It’s impossible to run a successful business if you don’t promote that business effectively. No matter how small your business is, it’s important to dedicate plenty of time and resources to promotional activity if you want to get the best results.
Effective business promotion holds numerous benefits, including:
- Increasing the awareness of your brand
- Providing key information for potential clients/customers
- Bringing in new business
- Increasing sales and profits
The good news is that promoting your business doesn’t have to cost the earth. Pinpointing the best marketing avenues for you and working with companies like HelloPrint.co.uk is a great place to start. Here are six easy and inexpensive ways that you can effectively promote your business.
Your website
Your website is the number one way that you can showcase your business. More than half of the world’s population now use the internet and more than one in five of the world’s population shopped online in the past 30 days. That is A LOT of potential business. If you don’t have one yet, add setting up a website to the very top of your to-do list.
If you’ve already got your website up and running it’s worth taking a look at it with fresh eyes to see where you can improve and update pages. Your site should be easy to navigate and focused with any information that your clients or customers would be looking for. You should also ensure that your website text is well-written, error-free and that it conveys the right message to your website visitors.
Social media
Social media is a fantastic and free way to promote your business. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube can give your business a lot of exposure when used correctly. Choose the site(s) that best fit your business and invest your time in engaging with your target audience.
Wherever you communicate
If you’re meeting new clients/customers, ensure that you have professional business cards to hand out. Depending on your sector, you may also want to create brochures or leaflets to promote your products or services.
Have you set up an email signature that includes your key business information such as, your business name, logo, contact information, your web address and social media links? Every email you send should work as a promotional tool for you so do ensure that your details are clear.
Blogging
What is your area of expertise? Writing blog articles on topics relating to your business is a great promotional tool and one that can set you apart from your competition. By giving away free advice and insights to your customers you’ll build up a great reputation and be recommended by others.
Once you’ve written an article you can publish it on your blog, share it on your social media channels and even get in touch with relevant industry publications to see if they would be interested in republishing it.
Newsletters
Start adding your customers to an emailing list so that you can keep in touch with them and share promotions. It’s also quite straightforward to set up a newsletter sign-up option on your website so others can opt to receive your newsletters.
You can then use software like MailChimp to create a great looking email that shows off your latest offers and you can also include links to your helpful blog articles.
If you appear high up on Google’s search results you’re going to get a lot more website traffic which means more customers! To work your way up the rankings you should make an effort to SEO optimise your website. To do this, you can either pay an expert or have a go yourself by picking up an SEO book or by doing some online research into how to optimise your website.
Bringing it all together
These are just six ways that you can easily promote your business, however, there are plenty more! What’s important is that you try out a few options and see which methods work best for you. You can then focus your time, efforts and money into these areas and watch your business grow.