If you own a small business you are well aware of two things:
Effective marketing is hard. Those that say it isn’t are 100% lying. These are the people to stay away from.
Marketing can be expensive. Effective marketing can indeed be expensive. You know that already.
So keeping those two things in mind let’s talk about some effective ideas you can deploy tomorrow – for free. These 5 ideas are proven to be successful so don’t wait another day – do it now. These 5 items should be your morning meeting tomorrow.
- Get your elevator speech down pat. Perfect it. When someone says “what do you do?” you should be able to wow them in a few seconds. You have about 10 seconds to tell someone EXACTLY what you do AND give them a reason to want to hear more. This takes practice. Do it tonight. Write it down and start pitching to the mirror.
- Ask for reviews. This should be almost a daily habit. You cannot imagine how much it helps to have reviews on Yelp, Trip Advisor, FaceBook, Google, and anywhere else you deem relevant. Make this as easy as possible for your customers – call them and then send them a link with specific instructions. Cost? Zero. ROI – could be your biggest client lurking in your future checking out reviews.
- Ask for referrals. No-brainer here. There is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t be asking customers for referrals. Make this a regular habit – but be tactful about it. If you have to give them some sort of incentive – maybe a discount for every referral they send your way. Again, this costs nothing but can lead to a tremendous amount of business. If you are not doing this you are leaving money on the table.
- Create a Client Retention process. There are numerous studies that show it costs between 5 and 10 times to develop new business versus keeping existing customers. You should make client retention a priority. Become their goto resource for everything related to your particular industry. Do you need to offer more services? Products? Can you become their partner? Think outside the box (God I hate that phrase) – and put together a process that works.
- Begin using Video. I know I know I know – you suck on video. Doesn’t matter. Do it anyway. Video content sizzles right now. People love watching videos – especially when it comes to making a decision as to who they are going to give their hard-earned money to. If they can watch YOU on video and your competitor has a boring stale website with text – you better believe you just grabbed the upper hand without spending a dime. Make a video tomorrow.
So there you go. 5 things you can do tomorrow that I consider 100% effective marketing. No excuses. The only item above that might take you a day or two is putting together a client retention process. By this time tomorrow you should have your elevator speech down pat, there should be 3-4 reviews on all social media platforms, you should have 2-3 referrals to contact this week, and you should already have a short video posted to your website and your social media platforms.
Do it.
Dennis Lynn
Inbound Solutions Group
Blairsville GA