Your promotional literature is one of the main sources of communicating your brand image, core values, objectives and a description of your products and services. The way in which you present it all can make or break your business.
Ensure your website is up-to-date
As more and more people move online, it’s vital you don’t get left behind and miss out. Ensure you have a web presence by setting up a website. It’s important to keep your branding consistent both off and online. In many cases, a design firm can develop or spruce up a website and ensure design consistency.
However, the most important aspect of a website is having the information and contact details up to date – there’s nothing more frustrating or off-putting to a potential customer as having to go through several different people to the person she/he wants to contact.
Email effectively
Email marketing is an affordable method of reaching out to potential customers and can be targeted very effectively, with the added benefits that recipients can respond immediately.
You can send out emails to various mail groups using your in-house address book or database. Another, larger scale and perhaps more efficient option is using an outside email marketing company to assist – but whichever you choose, ensure you are able to measure the emails’ effect on sales.
Stay in front of your customers
Send out a monthly newsletter to your existing customers to make sure they think of you first when they need a product or service that you provide.
Fill your newsletter with helpful, educational content. Don’t create a four-page ad and call it a newsletter. Instead, think about what kind of information your customers will find extremely valuable. What can you impart that will help your customers increase their profits and grow their businesses? If the content of your newsletter is valuable enough, you can offer free subscriptions on your web site as a way to build your database.
Get your opinion out there
Consider contributing to industry blogs and social media sites. This will to make your voice heard just as much or more than your competitors in the forums that matter most to your business.
Joining online networking sites such as LinkedIn, Ning, or Collective X, and adding your company’s details to free online directories is a simple way of increasing your business’s visibility with the only cost to you being the minimal time it takes to input the information.
Get your face out there
As effective as all of the above are, there is nothing like good old fashioned face to face contact. Attend networking events to meet new contacts and arrange customer meetings to discuss how to serve them better.
At these, speak positively: research at Aston Business School has found that companies whose directors were consistently optimistic in their business plans and statements fared much better over a 10 year period than those who were more reticent.
This year will be hard, but companies who invest wisely in selected marketing initiatives will bolster their position and enable them to emerge stronger and brighter in the future. Let Strategem Group help you develop a marketing stratagy for your business. Call us today at 630.584.9380 or visit our website.
