Setting up, running and managing a business is hard enough. Add a tough economic situation, ever-shifting market demands, unpredictable consumer behavior, and plenty of other such externalities – all this can cause even more consternation to small business owners. Taking such externalities into view, here are a few tips for you to make sure that your business sails as smoothly as ever – no matter how externalities look:
How to Promote Your Business – Don’t ever wait till the going gets tough.
Big mistake: waiting to promote your website only during the rough times, off season, etc. Marketing is not an easy job, granted. That doesn’t mean that it should be ignored. In fact, it doesn’t even make any sense to ignore marketing since this is the only function in business that actually fetches you the profits. Keep the promotions going all around the year: unleash the power of your promotional products, launch a corporate gifting program for your clients, send out flyers, maintain your blog regularly, develop multiple sales/marketing channels, etc.
Make it a daily discipline
Marketing cannot be a one-off; it cannot be seasonal, and you certainly can’t depend just on word-of-mouth. As a business, you’d literally be extinct without marketing. Spend 80% of your time on marketing, rather than fire-fighting every day with business operations. Your business is truly leveraged when you begin to hire and let others take care of “business as usual.” Even when your business is semi-automated and you have people working for you, make sure that you give your marketing the most attention – no matter what you are actually good at.
Let clients invest time and effort into information digging, you focus on selling
Most entrepreneurs and salespeople make the mistake of explaining too much, saying too much, and clobbering up clients with more information than they can handle. If your products and services are simple enough, there’s no need for you to explain. If your offers are highly technical in nature, you could just install or set up for clients, so they still don’t need to know much. If your product or service needs explanation, give out brochures that explain the product features in detail. Alternatively, you may write a CD, upload a DVD, or stack all the information in a promotional USB stick.
Start an affiliate program with bounties
An affiliate program for your business is a no-brainer. For one, there will be an ever-ready swarm of ambitious publishers and entrepreneurs who’d love to promote your business. Secondly, they would be working every day, round the clock, and throughout the year (that’s continuous marketing, even better than what you could accomplish with your own sales force). Finally, it’s free to start an affiliate program except for the setup costs and the costs for all those goodies such as stubby holders, stationery items, incentives, gift cards, promotional bags, etc.
