Hi, I’m Bruce Naylor, your frugal tech.
Not all of my videos are technology related. Sometimes I like to share and passed along some great business tips for those of you who are entrepreneurs or dreaming of having a small business or have a business to yourselves or maybe something you want to share with the boss at work.
And I came across a nice little article written by Kathy Yakal. This was 17 cheap or free marketing ideas for your business and I think some of those are pretty good tips so here we go.
Number one, increase visibility in your community, so you join local organizations you know like the Chamber of Commerce and increase your business networking opportunities. I think that is commonsense maybe even do some volunteer works in your community.
Number two, participate in online marketing groups such as Twitter and other networking sites. I think that’s a good idea. I highly recommend that to everybody although Twitters is a little bit more than just a craze in my opinion.
The next is participate or submit information to blogs. Got to admit the blogging does indeed work. Now if you’re expecting to get rich from blogging or get lost in business from your blog maybe not but make sure the secret is giving people information they can use and updating that blog in regular manner. That’s the big things with blogs.
The next tip is to reward existing costumers. So offer an incentive for your existing costumers to come back and do some business with you, maybe send them email or letter or something like that.
The next tip is to get your costumers to bring in new costumers, so in a center for a referral program and that’s I think a really good idea. You know sometimes you forget when you’re closing a sale or doing a piece of business to ask that person if they would refer someday to you. It's just good business practice.
The next step is browse up your website. Go back and look at your website again and again maybe you’ve got a fresh pair of eyes to look at. If your site is not attractive, if it’s stay on, you know it’s not going to attract a whole lot of people. So make sure you got a nice, fresh, vibrant website loaded with good information, knows, it’s updated or that sort of thing.
Next tip is providing free helpful information to your client or costumers. You know, so content should be related to your business type and it should include hints, tips, tricks that sort of things we’ve have used. Again, that that costumer can feel good about.
The next step is offer none competing businesses maybe a link exchange. Okay, you know maybe on a lawn and garden business and you know maybe you do driveways with that sort of thing. That would be a natural thing. You link to me and I will link to you kind of keep everything related but not a direct competitor.
The next tip is to use downtime for marketing. When times really do get slow, keep your employees busy, keep yourself and employees by contacting or reaching out to costumers. Maybe do email marketing campaigns or letter campaign that sort of thing but try to do more an individual basis rather than a mass email type of thing.
The next step is to get active in your online community. So encourage employees to do the same. You know don’t spam discussion groups or something like that but don’t be afraid to use signature lines in your emails and so forth with links to your website. So just establish some common sense rules when it comes to that sort of thing.
And the next tip and I think is a very good one is check out your supplier’s websites and add links on your site that would be informative and helpful to people. So many corporate sites have things like constructional videos and webbing or that sort of thing that your costumer may find his fault even reinforce their idea that they need your progress or reason take advantage of it.
We talked about blogs but make sure you launch a blog on your site and update it daily nothing reads I don’t really care like a blog was just don’t get very regular post to it. I will tell you what sometimes I’m bad about that. I get busy doing other things and then regularly updating the blog but you know what I resolved here and now to make at least one post entry a day to my blog and I’m going to do it, I will really try.
Use Facebook, use Twitter maybe having a Facebook page won't bring new business but it certainly keeps costumer asking why you don’t have one and it’s really not very difficult to do. Your Twitter is a young technology and people kind to try scramble or figure out how to use this thing efficiently. But use and implement it in a marketing strategy, think of it as a micro blog.
And the last piece of advice and the whole reason I really made this video is to never, ever, ever, ever give up. Okay, don’t ever surrender. Getting new costumers, converting potential costumers can seem like an ongoing uphill battle. We’re dealing in probably the worst economic crisis since the great depression. It’s no joke. A lot of business is hurting a lot of people out there right now.
But you know what? There is also opportunity out there to actually grow your business if you do it smart. And maybe a little luck as well, a call and meeting together of your brain trust, your employees now maybe get some pizzas, kick ideas around, be open, be open to new ideas. Listen, sometimes it’s time to change the math. In other words that the cause of status quo exceeds the cost of change it's time to change the math.
This is some business tips I think are useful. I wanted to share this with you. I love to hear your comments and opinions. Visit us at www.frugalbrothers.com. Remember, if it's within your shot, you’re not making any money or saving money, get it out there. I’ll talk to you later.
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