Marketing is an essential task regardless of what stage your business is in. Once your organization has reached a certain level in terms of sustainable revenue, you may consider getting a marketing department or enlisting the help of a firm that can help focus on your marketing needs full time. At this point in your business, you would have a definitive budget carved out for a combination of both inbound and outbound marketing. However, if you are still in the early stages, you may be doing a lot of the marketing yourself or you may have developed a small budget, and are looking for cost effective ways to stretch those dollars. Below I mention a few marketing tactics (besides Facebook) to try. Keep in mind, your best bet for marketing it so delve into some solid research regarding your target market. Armed with the invaluable demographic and psychographic information from your research efforts can tell you which marketing strategies would prove best for your sector of the market. Lastly, before you begin, I recommend creating a quick tracking spreadsheet to track which marketing strategy is giving you the most traction.
- Get to know some PR people. They can help get your press releases published or get you better pricing on the media you want to distribute.
- Create a solid referral program. Word of mouth is the best advertisement. We are more likely to try a business we got a raving review from, then one we found on our own. Create a way to reward customers, friends and family for referring your business.
- Get published. Getting published in a major publication is desirable, but not always feasible. But you can look into local newspapers and newsletters that circulate in the neighborhoods you want to be in. They are always looking for content and you can volunteer yours to gain exposure in the geographical location you want.
- Utilize community boards. The local Panera Bread may let you hang an ad on their bulletin board. Ask around to some busy coffee shops or popular lunch locations to see if they have community boards.
- Free events are always popular. You can usually host things like this at a local library (they will put the event in their calendar) and other community locations like that. Don’t give something for nothing. Make sure each participant leaves contact information for you to follow up.