How to Advertise Locally Without a Budget

January 14, 2009 By 1 Comment

One of our readers, Maria, asked a question on the Contact Us page of the site. Her question was:

“I am trying to figure out the best way to advertise my short term rental and don’t know how to get the word out. Any ideas?”

I assume that Maria doesn’t have a lot of money to advertise that her property is available and wants to do it herself instead of listing with a Realtor. Given today’s economy, the market is probably flooded with other similar properties in the area all asking for the same price or less.

You may have the same issue with your business or product, tons of competition and little to no money for advertising. Well, it’s time to get creative and start implementing some Guerrilla Marketing tactics. Hopefully you have a little time on your hands or can re-prioritize to find some.

I’ll start with an obvious one for real estate but this works for selling products and professional services as well. Try a posting on Craigslist.com for FREE. First start by looking through different areas, maybe not just your local area, and find compelling headline ideas. Spend time on figuring out what will be most enticing in your headline. Adverbs like new, modern, renovated, exclusive, etc. may get you some attention and encourage people to click on your ad and not just skip by it. Also try to include flattering pictures. If you aren’t good with photography, ask a friend or family member to help out. Don’t include dark photos and take time to arrange your property or product in an organized and professional manner. The key to Craigslist is monitoring it on a daily basis. If many people are posting regularly it will fill up and your ad will move to the second or third page and go unseen. You must repost your ad so it stays on the front page and visible.

Unfortunately sometimes there’s just too much competition on Craigslist or not enough traffic to really promote your place, business or product. So it’s time to get creative. Consider creating a Flyer, nothing fancy just something clean with an interesting headline and maybe a photo or two. Try posting these photos in your local area, on phone poles, at a church, a local retailer, grocery store, recreation center, etc. Get creative and you should have some luck.

Here’s a great blog post from Chris Brogan, talking about a small business that needs to promote their business locally. Read through the comments there’s a lot of great ideas there.
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/can-social-media-save-a-local-business/#comments

If you have any other ideas for Maria or our other visitors please share them below in the comments section.

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Filed Under: Guerrilla Marketing, Marketing & PR Strategies Tagged With: , ,

Understanding Marketing is the Way To Success

January 6, 2009 By 1 Comment

During these rough times when everyone needs to cut back on budgets it may be hard to keep spending on Marketing. It’s probably even harder if you don’t really understand how your marketing efforts should go and what kind of results to expect. Do you even know if your marketing worked last time, are you tracking it?

We want to make it easier for you to understand marketing and all the different tactics involved. So we are sharing several tips on “how to” do it yourself here on this site. This way you can understand marketing and do it yourself to save a little money. Marketing doesn’t have to be complicated but it does need to be ongoing. Marketing isn’t something you can do once and then get tons of results. It’s something that you need to keep going with and adding to. One of the biggest mistakes I see small businesses make is by trying some marketing once or for a month then stopping for months. Check out this great story about people’s habits and advertising’s effects.

Instead of waiting for the sales reps from the Yellow Pages, the radio, the newspaper come after you, you need to start this year fresh with a plan. I know already you are thinking I don’t have time for this but it is super important to put a marketing plan in place every year. It doesn’t need to be super complicated, it can be a simple list with some budget numbers attached. You can add to it each month when you start seeing or not seeing any results. This is called tracking or measurement. It is critical that you track the results of your marketing. If you are considering signing up for any type of marketing with a media (radio, TV, Newspaper, etc.) rep, make sure to ask how will we track the results. Yes WE. They are selling you a product (the ad) and you have every reason to see that it is working. Most likely they have been doing this for a while and can help you with tracking suggestions.

