The more creative you are with your marketing for your small business, the further you can stretch your advertising budget. For a lot of small businesses, this can mean the difference between success and failure. If you are on a shoe-string start-up, you have to be even more creative.
One things that will increase the effectiveness of your marketing will be to start networking. Some people do this naturally, but for most of us it is one of the most necessary and difficult parts of marketing our business. A good place to start is go to several business networking groups or a rotary clubs. If you are offering a service, like a janitor service, try to see if anyone in the group is looking for your service. The more friends you make, the more potential clients you have. Keep in mind that only friends will refer you to friends. A larger professional network is a great way to find work.
What better than free? Giving something away for free is a marketing strategy that is almost guaranteed to generate a higher response rate. In order for this strategy to work, you should focus on customer retention and making money off of your clients in the long term. A successful burrito company found that printing a coupon for a free burrito attracted 10 times as many new customers as their previous coupon. Yes they were losing a little money every time someone redeem a coupon, but they retained and grew their business at a faster rate and that more than compensated for it. With a janitorial service business their are 100s of different ways to offer free services. Two of these include a free cleaning evaluation or $100 off the the first contract signed.
For increase your advertising sphere without increase the size of your advertising budget, online advertising is the way to go. The first thing you need to do is get listed on Google maps. This is a free free service and it takes 1/2 hour to set up. I have had people call and offer to charge me $300 set up plus 100 a month to manage but for a 1/2 of work, you only need to do once that sounds like a scam to me! Make sure you pick all the categories you are offering services in and that your main keyword is in your title. Getting a few legitimate reviews from customers will also go a long way to improving your Google map rankings.
You are much less likely to succeed in business if you do not understand the value of each lead. Do you know how much that last phone call cost you? Do you know on average what each new customer to your business is worth? Sometimes this can be difficult to track, but it is always worth it to try to find out. When a new customer calls ask them how they heard about you. Keep of who referred them or what advertisements they responded to. The truth is that business is always moving towards increased efficiency, where you choose to keep up or not is entirely up to you.
Customer referrals are the best source of business. You will normally have more sales close and you can often have slightly higher margins because you will not be bidding in such a competitive atmosphere.
One things that will increase the effectiveness of your marketing will be to start networking. Some people do this naturally, but for most of us it is one of the most necessary and difficult parts of marketing our business. A good place to start is go to several business networking groups or a rotary clubs. If you are offering a service, like a janitor service, try to see if anyone in the group is looking for your service. The more friends you make, the more potential clients you have. Keep in mind that only friends will refer you to friends. A larger professional network is a great way to find work.
What better than free? Giving something away for free is a marketing strategy that is almost guaranteed to generate a higher response rate. In order for this strategy to work, you should focus on customer retention and making money off of your clients in the long term. A successful burrito company found that printing a coupon for a free burrito attracted 10 times as many new customers as their previous coupon. Yes they were losing a little money every time someone redeem a coupon, but they retained and grew their business at a faster rate and that more than compensated for it. With a janitorial service business their are 100s of different ways to offer free services. Two of these include a free cleaning evaluation or $100 off the the first contract signed.
For increase your advertising sphere without increase the size of your advertising budget, online advertising is the way to go. The first thing you need to do is get listed on Google maps. This is a free free service and it takes 1/2 hour to set up. I have had people call and offer to charge me $300 set up plus 100 a month to manage but for a 1/2 of work, you only need to do once that sounds like a scam to me! Make sure you pick all the categories you are offering services in and that your main keyword is in your title. Getting a few legitimate reviews from customers will also go a long way to improving your Google map rankings.
You are much less likely to succeed in business if you do not understand the value of each lead. Do you know how much that last phone call cost you? Do you know on average what each new customer to your business is worth? Sometimes this can be difficult to track, but it is always worth it to try to find out. When a new customer calls ask them how they heard about you. Keep of who referred them or what advertisements they responded to. The truth is that business is always moving towards increased efficiency, where you choose to keep up or not is entirely up to you.
Customer referrals are the best source of business. You will normally have more sales close and you can often have slightly higher margins because you will not be bidding in such a competitive atmosphere.
About the Author:
Isaac Arnold is a successful business owner. Find out more about how to start a Janitorial Service by visiting his site.
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