Make sure your logo and branding is consistent
You’re an small business, you’re competing in a global market place in tough economic conditions, how do you stand out from the crowd?
By Dan Jacobs, CEO of enthuse.me
First of all, there is no such thing as local anymore. Whether you’re an accountant or a gardener, you’re competing against other businesses from all over. Many products and services which used to be supplied face to face are now being supplied online or remotely and your customers can shop around a lot more easily than ever before.
To remain competitive, it’s not enough to have a great product and great pricing, you also need to package and market yourself better. This is becoming more and more the necessary.
The key to cost effective marketing is more and more about becoming better at managing your online presence. Here are my recommendations that I believe all small businesses should consider as a no-brainer.
1. Customer contact - Let your customers contact you and converse with you how they want to. That means having a presence on twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email, and a comments section on your website.
Talking to your customers is still one of the best ways to market yourself, great customer services means great word of mouth which is the life blood of an SME. Keeping customers up to date with what you are doing is a great way to keep you in their minds and to maintain a relationship. Don’t underestimate the importance of responsiveness.
2. Packaging / Design – Ensure you have a consistent look and feel so that wherever you are promoting yourself, your customers can recognise you. A logo doesn’t have to be fancy or complex and a simple colour palate will seal the deal. You can get a freelance designer to create these for you for as little as £100.
3. Online presence – The basics of search engine optimisation (ensuring search engines can find you easily) are around best marketing practise of the web. This means creating good quality content on a regular basis on your blog, website and social media.
Write well about what you know and the web will reward you with search engine traffic. If you’re a gardener, consider writing a regular blog with tips on growing tomatoes etc. If you’re an accountant, consider writing a regular blog about filling in tax returns, the importance of managing your finance etc.
4. Your website – make sure you maintain your own website regularly; search engines don’t like static sites. enthuse.me is a great way to have a web presence which is easy to keep up to date and link through to all your other online web content.
5. Publicity – don’t be afraid to reach out to offline local communities, groups, schools where you think you target audience may be with leaflets or by brokering a mutual partnership of some kind.
What you lack in budget you can make up in creativity eg: run a raffle, competition, survey, event, guerrilla marketingc, stunt et. Always keep in mind who your audience is, speak in their tone, language and ask yourself, ’How are we providing them value’.
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