You will see that with traditional marketing like radio, TV, newspaper ads, Yellow Page ads, it can be hard to track or measure the success. There are things that can be done in ads, like saying “mention this ad” or “bring in this coupon.” However this means that the responsibility of tracking your marketing has been pushed off on your customers. Is that really their responsibility? Can you trust them with that responsibility? Probably not. Instead you and your employees need to take on this responsibility. When a potential new customer calls or emails you and all employees need to ask “how did you hear about us.” Create a simple form to be filled out for new customers – name, phone, email, how they heard about us. If you have a store or restaurant, ask when the sale is being made or when the order is being taken. Reward an employee for tracking where the most customers came from – your newspaper ad, yellow pages, Google, etc.

Online marketing, like emails, website forms, search engine marketing can be a little easier to track because they provide an electronic trail of where that customer came from. Make sure your website has a form and you can see the stats of who is filling it out every month. If your website designer can’t provide that to you, it’s time to find a new designer. If you sell things online, make sure each sale can be tracked back to a source. Did they come from Google, an email, LinkedIn, etc. It may cost extra to have this functionality added to your site but it will be worth knowing where the sales are coming from, not just the window-shoppers.

In case your still not convinced to track and measure your marketing think about this. If you loaned someone $5000 would you want to know when they repaid you or would you not stay on top of that? Well if you pay $5000 for marketing, it should be tracked. You need to know if you are getting your moneys worth or if you’re just wasting money and time. Different tactics work for different businesses in different areas. You need to know your ROI!

ROI is return on investment. Did the marketing you spent $500 on bring you sales of $0, $500, $1000 or $20,000. This is something you should track so you can repeat it, tweak it or stop it depending on your results. If you results were amazing, go ahead and repeat. If you broke even or just did a little better you may want to tweak your message or creative look and try again. If it didn’t bring anything back at all you have a hard choice to make. Is this something that people need to see over and over again to really work AND is this something I can afford to keep trying.

If you are trying to run your business and trying to do marketing it can be overwhelming but you have to stick with it. Check out some of our other articles to help you out and get you motivated.

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Small Business Marketing Better Online or Offline?

December 31, 2008 By 3 Comments

As a follow up to the earlier blog post about 2009 New Year’s Resolutions, have you given any thought as to whether your 2009 marketing efforts should be based on tactics used via the Internet (Online), or tactics used without the Internet (Offline)?

Every small business should have a Web site. No discussion on that one. Even seniors in their 70s and 80s are using the Internet and have been growing more comfortable with “googling” something. But as far as using the Internet for marketing purposes, you may want to think twice about the best way to truly engage with your target customer.

It all boils down to truly knowing who your customer is. If your customer is using the Internet throughout the day for business and pleasure (like teens and most people under the age of 60), then yes, you should have a heavy dose of Online marketing in your bag of tools. Good examples include:

  • Emails
  • Landing pages
  • Internet promotions/rewards on your Web site
  • Social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, et al).

But if your customer uses the Internet sparingly, you may want to think of other ways to market to them. good examples of Offline marketing include:

  • Direct mail
  • In-store promotions
  • Guerrilla marketing
  • Event marketing & sponsorships
  • Telemarketing

Some small businesses will want to use a good mix of both Online AND Offline marketing tactics. As you continue to build your new marketing plan for 2009, place a lot of focus on truly understanding your customer. Who they are, how they spend their leisure time, where they get their information and how they are influenced are all key issues to deal with. Understanding your customer will go a long way in understanding which type of marketing that will reach them, ultimately saving you lots of time and money.

Do you know who your customer is? Leave a comment and tell us if you will be doing your marketing online, offline or both in 2009.

Filed Under: Blogs/Web Sites, Customer Loyalty, Marketing & PR Strategies Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

2009 New Year’s Resolutions for Small Biz

December 27, 2008 By 1 Comment

There’s no point in writing a recap of what happened to the economy and the landscape for small business in 2008. Open up any newspaper, click on any Internet news site, or for that matter, have a conversation with the person next to you. By now, it’s old news. And like the more than two million people that lost their job in 2008, we’re all happy to leave that year in the dust.

