Here is a list of pretty simple things any small business owner can do to grow their business, even in a recession. Many of these things involve Internet marketing but there are also a couple of offline techniques to use as well.
This list works for most businesses even though my focus and passion as a business marketing consultant are small business marketing services for professionals such as chiropractors, massage therapists, dentists, optometrists, salon owners, etc.
- Market to your list of current customers by sending them some sort of discount coupon to encourage them to come in for another visit. Don’t have a list? Get started now!
- Create a Google Local listing for your business (Google Places). This is also free and is becoming more important as Google shifts focus to local results. You need to be keyword-optimized and have reviews from clients for this to be successful. But this is a powerful technique, so don’t skip it.
- Create a Facebook fan page for your business. This is free… so definitely start your online presence here if you don’t have a website. Over 250 million users go onto Facebook each day… can you afford to miss out on that traffic? By the way, this is different from your personal profile.
- Create a website for your business. Already have a website? Be sure it’s keyword-optimized for the words customers are typing into Google to search for service providers (this is probably not your business name).
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. More users are searching online using smart phones than computers nowadays so make this process easy for your potential clients.
- Create discount coupons and post them on your Google Places page, Facebook page, and website… this gives current clients a reason to keep coming back to your online sites.
- Ask all your customers to write reviews for your services and post them online at places like Yelp and InsiderPages. Google scrapes these sites and includes them in your Local listing page.
- Write articles about topics of interest to your customers and post them on your website or blog. These should educate, inform, and entertain your audience not sell.
- Create a video showing your customers how to do something and put it on YouTube.
- Subscribe to RSS feeds using Google Reader so you know whenever someone publishes anything about you or your business.
Most of these techniques are pretty simple to implement if you have the right tools. The goal of all this is to increase the number of times you come into contact with your audience of potential customers. The more contacts you have with your audience, the more you will sell.
There are additional tools you can use to communicate with your marketplace such as Twitter and LinkedIn. Implement this Top 10 before you spend time on other social media tools such as these.
Which of these techniques have you tried for your business? I’d love to hear your results!
If you don’t have the time and energy to implement these techniques, contact me and I’ll be happy to help you.
