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Great Marketing Ideas - Proven Tactics Your Competitors
Aren't Using
You've set up your
business and the customers are trickling in, but how can you turn the
trickle into a flood? You know you need some great marketing ideas to
boost your sales, but you don't have the budget for national
advertising. Well here are some simple but effective ideas to help you
get increased visibility for your small business.
As a small business, your
main source of customers may be local, from your own community. As a
local business person you will already have a certain local profile -
you will be well known to friends and neighbours, the trick is to
leverage off that profile and generate a much stronger visibility for
your business in the community.
A great marketing idea is
to maximise your local advertising and promotion at the lowest cost.
Here are just 5 examples
to start you off:
- Make sure your car and
van have highly identifiable logos/pictures/photos on the sides and back
so everyone recognises you as you drive around. Have you ever followed a
van down the road and smiled at the corny slogan or play-on-words on the
back? Well it certainly grabbed your attention, didn't it, and I bet you
can remember the name of the business, though you might have forgotten
all the boring ones you saw.
- Wear a T-shirt,
polo-shirt or sweatshirt to work with a neat logo promoting your brand
or your business. These days you can get any logo embroidered, or any
photo or design printed, on all manner of garments. It can look cute and
corny, or smart and exclusive (think of bank employee uniforms),
depending on how it is done, and this should match up with the image you
want to portray of your business. You may even be able to claim
tax-relief if the taxman accepts that it is only worn for work.
- Get to know your local
schools and help them by sponsoring or running sports events or
competitions; getting your name linked to the youth football league;
providing a set of shirts for a sports team (with your logo on, of
course!); or offering a prize in the name of your business, to be
awarded to a top student (perhaps in a subject relevant to your
business).
- If you have large
premises which are not used at the weekends, or in the evenings - why
not offer to let them be used for community meetings or events? Everyone
who attends will be grateful to you for the use of the space, and you
will have put your business's name at the forefront of their minds (make
sure there are plenty of flyers for your business lying around, for
people to pick up).
- Local radio stations
are always in need of interesting items to fill their programmes. Make
friends with the local DJs and presenters, make their lives easier by
supplying them with interesting material about your local business, the
people you employ, the work you are creating, the good works you are
involved in, etc. The same applies to local newspapers or free-sheets -
they always need good interesting material, which can act as free
publicity for you, without you having to buy advertising space.
So you see great
marketing ideas don't need to be expensive or complicated - these ideas
show you that the simplest and cheapest can be just as effective and I'm
sure you will be able to come up with lots more of your own, by
brainstorming with your family, friends or employees.
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Here's another neat little trick. Would you like loads more
great marketing ideas generated at the click of the button? The
Marketing Brainstorm is a fun way to get your creative juices
flowing and you can try it free. Head to
www.marketingbrainstorm.com and try it.
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