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This article will provide you a guide on how to promote your business without breaking bank. Before then, there is need to let you know that marketing is essential part of your business. It doesn’t matter the type of people you do, if you don’t know how to promote your business effectively, you may end up in frustration. You may conclude that your business idea is not profitable.

A lot of young entrepreneurs believe that once they are able to identify a good business idea, they will launch the business and customers will start knocking at their door. This is a great business mistake which I don’t want you to make. It doesn’t matter you great your business idea is, if you don’t know how to promote your business, you may not find any customers to patronize you.

So, the big question is, how can you promote your business? This is the question that this article will provide answers to.

How to Promote Your Business

• Develop marketing strategy: This is the starting point. You need to identify your prospective customers and plan how you can possibly reach them. Nothing can be more painful than spending your little on marketing that bring no or little returns to you. Wrong marketing will not only waste your money, it will also waste your time. Marketing is good of course, but you need to adopt the marketing plan that is right for the type of business that you do. Also, you need to understand that marketing is not just advertising. Marketing is more encompassing.
• Who are your prospects? You should understand your target audience. Who are they? What are their age brackets? Where do they live? What is their economic purchasing power? What do they do? Where do they hang around? For instance, if you want to reach youths, you can easily reach them on Facebook. But if you are targeting senior citizens, if may be a waste of time using such platform to attempt to reach them.
• Develop a website: We are in a technological age. Therefore, whatever the kind of business you do, whether online or brick and mortal type, you need to have a website for the business. You may not necessarily need to sell online before you have a website for your business. Having a website for your business has many advantages. It adds credibility to your business. Before some individuals or entities make buying decision, they usually go online to search for companies that sell the product or service they want to buy. When a prospective customer locate your business online, the website will talk for you. That is why it is important that your website contains enough information about your offerings. Having a website can increase your sales significantly. The truth of the matter is that, you may not know how much sales you miss if you don’t have a website. You will just be losing sales to your competitors.

Read Also: 8 Reasons Why Small Business Need a Website for Your Business

• Blogging: Another way of promoting your business is to add blog to your website. You should not confuse a website with a blog. A website may be static. It may just contain information about your business, your team members, your product and services, your location address, email address, and telephone number. Once the website is set up, you may not need to touch it again except you have new products or services that you want to add to your offering. But a blog needs to be updated regularly. It is online tool you can use to publish regular information about your business. If you publish relevant articles on your blog regularly, this may help you drive more traffic to your website. The more traffic to your website, the more people will get to know about your business and what you offer. Some of them can turn into buying customers.
• Use SEO Strategy: Have you ever used a search engine such as Google or Yahoo to search for information on the internet? If yes, you will notice that some websites usually come up on the first page of the search result. If you can optimize your website or article for search engine, you may be able to rank high with your keywords. If your website succeed in ranking on the first page of the search results, you will be able to enjoy free traffic without having to pay for it. If you are not good at Search Engine Optimization, you can engage an SEO Consultant to help you do the job.

• Social Media: Social media is in vogue now. If you want to know how to promote your business, I will say that whatever you know is not complete without engaging social media to promote your business. There are many social median platform you can use. These include LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, Telegram and others. Although they are all social media, they serve different purposes. You need to know which of the social media platforms that is good for the kind of business that you do. I need to mention that having social media account is not enough. You need to update it regularly to keep your followers engaged. If you are into fashion, people will like to see photos of your products. The pictures of your product must be clear. If you have very nice pictures on your social media platforms, people will be willing to them among their friends. This will increase the visibility of your business. On the other hand, if you are into professional service, you can use LinkedIn to promote your business. You should ensure you have a detailed and robust profile. Let people know about your skills and areas of specialization. You can enjoy recommendations through the platform.
• Use Google Map: You can sign up to Google My Business and also sign up for Bing Places for Business. When people search for your business or what you offer, people can easily find the location of your business.
• Business Card: As a business person, you need business cards. Your business card should be seen as a marketing tool. Therefore, it should not just contain your name and telephone numbers. It should also contain the name of your business, product and services, your location address, email address, and business telephone number. Remember that I say that it should contain your business telephone number. You should not include your personal telephone number if you don’t want people to be calling you through the number especially when you are not open for business.
• Email Marketing: One of the advantages of having a blog is that, it can help you in collecting the email addresses of your prospective customers. Some of them will willingly subscribe to your articles. This means that they are willing to receive information about your products and services. You can constantly send email to this category of people to notify your about your new products and services. The conversion rate for this type of marketing is usually high. The reason is that, they already know about you and your business. And they are interested in what you do. Therefore, there is possibility of them making a purchase or responding to your mail positively when they receive it.

