You have the greatest small business in the world. But if no one knows you’re there, does it really matter? In order to get your customers’ business, you need to first grab their attention. Fortunately, there are a multitude of ways to make sure your business is getting enough of it.
Today’s vocab focuses on three proven attention-getting methods. We’ll only review them briefly here, but in the weeks ahead, we’ll examine them in-depth to demonstrate how they work and how you can make the most of each one:
Newsletter. Distribute your newsletter to your customer base and fill it with all kinds of information they’ll find useful. That means, no matter how interesting your cat, how cute your kids, or how delicious your Aunt Joan’s eggplant/fig/nacho chip dip is, your audience probably won’t be interested. (That is of course, unless your business has something to do with cats, kids or chip dips.) But if your target market isn’t interested, they won’t read your newsletter. And if they won’t read it, you’ve just wasted a lot of time and money putting it together and distributing it. Instead, send out a low-cost online newsletter filled with the latest info about your industry, upcoming promotions or discounts you’re featuring, the latest breakthroughs or products on the market and more. Remember, your newsletter should provide value to your customers so that when they receive it, they will read it, not delete it.
Optimized. When you optimize your website with carefully chosen keywords, you increase the volume and quality of traffic coming to your site via search engines. Of course, just like a brick and mortar store, once you get your customer through the front door, you exponentially increase the chance that they’ll convert to a paying customer. Optimizing your website is no minor task. It’s hard work, it’s on-going and if you contract the work out to a professional (which I highly recommend you do, because how much do you really know about algorithms?) it can be expensive. However, the payback can be substantial and well worth the investment.
Promotion—According to the Promotion Marketing Association Coupon Council, almost 80 percent of Americans use coupons. That means there are a whole lot of folks out there looking for a great deal. It’s up to you to give them an offer they can’t refuse. Promotions include everything from temporary discounts to contests to sweepstakes to give-away’s. Spend some time thinking about what you can afford to give away. By offering a promotion to your customers such as a free consultation, a discount or a rebate, you can potentially increase your customer base and your sales, while spending a minimal amount on the actual promotion itself.
Make sure your business gets enough attention by testing one of the methods mentioned above. By applying even one of these strategies to your own biz, you could be getting all the attention your heart (and business) desires.
Photo credit: Federico Stevanin, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=149