Aside from looking at the calendar and realizing it’s the here and now, it’s time to start focusing on 2009. What will the new year bring for the economy, small businesses in general and the continuously evolving societal impact the Internet has on business and industry in every category. At this point, one must think there’s no way to go but up, right? Although it’s scary to think, sure, things could get worse. But let’s think about the positives for a second (or, hopefully longer). And if you are one of the people that unfortunately lost a job in 2008, it’s time to put some serious thought to that burning desire you’ve always had about starting your own company, rather than go back to the corporate ranks.

One Presidential administration will be leaving soon, and another will be entering. Whether you voted for him or not, and whether or not you think he will bring good things to the economy, Barack Obama has a plan. And combined with all the financial rescue steps we’ve taken in the last 120 days to thaw out the credit markets, I’m fairly certain 2009 will be the year of the bottom. When you think about just how bad this economy has gotten, especially for the small business owner, the bottom is a much-welcomed phase for this economic cycle since we’re that much closer to a rebound. To be fair, it won’t happen overnight. But hitting bottom is better than the free fall and panic 2008 felt like.

The number one resolution you should be making as a small business owner is a willingness to make some tough decisions about your business. If you’ve been careless about your balance sheet or if you’ve expanded into areas you have no business being in, it’s time to take a good, hard look at your business and make the necessary cuts and adjustments so you can position yourself to come out of the “economic bottom” as healthy as possible.

Do some soul-searching to find exactly who and what your brand is. Think long and hard about why your ice cream shop is different than the ice cream shop down the street, for example. The answer to this question will be the foundation for positioning your turn-around in this economic cycle.

Now that you have a refreshed outlook on your brand, it’s time to get to work on telling your customers again about who you are, and the value you bring to their lives – even in this horrible economy. The truth is, people are still buying the things they need. But we’re not all robots. We’re buying things we want as well. Determine if you fall into the needs or wants category and build your marketing messages around this. Marketing’s job is to tell people about who you are and what you sell, and also to get them excited and change their buying behavior. But marketing messages are different for needs vs. wants, so it’s very important to distinguish between the two.

In the coming days, check back to get tips on how to refocus and rebuild your marketing plan for 2009.

Does your business sell a product/service that falls into the needs or wants category? Tell us about it here.

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What Do You Want To Know?

December 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment

We are here to help you with all of your marketing and public relations questions. We know how intimidating it can be to want to start doing marketing but not know how to get started. Marketing, PR, social networking, email marketing, direct mail, newsletters, customer loyalty programs, Web sites, blogs – these are all things you should be doing. But you’re a business person – not necessarily a marketing person.

Drop us a line at info@understandingmarketing.com, and let us know specifically if there is something you have a question about.

Filed Under: Marketing & PR Strategies Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Obtaining Capital for Small Biz

December 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Having access to capital and funding is paramount to the lifeblood and success of any small business owner’s survival. With it, the sky’s the limit for putting in place all those great growth plans. Without it, your engine chokes from running out of gasoline. Sometimes, it’s that simple.

More importantly, you may need access to capital and funding for some neat marketing plans you have for your small business. You may want to develop a blog, Web site, landing page, or even an email campaign to tie everything together. In any case, although it’s possible to successfully develop and implement a solid and effective marketing plan on a shoestring budget, you still need to have access to some form of funding.

To say we are in a credit crunch would be the understatement of the century. So here’s some good news for you. We are finally seeing some signs that the $700 billion bailout plan is trickling down to banks that are planning on lending to businesses just like you.

As of the beginning of December, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) had received more than 1,200 applications from small regional and community banks wanting a piece of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). What this means is that the Bailout money is going to more than just Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan.

So keep making plans to do all kinds of marketing and PR. And keep trying to get those funds since the big Bailout money is on its way. Have you had a difficult time getting access to capital? Leave us a comment and tell all about it.

Filed Under: Marketing & PR Strategies Tagged With: , , , ,
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