Small Business Marketing Ideas
As I get my business off the ground, I am looking for ways to get the word out about GS Business Resources. So when the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur blog posted 115 Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses, I took notice.
That’s right, 115 tips gathered from a wide range of sources, and designed to help small businesses market on a tight budget. Well, I have a small business, and my marketing budget is about $0, so this list was very helpful for me. I was pleased to see that I am already doing some of the items suggested; however, I came across some I hadn’t thought of such as:
- #13 – Send hand-written follow-up cards. Hand written notes are so uncommon, they get your recipients attention. Now this may seem odd for a virtual assistant, but as I am building my business locally, it is the perfect opportunity to make myself stand out. And if I live far away from a client? Why not use a postcard featuring local attractions to show them my part of the world?
- #34 – Join forces with other businesses in the same target market. Need to brainstorm people to contact on this one.
- #78 – Use your email signature to promote new products, discounts, or events for your business.
- #97 – Use Twitter Search to look for keywords related to your business. Join in conversations and tweet help to people looking for it.
Not every idea on the list will work for every business, of course, but I encourage you to take a look and see which ones would work for you. What marketing ideas are listed that you had not thought of before? How will you implement them? Post a reply so we can all benefit!
Updating Your Thinking
Have you ever realized that a thought you’ve had for awhile, possibly for years, wasn’t really working? That there was another way to look at the situation that had never occurred to you before?
Well it happened to me last week. Nearly two years ago I received a gift of a coffee maker. This was a “fancy” one, complete with a built in grinder. I would have never purchased it for myself, since I had a separate grinder that worked quite well, but it was a gift from a good friend who knew I loved my morning coffee, and who had – and loved – the same coffee maker.
I also knew that her grinder had stopped working after a year and she had to purchase another one, so I decided to keep my old coffee maker “just in case” mine broke. My old one also had an espresso maker on it, and even thought I only used it a couple of times, I wanted to keep it “just in case” I decided to make espresso.
Do you see where this is going? It FINALLY occurred to me that if the grinder breaks (and it hasn’t in nearly two years of daily use), the coffee maker will still work, and I can grind my beans with my small grinder (yes, I still have it). I also had not even thought of pulling the old one out to make an espresso. I don’t drink espresso that often; if I want one I’ll head down the street to a coffee shop and let them make it.
My old coffee maker, which still worked very well, was simply taking up space in my home. So I loaded the coffee maker in my car along with some other items I was ready to let go of, and took them to a local donation center.
It felt good to let it go—–but I also felt a bit foolish for not realizing the options I had earlier. So I am trying to learn from that, and I am taking a hard look at many things and thoughts in my life, to see which ones are no longer true for my life.
How about you? What thoughts are you holding on to that you can let go of? Are you a small business owner who thinks you have to do it all yourself because no one else would give it the proper attention? That you cannot afford to hire anyone to help you? That spending your valuable time doing tasks you hate is better than handing it off to someone else, allowing you to focus on what you do enjoy?
Hiring a Virtual Assistant is something worth thinking about. A VA may be more affordable than you think, and certainly more affordable than hiring an employee. Think about it – you don’t pay for vacations, holidays, or lunch breaks. Since a VA is an independent contractor, they depend upon doing a good job to receive repeat business and referrals.
Consider giving you thinking an update. Consider a Virtual Assistant to help take care of tasks that you don’t enjoy, freeing your time on what you went into business for in the first place.
