Small Business Marketing Tactic: 63% Of Consumers Look To Website For Information!

63% of consumers and small business owners turn to the internet first for information about local companies!

It's TRUE! According to research from Webvisible and Nielsen, reported by Marketing Charts, though 63% of consumers and small business owners turn to the internet first for information about local companies and 82% use search engines to do so, only 44% of small businesses have a website and half spend less than 10% of their marketing budget online.

Give serious thought to providing your customers and potential customers with a website that they may:

- easily navigate

- access the detailed facts about your business offering

- quickly contact you via phone, email or status update using FACEBOOK (yes, seriously!)

Remember, you are not commissioned to be all things to all people. Keep your customers in mind as you create a simply, clean website that provides your customers with the information they need to keep coming back to you!

Small Business Marketing Tactic: Share Industry Research Findings With Customers!

Read market research on your profession, industry, product, target market, etc. Figure out how to share that research within your daily dealings with your customers, in your advertising, etc.

Some examples,

- the owner of a local coffee & tea shop can easily promote the health benefits associated to people add green tea to their list of daily beverages.

- a local florist can instruct pet lovers on the dangers that certain plants can cause to loved cats and dogs. (posting flyers at local veterinary clinics, etc)

- a professional organizer can publish the research results from a study of homeowners, who discovered the large amount of "wasted" time they had spent searching for their keys, important documents, etc in their cluttered lives.

- a commercial cleaning service owner could publish the psychological findings of how certain air-freshening scents cause patients to feel more relaxed when they enter their physician's office.

Small Business Marketing Tactic: The Power Of Your Voicemail Greeting!

For many small business owners, the telephone voicemail greeting is your first impression with a potential new client. Remember the power of our voicemail greeting!

Greet your current & potential customers with a message that includes:

1. The current date

2. Memorable message that provides "tip of the day"

3. Basic information about your business

- business hours

- location

- when they can expect for you to return their calls

PLEASE follow up and RETURN their calls when you say you will!

Small Business Marketing Tactic: Create A Coupon Calendar!

Today is a great day to start thinking about the new calendar year! Reward you customers by providing redeemable coupons on the calendar AND do it at little or NO hard cost to your bottom line.

How?

1. Research inexpensive calendars that can be printed to include coupons

2. Determine the number of coupons that you want to include on the calendar

3. Calculate the total cost to design & print the calendars

4. Divide the number of coupons by the total cost, so you know COST PER COUPON

5. Solicit your local non-compete business and sell AD SPACE for them to also provide a coupon on these calendars that will be distributed for FREE to your customers

As an added thought, you can offer the calendars to your local non-compete businesses too (for a fee!), and they can distribute to their customers too thus increasing the number of impressions for your coupons as well!

Small Business Marketing Tactic: Access The Industry Vertical of Social Media

In an Entrepreneur.com post from 9/30/09, Carol Tice reminds us that social media is not exclusive for those massive crowds of Twitter and Facebook. Some industries have their own silo of media that are being created to help members connect with each other and with your target audience.

One example she provides is LocalDirt.com, a new portal that connects farmers with customers nearby. How it works:

Farmers receive web-based orders from buying groups

Consumers arrive to local farmer's market and picks up the goods.

In its simplest form, the site basically makes shopping for local food easy!

Hmmmmm...encourages me to explore those industry verticals in my work....Shoot! Better yet, I think I will create a mini-silo on my own!