Read Also: Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

• Vendors Alliance: You can establish a kind of alliance or joint venture with your vendors. In most cases, they have information about the people that need your products and services. So, don’t be afraid about involving them in your business. It will be a win-win arrangement. The more you sell, the more you will buy from them.
• Join Professional Groups: It is good that you belong to relevant professional groups. It is an avenue through which you can rub minds with other people in your field or rom other fields of businesses. In some cases, you can get businesses within your groups. How does it work? People within your group know your areas of specialization. It is possible they don’t have competence or enough resources to handle a project. In such a situation, they won’t hesitate to give such job or contract to person that they know will be able to deliver.

Besides, you may not necessarily belong to the same field. If you belong to professional clubs, you will understand how executives make business decisions when having informal meetings. In fact, it is a cheap way of landing some juicy contracts. However, in most cases, you need to pay to join this kind of club. In case you choose to belong to such clubs, it is important that you make best use of the opportunity it presents.

• Engage social media influencers: Another point on how to promote your business is by engaging social media influencers to talk about your business, products and services on their platforms. Social media usually have large followers and their followers trust them to some extent. So, if social media influencers can use or recommend your products, there is likelihood that their followers will buy into it. Another way on how to promote your business through this medium is by encouraging the social media influencers to help share your posts on their platform. You may not be able to reach much audience on your own. But when a social media influencers shares your post, you may be able to reach more audience. But if you want to use social media influencers to promote your business, you should ensure that the followers are potential buyers of what you offer. Otherwise, it will just be a wasteful exercise.

