Here are 7 low-cost but highly effective marketing tips to help any small business find customers and generate sales quickly.
1. Don’t Advertise Like a Big Business
Big businesses advertise to create name recognition and future sales. A small business can’t afford to do that. Instead, design your advertising to produce sales …now. One way to accomplish this is to always include an offer in your advertising – and an easy way for prospective customers to respond to it.
2. Offer a Cheaper Version
Some prospective customers are not willing to pay the asking price for your product or service. Others are more interested in paying a low price than in getting the best quality. You can avoid losing sales to many of these customers by offering a smaller or stripped down version of your product or service at a lower price.
3. Offer a Premium Version
Not all customers are looking for a cheap price. Many are willing to pay a higher price to get a premium product or service. You can boost your average size sale and your total revenue by offering a more comprehensive product or service …or by combining several products or services in a special premium package offer for a higher price.
4. Try Some Unusual Marketing Methods
Look for some unconventional marketing methods your competitors are overlooking. You may discover some highly profitable ways to generate sales and avoid competition. For example, print your best small ad on a postcard and mail it to prospects in your targeted market. A small ad on a postcard can drive a high volume of traffic to your website or generate a flood of sales leads for a very small cost.
5. Trim Your Ads
Reduce the size of your ads so you can run more ads for the same cost. You may even be surprised to find that some of your short ads generate a better response than their longer versions.
6. Set up Joint Promotions with Other Small Businesses
Contact some non-competing small businesses serving customers in your market. Offer to publicize their products or services to your customers in exchange for their publicizing your services to their customers. This usually produces a large number of sales for a very low cost.
7. Take Advantage of Your Customers
Your customers already know and trust you. It’s easier to get more business from them than to get any business from somebody who never bought from you. Take advantage of this by creating some special deals just for your existing customers …and announce new products and services to them before you announce them to the general market.
Also, convert your customers into publicity agents for your business. Develop an incentive for them to tell associates and friends about the value of your products or services. An endorsement from them is more effective than any amount of advertising – and it is much cheaper.
Each of these 7 marketing tips provides a simple, low-cost way for any small business to find customers and generate sales quickly
by Bob Leduc
Bob Leduc retired from a 30 year career of recruiting sales personnel and developing sales leads. He is now a Sales Consultant. For more information about *BizTips from Bob*, a newsletter to help small businesses grow and prosper, visit his web site at http://BobLeduc.com
Whether you like it or not, eventually it will be necessary for you to take your small business on the road to do the whole “dog and pony” show at a major trade show.
The benefits? Reaching a huge new audience in the span of a few days, meeting new partners, connecting with a new client base, generating new ideas.
The disadvantages? If you’re not strategic about it, trade shows can be financially crippling, physically exhausting, and potentially a huge waste of time. So here are a few productive tips specifically for small business owners who are thinking about hitting the trade show circuit.
DO YOUR RESEARCH
Before you commit to any particular trade show, do your research. Go as an attendee and make sure that the show is all it’s cracked up to be before committing to becoming an exhibitor.
There are an increasing number of green business trade shows out there, so be sure to do your due diligence and make sure that the show is reaching the right audience for your business. There are great resource sites out there to help in the research phase.
PLAN AHEAD
Taking the show on the road is not something that is open to improvisation. Know exactly what you’re going to be showing, what products you want to showcase, and which new initiatives you want to push. Only the clearest of messages can be heard or discerned from the cacophony of a crowded show floor.
Deciding this early will also help you mount a clear PR campaign in advance of the show. You cannot always rely on the show’s internal PR engine to promote your brand, so the earlier you lay out your own game plan, the earlier you can start telling people about it. Logistically speaking, the more details you have nailed down before show, the less money you’ll spend on last minute expenses (such as drayage, transportation, etc.).
PARTNER UP
Since prime booth space can be costly, think about potential partnerships with like-minded brands. At the recent Dwell on Design show in Los Angeles, Inhabitat partnered with local design gallery TOUCH to create a pop-up eco gallery and shop, making the most of TOUCH’s experience curating and designing compelling booth space and relying on the blog’s wide reach to draw an audience.
Likewise, retail brand Gilt Groupe partnered with French luxury furniture brand Ligne Roset to create a sexy and sleek co-branded space, each gaining brand recognition through association. Two brands can be better than one, if both are getting something out of the experience.
BE CREATIVE
Designing a compelling booth space is actually a fine art. Besides showcasing your product or service, a booth space should be visually attractive and completely understandable at the same time.
