Small Business Marketing Ideas

For a business owner coming up with new marketing ideas to grow your business can be frustrating. So I wanted to share with you several marketing ideas that we use to help small businesses to increase the average sales per client.

Consider the difference between an average sales of 10% over the lifetime of the client this could mean thousands of dollars or potentially millions of dollars of additional revenue and profit. The obvious way to increase the average sales per client is to increase prices. And if this was a world where your clients had no choice that might work, Unfortunately, in a competitive marketplace, your product must be priced appropriately, else you risk losing customers.

So the question is how: how do you increase the average sales per client for your small business without losing clients. In fact many of the techniques I am going to recommend, may even increase the number of clients. Because customer buy value not items, when you increase the value the cost becomes less of an issue.

In order to provide this recommendation in an orderly fashion, I have broken them into different categories.

Adjusting your Point of Sales process:

• Recommend additional products / services. While talking with your client explore their real needs and discover any additional products that your clients may need that you can offer. Remember they want their problems solved. Help them solve their problems and they will gladly compensate you.
• Bundle Products. By putting together a "ready made" package to solve your clients most pressing issues, you can position yourself as s problem solver not just a product seller.
• Recommend value products over cheap price. When a prospect comes to you looking for a product, review their needs before recommending a product. Often they think the cheapest item will work for their solution. Help your clients understand the problem and difference in products. This alone can increase your sales drastically.
• Product Placement. Place product that are used together - in the same area. This could mean making a small display that highlights an event or occasion. Consumers by experiences more than products. Help them create an experience. By grouping like minded products together, you will inspire your clients and their spending.

SALES SKILLS

• Use Consultative selling to understand all their needs.Take the time to understand your client's problems. They are coming to you to solve their problems. Ask questions. I like to think of myself as a doctor and before I prescribe any solution, I want to understand all their symptoms. This will help your clients feel heard and create more trust with you.
• Determine budget before quote. As you are asking questions and listening, find out if they have determined a budget. This will help you know what price points to be considering.

PROMOTIONS

• Promote seasonal products. Consider the different problems your clients experience at different times of the year. Create products specific for those problems and offer them during the appropriate seasons.
• Buy One - Get one. This can be used in so many ways. You can use a buy this and get that at 50% off, or free. Used with discretion, this can be a huge boost. Consider what your clients want and off the get one to increase sales.
• Increase Value offering. Instead of discounting a product, consider keeping the same price and adding more value to the product. For example, include 10% more product FREE instead of a 10% discount on your product.

Using these marketing ideas for your small business will help you to increase the average sales amount while increasing revenue and profit for your business.

Marketing Ideas for Your New or Small Business

You've started a new business and are not sure how to get marketing ideas to reach your target market. Sit down and distinguish what you want to achieve first, that is, brand awareness which will lead to sales or immediate sales. This decision will depend on the type of product you're selling. If you're selling a high value product, you may want to start with brand awareness to build trust in your brand. Either way you need to get your brand out there.

Here are some marketing ideas that will get you going:

• Run a competition and offer your products or services as the prize. Or offer something that will appeal to your potential customers. This will engage future customers and create brand awareness.
• Get your business involved on the major social network platforms. Liaise with your potential client base. You can promote your offers and competitions on these social networks. And create interest in your products and services.
• Book a stand at an exhibition in your industry. Thousands of people visit exhibitions. Potential clients can engage with you and learn about your products as well as even see and touch your products themselves. This face to face contact creates trust with your brand that would have taken months to obtain.
• Visit a mall in your target area and find out if you can book a space for a day or a weekend to promote your products and services. There's always a lot of traffic in a mall so you are sure to reach customers.
• Hand out promotional flyers with a promotional item at exhibitions, in shopping centres and also send them out with all your invoices. Spread the word about your business.
• Offer a free gift with every order placed within a certain time frame. People love free gifts and they will remember your company for it. This could lead to word of mouth referrals.
• Give away promotional products with every order, at shopping centres, at sports grounds, or wherever your target market is situated. Give pens, caps, keyrings or even stationery packs branded with your logo.
• Brand your logo on promotional T-shirts or golf shirts. Give them to employees, family members and customers to wear. Every time they wear your promotional golf shirts or t-shirts, this will act as active advertising.
• Participate in events such as walks and wear your branded t-shirt. People will see your logo and remember your company for participating in the event. Promote your participation in the event beforehand. Let people know that you will be involved in the walk or run.
• Use vehicle signage. There a few options that you could use such as vehicle magnets which can be placed on the doors, stickers for branding your vehicles and rear window signage. While driving you can actively advertise your business. You could even ask friends and family to place vehicle magnets on their cars to help promote your business.

Your marketing consultants can assist you with many marketing ideas that will suit your business and reach your target market. There are many options that you could use to get your name out in the world. Find solutions that work for your business.

Chanre A Williams is a marketing consultant and the owner of Deschan Marketing and Promotions. Based in Gauteng, we offer affordable and customised marketing solutions to small and medium businesses.

Complex Business Solutions and Simple Applications

Programming business solutions into your company from scratch is a very long and arduous process. Even with a competent IT department, the actual development of an application is not easy to come up with. The hours of employee time that it takes to create the technically challenging programs can be exhaustive. This, obviously, is not very cost effective and it detracts from the work that is normally done by the IT staff.

Running software programs that are specifically designed to take those difficult situations and turn them into easy, point and click solutions is a much more cost effective idea. These are programs that have already been exhaustively created, tested, reworked, and made to be applicable for any business. Yet, there are many business owners that are unsure of whether or not this is a fast and effective way to solve their issues.

Technology in business has become so commonplace that most of the time there is little understanding of what actually goes into its creation. The companies that are able to produce this software and run a reliable service for various companies have invested a great deal of time and money into the process. This benefits your business because that is time and money that you do not have to apply while gaining the easy solution that you require.

How can one software program offer solutions to so many different issues and still be effective? This is what cloud computing is all about. The original program is designed to solve a specific problem and the additional issues are resolved through the cloud. This means that you can take on the additional applications that are required for your business to run smoothly and effectively. Because it is run on the cloud concept, you are not required to take on anything that you don't find beneficial. Applications that are useless should not have to be required in a package purchase.

For small to medium businesses, the idea of creating this sort of wide spread problem solving software is overwhelming. There are many different software programs that offer a wide range of applications. The time devoted to research and software comparison is hardly a fraction of the time that would be devoted to the creation of such software from scratch.

As technology gains its place in the market and businesses come to rely on technological advancement more every day, the continued development of additional simple to integrate applications will help to continue to improve the outlook for small to medium businesses everywhere. The growth of such development will only serve your company more as you will continue to have easy solutions to those complicated problems.