• Webinar: People are searching for information. If you can provide your target audience with free webinar that is very rich in content, a lot of people will like to be part of it. If you want this to be very successful, you will need to select a topic that will meet the need of your target audience. Use every platform available to promote it. Social media platform is good for this and you will be able to share it among your contacts. You should also encourage your contact to help you share it among their contacts. How to promote your business with this webinar is that, you will request people to register with their email address.. This will give you opportunity to have their email address. Through the email addresses, you can later market your products or services to them. Even, within the webinar, you can suggest your products or services to them as solution to the problem you may discuss with them. However, you need to do this carefully so that they won’t feel that you are just out to sell to them.
• Comment on relevant blogs: There are blogs that attract thousands of readers every day. Possibly, your own website is not even attracting up to twenty people in a day. You can post comments on top websites or blogs and have a backlink to your own blog. If your comment is reasonable, some people may want to click on your link to read more about you or your articles. But you need to do this with a caution so that you are not seen as spammer. You don’t comment on all blogs that you see. You should only comment on blogs that have your target audience as readers. For instance, if I want to promote my blog which is essentially on small business and entrepreneurship, if may be a waste of time for me commenting on dating or betting website.
• Post on online forum: Another point on how to promote your business is by posting relevant articles on forums. Forums usually require that you register a username before you can become a member. Once you sign up and start posting, you need to be consistent. You should only post quality articles. Also, when commenting on other people’s posts, you have to ensure that your comments are rich in content. Over time, you will have many articles and comments in your account. Before long, people will start noticing and they will begin to about your profile. That is why it is essential that your profile contains good information about your business. While you may not be able to talk about your business every time in your posts so that they won’t see it as advertisement, you are free to mention your business in your profile. This means that, each time a person check your profile, the person will get to know about your business.
• Be a columnist: You can promote your business by being a columnist. Columnists are usually seen as experts in their area of interest. For instance, if you are a medical doctor, you may become a columnist under Health Section of a newspaper, magazine or website. But before you can effectively use this method to promote your business, you should be allowed to include your brief profile as the author of the articles you will be publishing. Also, you need to ensure that the readers are from your area of coverage. It will be of no importance if you are a columnist of a website where the readers are mainly from a different geographical location. If you can locate a newspaper, magazine or website that can help you reach your prospective customers or clients, it is worthwhile being a columnist even if it requires you writing for free.
• Offer quality services: If there is anything you need to know about how to promote your business, I will say that you should not joke with this point. There is need for you to offer quality services to your clients or customers. That is the only thing that will keep them coming back to you. It can be stressful if you need to always chase new clients or customers all the time. You need repeat customers. In case you engage staff that are working for you, you should train them on how to attend to customers. They should have interpersonal skills and ensure they treat all customers with courtesy no matter the size of his or order. A customer who is not able to place large order today may grow to become your biggest customer tomorrow. If at all, he can’t place big order, he may recommend you to another big customer. Therefore, you should ensure quality customer service. One unhappy customer may prevent ten other customers from patronizing you.
• Ask for leads/referrals: Don’t hesitate to ask your satisfied customers to refer other customers or clients to you. You can even motivate them by offering them a commission for every customer they brought. However, not every customer will like to be offered something. Therefore, you should understand your customers and know the kind of persons they are. Referral is a good way to promote your business. In most cases, referrals usually end in sales because the job must have been concluded by your satisfied customers.
• Ask for customer reviews: Another point on how to promote your business is by asking for customer reviews. This is similar to asking for referrals. The main difference is that, in case of referrals, your customers are helping you to talk about your products or services to specific persons. But in the case of customer reviews, your customers are giving general positive testimonials about your business, products or services to the general public. When people read about customer reviews, it helps prospective customers in making decisions whether to buy from you or not. Of course, only positive customer reviews will help increase your sales. If it is negative, people will run away from you. That is why it is very important that you offer good quality service. One negative side of customer reviews is that, your competitors may deliberately post negative comments about your products or services. That is why you need to control the level of access you give to people to post on your website or social media platform. If you notice any negative comments or reviews, you should either delete it quickly or you do some damage control immediately.

• Guest posting: Guest posting is similar to being a columnist. The main difference is that, you don’t write regularly on a particular newspaper, magazine or website as in the case of when you write as a columnist. Guest posting allows you to write on other websites while the website allows you to have a backlink to your own website. In most cases, people guest post on websites that rank higher than their own website. When you guest post on a website that have large number of readers and then backlink to your website, your own website will enjoy more credibility as the links are coming from credible websites that people trust.
• Networking: If you are a business person or an entrepreneur, you should develop networking skill. Networking is more than greetings and then exchange business cards. It is a skill that you need to consciously develop. People with good networking skill know how to make use of every opportunity to promote themselves and their businesses. What a person without the skill will do that will put people off, other people with networking skill will do it and it will land them business opportunity. If you are good at networking, you will realize that every event is good for networking. That is, it is not at business meetings only that you can network. You can do this at birthday parties, wedding events, anniversaries and other special events.
• Public speaking: Those people that are good at public speaking are making it big. They make money in two ways. First, they get paid to talk at events. Secondly, they know how to promote their business at such events. Those people that are very good may not even mind offering free public speaking. They know that the sales they will close at the event will be much more in value than what they would have been paid. I remember a seminar I attended where a speaker talked about stock investing. The seminar was so convincing that I decided to visit her office the following week. Trust me, I met other that attended the seminar in her office. The woman was very open to acknowledge that she had never experienced the level of influx of customers that came for business in one week ever since she had been in stockbroking business.
• Community event participation: When it comes to promoting your business, you can actually start from your community. People say, charity begins at home. If you are very active in community service, you will enjoy credibility. People will trust you and like to do business with you. There was a time we had an issue in our community and a lawyer volunteered to offer his legal service free of charge. That singular act brought him into a limelight. Apart from the token that the community offer him, people started engaging him for other related services.
• Product demonstration/Exhibition: Still looking for how to promote your business? Well, you can take your products or services to Trade Fairs or Exhibition Centres. It is a place where you can demonstrate your products and services. You will be able to provide first-hand information to prospective customers. You can demonstrate to them how they can use your products and also explain to them how your products and services can benefit them. If they are convinced of the benefits the products or services will provide, they will buy. Even if they don’t buy immediately, they can but in the future. Therefore, it is important that you collect their contact email address and telephone number for follow up.