That said, it’s possible to create a compelling booth on a budget. For example, TOUCH was able to use simple recycled materials, essentially painted cardboard boxes, to create an elegant pop-up shop and gallery for the Inhabitat booth at Dwell on Design. You don’t have to spend a fortune, but you need to think of your booth space as a blank canvas. Don’t scribble on it. Make sure to paint a masterpiece.
ENLIST VOLUNTEERS
You’ll always need more people than you think to mount a successful trade show campaign. You can’t be in five places at the same time, so be prepared to enlist friends, family, employees, and volunteers to help you cover all the bases. You’ll be thankful to have extra hands. This is not the place to cut corners.
AVOID THE SCHWAG TRAP
Press rooms are pointless. Don’t bother printing collateral for journalists who most likely will not want to schlep a bag of press kits around with them on the show floor. It’s time to go electronic.
Don’t give away useless schwag that will only end up in the nearest trash can. Rather than giving, you should be taking. Collecting, that is. Think up creative ways to collect e-mail addresses, business cards, and other information so you walk away with a way to keep in contact with the people you’ve met at the show.
If you’re going to give anything away, make it something substantial and meaningful. If you’re running a green business, the days of schwag are past.
by Haily Zaki, Contributing Editor, Inhabitat.com
If you’re considering setting up at a trade show for the first time, here are eight tips for a successful trade show booth display:1 - Rent the smallest possible booth space for your first trade show. The first time you exhibit, you’ll learn a lot about what works for you and your products and what doesn’t, and what you’d like to change for your next show. Also, seeing other exhibitors’ booths and ideas will inspire you to evolve various aspects of your own display. So it’s a good idea to keep your trade show expenses lower as you learn, by renting a smaller space and starting with a simple display.
2 - Create an open trade show exhibit. Make it a space people can enter comfortably without feeling trapped. If you set a table across the front of your booth and stand behind it, it’s harder to draw customers in and involve them – so they tend to walk on by.
3 - Keep your booth uncluttered so customers can focus on what’s important – your product. When approaching your display, anyone should be able to discern immediately what your booth is promoting. No one is going to take the time to study it and guess, when there are hundreds of other booths to visit.
4 - Before planning your trade show booth display, find out everything you can about your allotted space. Know its dimensions, where it will be located in the building, what companies or organizations will be in your neighboring booths, whether it’s in a high or low traffic area, whether you have access to lighting and electricity, and anything else that will affect your exhibit display setup.
5 - For your first trade show, consider renting booth display components. Rental displays can relieve you of the issues of transportation and storage, and allow you to be a little more daring in your exhibit design than you might be if you were purchasing them. Also, studies show that many first-time exhibitors never do a second trade show. If you only exhibit once or twice, purchasing your own exhibit components doesn’t make economic sense.
6 - Design your booth with an eye to keeping shipping costs low. Oversized or heavy displays can be very expensive to ship to the trade show, and may also require that you hire expo personnel to bring them into the exhibit hall and help you set them up. Opt for smaller, collapsible, lighter weight displays as much as possible.
7 - Plan to secure your expensive items so that they can’t be stolen at a trade show. If you use a laptop computer for a multimedia presentation at your booth, be sure to have it securely locked to your display, and take it with you at night if it’s a multiple-day event. Display the samples of your more expensive products either well inside your booth where they can’t “walk off” as attendees stroll by, or inside a locked display case.
8 – For the most professional image, create a unified appearance for your displays. Choose no more than three colors for your display elements and table coverings – such as gray, white, and blue. Each exhibit component should be one of your three colors. Also, choose no more than three textures – such as brushed metal, matte vinyl, and clear acrylic; each display element should be one of these textures. This creates a professionally pulled-together booth that lets your products stand out in the display.
In summary, although it’s tempting to go all out when designing your first trade show booth display, it makes more sense to keep your first booth small and simple, and focus your energy on marketing your products and networking at your first show.
During the event, learn as much as possible about how you’d like to alter your exhibit for show next show, and write down all your ideas either during or immediately after the show.
Once you have your first trade show under your belt, you’ll have a much sharper idea of what you do – and don’t – need in a trade show display to make each successive show your most profitable one to date.
by Rena Klingenberg
Rena Klingenberg is a jewelry artist with expertise in displaying and marketing products creatively on a small budget. She publishes two websites, http://www.home-jewelry-business-success-tips.com and http://www.trade-show-booth-display.com
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