Marketing: Don’t Stop Promoting Your Business!
Added on July 8th, 2008
Found in Google Adwords, News
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When business is slow and ’financial’ belts are tightened, marketing is usually the first area to suffer. Upon closer investigation you may find that this really is a case of ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’. By delaying work on that new website, or not getting that new company brochure printed you may be doing more harm than good!
Rather than withdraw from the ’scene’, now may be the time to ‘get out there’ and promote your business. When times are hard businesses shop around more, they look for value added services, they look for products or services that improve their productivity, they may be looking for you! If you are not there being seen in the right places, making your presence known and keeping in touch, before you know it the customers you have already may be gone!
When considering how to market and who to market to perhaps asking yourself a few key questions may highlight where you lack the right tools to do the job.
- Image: Does your company create the right impression? Strong brand? Logo?
- Product/service: Do potential and existing customers know what you are offering?
- Communication: Are you keeping in touch regularly with your customers?
- Service: Do you review your service levels and respond to customer feedback?
- Sales: Do you make it easy for people to buy from you?
The list could go on. In essence the real question is, do you communicate effectively with your customers and are you reaching out to potential new customers? It may be worth considering some of the following areas as a way of developing awareness and keeping the lines of communication open.
Email marketing- a way of sending your message quickly and easily to large volumes of people. With the right tools you can assess the response to your message and have more insight into where customers interests lie.
Dynamic forms - by adding some extra funtionality to your website like forms and questionnaires you can gather useful information from your clients using drop down boxes to select. You could even set up booking forms or customer feedback forms etc
News pages and blogs-adding a news page or having a blog built into your website can provide you with a facility for changing what could be an otherwise static site as well as relaying useful industry or product news. They also provide an opportunity to add ‘keyword’ rich content which makes them a useful tool for generating interest from the search engines.
Content Managed Sites - upgrading to a site that you can manage yourself although initially dearer can provide you with flexibility. You can amend the site regularly, keeping it fresh, as well as managing products and information. When taken to the extent of e-commerce you can sell goods online and take orders. How far you take this type of solution depends on your requirements and your budget.
Design - professionally designed websites create a positive company image. Investment in getting the right look and feel for your business can influence the type of clients you get and their anticipation of the service you will provide.
Photography - good photos can make all the difference on a website /company literature etc. Investing in a photoshoot where required can pay dividends in terms of portraying your company’s products to best advantage.
Pay-per-click - as well as traditional marketing consider trying out on-line marketing and promotion through Google for example. Taking your products direct to the people searching may not be cheap but it will give you a good indication of the level of demand and help with ongoing organic search engine positioning in the longer term.
Generally things in business that are worth doing will have a cost element however by viewing this more as an ‘Investment’ it is posssible to reap the rewards in the longer term. So what are you waiting for? get marketing to grow your business!
Tags: communication, content managed sites, email marketing, Google, image, investment, keyword, logo, marketing, Pay Per Click, photography, questionnaires, websites
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