• Cold calls: “Hello! Good morning sir, I am calling you from Company XYZ. Can I have few minutes of your time? I saw your contact number online and I understand that you are into so so and so. I want to introduce our products to you which can help you achieve your business objective…” I have received that type of call severally. This is what is called cold call. You can use the same method to promote your business. If you are very busy, you may engage a client service officer to handle this function. The cost of doing this is very low, especially if you are doing it yourself. If you call one hundred people and if it is only one that responded positively, you can be sure that, that only one will offset all the costs you incurred on the entire one hundred calls. Besides, the customer may repeat orders in the future. Even, the fact that the others didn’t buy now does not mean they won’t partronize you tomorrow.
• Samples: Seeing is believing. If you sell quality products that seem to be better than what your competitors offer, sending out samples may be a good way to convince customers of the quality of your products. If the quality is good, some people will not mind paying extra to buy from you.
• Free consultation: At times, people don’t know that they need certain things until you convince them. Offering free consultation may be a good way to promote your products or services, especially if they are new to the target audience. I remember a time when an optician came to the office where I was working then. He offered all our staff members free eye testing. The outcome of the tests showed that some of us needed to be using eyes glasses. From the free consultation, few people ended up buy eye glasses from the optician.
• Sales letters: Another point on how to promote your business is by sending out sales letters. Some people think that this is becoming outdated. It isn’t at all. It is true that email marketing is common now. The problem with email marketing is that, most of the mails may end up in spam box while some of the one that find their ways to inbox may not be read at all. Email marketing is not effective when you send mails to your contact list. But if you send out a sales letter, there is possibility that the letter will get to the person. Also, the person will be eager to read the content of the letter.
• Car branding: Do you have official vehicles? You can brand the vehicles to promote your business. However, this may require that you obtain permits from relevant authority.
• Engage resellers: In case you are finding it difficult to reach your potential buyers, you can engage reseller. For instance, you may not have enough resources to open branches in different locations. Meanwhile, you have customers in those areas. In such situation, you can engage resellers in such locations. You will need to share your revenue with them in form of commission. Nevertheless, this will help you increase your market share.
• Align with similar businesses: There are certain products and services that are complimentary. Nothing should stop you from collaborating with them. In fact, it is a cheap way of getting customers. For instance, if you run a pharmaceutical store, you can choose to locate your business very close to a hospital. It is either you are supplying drugs to the hospital directly or patients come to your store to buy prescribed drugs.
• Fliers and brochures: Fliers can be a very handy way to promote your business especially when you just opened in a new area. You can distribute the fliers within your neighborhood to create awareness of what you sell. Brochures may be good for walk-in customers who may want to have more information about your business. Your brochure should match your color. It is part of branding. Also, the pictures of your products should be very clear.
• Contest: How can you promote your business with contest? It is very simple. You may run a promotion that reward the best customer or sales agent. But if you want to run a contest, you need to first sit down and calculate the cost. What extra gains will the contest bring to your business? What is the value of the prize you will be giving out? If the gains outweigh the prize, then the contest is worthwhile.
• Advertising: The last point I will talk about on how to promote your business is advertising. There are different platform you can use to advertise your business such as radio, television, bill boards and online advertising. Your target audience will determine the type of advertisement you should adopt.

Read Also: How To Set Budget on Marketing

Conclusion

While this article may not be exhaustive, I believe it provides you useful information on how to promote your business. You may not need to engage all these points in advertising your business. You only need to focus on the ones that align with your marketing strategy.

Growing Your Business