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Make your business attractive with innovative marketing [Cape Argus (South Africa)](Cape Argus (South Africa) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Marketing is essential for any business to achieve real success and stay relevant, but a traditional marketing campaign can be costly for a small company. How can you reach new customers and retain your existing ones if you have a lot of time, but little money? Use social media Social media is free to use and is an effective way to communicate with current customers and encourage new ones. You can use it in multiple ways, so set aside at least a few hours every week to work on the following: l Start a blog related to your industry and update it regularly - at least once a week. Talk about projects you're working on or give tips related to your business. l Be active on your Facebook and Twitter pages. If you aren't tweeting and updating regularly, your customers won't be thinking about you. l Create a Pinterest account. It is now more popular than Twitter and is a great way to reach clients in certain industries. l Make a low-cost video and share it. People love entertaining or informative videos and are likely to share them with friends. Videos can also make you more visible on Google. Regular activity on social media can improve your search engine optimisation results and remind your clients that you exist. Encourage referrals Traditionally, customer referrals are a good way to build up your customer base. Offer existing customers discounts or small rewards in "refer-a-friend" promotions. For example, a customer could earn a 10 percent discount for referring a friend, and the friend could earn a 5 percent discount on their first purchase. Get reviews On a similar note, encourage customers to review your services online. A survey done last year found that 79 percent of customers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from their friends, and 73 percent said good reviews made them trust a business more. Some commonly used online review sites, including Yowzit and HelloPeter. Remember, reviews can be negative too, so make sure that you follow up with customers who have complaints and resolve them. Collaborate Find a local business with a target market that crosses over with yours and work with them to promote your businesses. Some ideas: l Give them a special offer to hand out only to their customers. l Trade products or services with a nearby business in exchange for advertising space. l Combine your efforts to create something newsworthy that will promote both of you. Support fund-raisers This is a great way to raise awareness of your business name. It has the added benefits of giving your business a reputation for caring and of raising customer goodwill towards you, and the cost is limited to services or products given away. You can also use creative strategies like donating R1 for each product sold on a certain day. l Hazekamp is with Red & Yellow School, which offers its students a range of real world, practical marketing communications skills aligned to the digital marketing age. Cape Argus (c) 2014 Independent Newspapers (Pty) Limited. All rights strictly reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |