[Amber]

Word of mouth, press releases and distributing articles online have worked for us: and all are absolutely free.

 

[chris1317]

Just word of mouth and PPC at the moment but hope to advertise in a local newspaper soon.

Chris.

 

[bitsnstuff]

Having just relaunched the business at the beginning of July, I am currently attacking from many angles! :lol:

I am currently using friends and family, word of mouth, PPC, banner adverts, sponsorship on other sites/forum, competitions, monthly newsletter, reciprocal linking, press releases, affiliate scheme and SEO.

Needless to say, I am flipping busy!!!!

Kate.

 

[epiphany]

With our old website we got a massive % of our business from search engines. If you know how to do it properly it won't cost you a penny but it is very time consuming. In some businesses it's very difficult to break into the search engine rankings: if you only want to do it at a local/national level it is lot easier to achieve success.

 

[Pete Williams]

Kate


How did you set up the affiliate programme? I am interested in doing one as well you see.

 

[bitsnstuff]

I got in touch with Affiliate Future on a recommendation from a member here and got the whole programme set up within 2 days. It is really easy to set up and works well.

I know some of the other members here have affiliate schemes running, but if you want more info, send me a PM and I will give you all the details I have.

Kate.

 

[SuffolkDesigns]

Affiliate Pro is a nice piece of affiliate software, quite painless to setup.

http://www.webradev.com/postaffiliatepro/

 

[Altoros]

Hi, I think as for the small business it is better use partners who could provide you with order first time.

Or as alternative way - choose your main competetive advantage and advertise it and everywhere! Many popular companies in the world began from main competetive advantage! It is only too hard to find where you could be better than others..

Dmitry

 

Hi,
We're a creative design company but also a relatively new small business too. Something ourselves and clients have found useful are e-flyers and e-newsletters because they're much more cost effective than mail shots and editable as much as you like, and they work especially well if you send them out once a month containing news, offers etc.
We are now specialising in eflyers and it it working for our clients as well as ourselves!
Please email me if we can help you
[email protected]

 

Word of mouth is good. Handing out business cards for customers to distribute works too.

I currently have A3 posters in shop windows where there is high footfall and that works really well.

Online, affiliate links are good, linking your site to ebay (about me page, listings (although they usually give out about the latter) )

PPc click, for me a waste of time and money.

Networking events work well, although I know local businesses who do deals with accountants and solicitors, they get a lot of business that way.

Last of all, I think newspapers can be effective, but I reckon its better to go for a decent newspaper and pay the extra, was installing a network recently and a business customer of mine was telling me about an ad he placed in the newspaper the previous week, the paper was out that day and he got 11 phonecalls in 3 hours!

So I suspect advertising in newspapers can be well worth it.... depends on what you are selling...

Graham

www.bookdemon.co.uk

 

[Marina Stone]

I also run a small business in marketing with the same size budget!

The local rag is a good place to advertise if you are marketing to the consumer market, however many of us deal with B2B (business to business) therefore not so useful, in which case, most local papers have a business section/paper published usually every other week.

PR is by far the cheapest way to get yourself into local newspapers, they normally like to write about new businesses in the area. Sending a picture is worth doing and makes the article more noticeable. It's not so easy in specialist magazines so in this case you need to make your press release about a special project you have accomplished or a brand new service/product.

Networking events are good, however the downside to this is it costs money and many groups require you to become a member, which can be expensive and sometimes not worthwhile.

There are many ways to promote your business on a budget and I may be able to give you some suggestions from experience. Every business is individual and would probably require different ideas. So please send me a private message if you need some free advice!

My business works with SME's providing a marketing service, from a marketing plan to producing monthly/quarterly newsletters and often spread the cost over the year to make it affordable.

If there is any advice you need please do not hesitate to contact me..
Marina

 

[Jayne]

Hi,

I advertise with sandwich leaflets, posters in my shop window and word of mouth. I found the best way was to do freebies for local school fates or chirch hall sale etc, sometimes donated a cake, other times gave them vouchers for to spend in our shop. Newspaper advertising didn't make much difference on shop sales, but did inprove my iced cake sales. I also advertised in other shop windows with posters and in return I would advertise their shops and services in my window.

Best Wishes

Jayne

 

[theodora]

Suppose you should firstly have a precise target and direction and seek a specific effect. Defining the appropriate media mix is a premise for achieving a particular effect on the targeted group. As a communication agency, we offer effective media plans and full coverage of all media channels, comprising daily press and magazines advertisement, collateral advertisement, TV, cinema, radio,etc. The successful marketing campaign is a consequence not only of a thorough market research but as well as of continuous adaptation of the communication strategy. So, in brief: word of mouth, flyers or leaflets are ok, but if you want to achieve and maintain a satisfactory business level, I advise you to stick to a specially defined promotional campaign that matches your needs.

 

[Altoros]

High quality products and competetive prices - the best competetive advantages!