How to Win at Internet Marketing

There are many ways to define marketing and most often not two people will define it the same. Internet marketing is a process whereby one creates, discusses, and then delivers services and products through the internet. The easiest way to think of it is when you expose a service or a product that is on offer. Many people claim that all that leads to sales is a part of the marketing process.

Online marketing includes internet marketing and website marketing and they all require one to handle a lot of strategic planning to be sure that the best results are achieved at the end of the day.

Affordable services

By doing marketing over the internet, it becomes very easy to boost your company’s value. The economy is unstable all over and conducting an online business could just be what you need.

Its importance

Internet marketing is now a very popular option and all businesses can make use of it regardless of size. The internet has changed how we all work and there is a lot of information that allows making the most informed decisions and communicating with people. You get to connect with more people over the internet than in person.

If you want to make it big in this area, then you need to take time and understand just how big the market has become and why it is so important to our business. When you have an appropriate campaign for advertising, you will get incredible exposure for the business.

Search engines are a normal part of life today and we use them to navigate and find information that is important to us. There are ways in which websites are ranked and this can be very beneficial to business. There is the keyword tool that allows you to find out how many people in the world, or locally, need your product or service.

The marketing process

For you to make it, you need to appreciate the entire process. When you think about it, you can recognize that it relates to the producer and the customer in equal measure. This is the holder of all the strategies and the tools that are usually applied so as to attract customers into getting the service or the product. When you succeed in this area, it means that the company will definitely gain some value through the purchases made by the consumers.

Services

You can access many services with this strategy. This is not a simple process, but involves lots of processes and techniques that work really well. The services include:

  • SEO services: this helps with the ranking of your website so that people can be able to see it more easily. Targeted keywords are used and this helps you get recognition.
  • Google places optimization: this allows businesses to list websites with the search engines and makes SEO for the businesses much easier.
  • Social media: social media keeps on growing and it is very popular in marketing. Millions are brought together by social sites. When you use business pages and fan pages, you will get viewership and people may even share details about your products and services if they are impressed.

 

Evaluating Your Brand Inside and Out

This article outlines the points you’ll need to evaluate your business operations and its perceived image or “branding” from the outside. Are you currently coming off as an industry leader? Are you extending yourself to even customers whose trust is hard to gain? Are you losing sales because you are unprepared when they are ready to purchase? Throughout this article, you’ll also learn the fastest and easiest fixes to any problems related to these points.

The Outside Perceived Image

It’s easy to get comfortable with your brand from the inside, but how do you think your brand is perceived from the outside? Can you ask a friend whose opinion you trust? How many social media accounts do you have and are they all well-maintained? Do they all look like they are family to one another in under the same brand? Do the images, colors, and fonts speak to your ideal client? These questions pinpoint the answers you need to find out what your current first impression is being left on your audience.

Beyond that, you need to ask yourself if you are providing your audience a “clear call to action”. Are you telling them what you have to offer and exactly how they can get it? Do you provide them a convenient way to purchase and/or contact you? You can inject a clear, but soft call to action in your brand’s banners by including a “do this” message somewhere in it; big or small, short or long. Make sure your profiles are entirely filled out for those who want to get to know you further, and that you provide them your contact information somewhere.

These days, if your social media is not kept up, are you even in business? Just like the saying goes “if a tree falls in the forest and no one was around to hear it, did it fall?”. If your social media accounts are quiet, your leads cannot hear you calling them. Consider researching how to create your own social media strategy and schedule your time accordingly. Professionals known as ‘Social Media Managers’ are a great addition to your team. Interview a few and you’ll be surprised what you learn! You may even get a free evaluation or strategy out of your inquiry!

The Inside Structure

They say that there are only 3 places businesses run into problems; they either do not have enough leads coming their way, they have a problem converting them to buyers, or they don’t have the inventory or manpower to support the rate of conversion. We already learned to evaluate our business’ perceived image and there are a number of ways to reach potential customers. My biggest concern with clients is their inside product and pricing structure. A customer comes to your site or social media accounts trying to qualify you as a place they’d like to purchase from and if they perceive your product and services packages as disorganized, you’ll probably never learn why your conversion rate is low. Many businesses don’t even have a structure, publicly or inside, so when a customer is ready to purchase now, time is of the essence, and if you don’t have pricing and a structured offer to send them quickly, you’ll lose the sale. Nothing kills sales faster than perceived disorganization and too much time passing!

The best pricing models offer 3, 4, or more main products or services at different levels of value. Having these varied levels nurtures your relationship with customers by allowing them to do business with you inexpensively as you gain their trust. This allows you to also cast a larger net, and capture customers at the level of spending they’re comfortable with. Companies today even offer a free product or service at the bottom of their “value ladder” for customers who are unwilling to do any business with companies they do not know. Having a structure like this also makes you extremely comfortable and efficient selling the product because this piece is already in place. Knowing your product’s cost and that there are multiple levels or services you can intuitively sell your customer will immediately and greatly increase your closing rates! Do some “market research” to uncover similar businesses’ pricing models.

Tips for Small Business Marketing

Most small business owners undermine their power when it comes to marketing since they believe that it takes a big amount of money to get more customers growing the business. However, there are simple ideas and tips which, when taken seriously and done in the right way with the right attitude can make a lot of difference. There is always something you can do to make a name for your business and maintain a large clientele.

Printing postcards
One of the simplest and cheapest tips of marketing your small business is the use of postcards. You can print a good precise message on a postcard after which you can mail it to your prospects. A postcard attracts attention and most people love small enticing messages so this idea will fetch great sales without spending too much.

Changing approaches
Since using one approach over and over can be boring to you and to your customers, it helps to change your approach every once in a while to keep it fun and effective. However, always ensure that you analyze each one of the approaches you intend to use to make sure that they will be advantageous to your business.

Buddy marketing
It does not help to be too selfish since one business can help another grow. In buddy marketing you can include another business’s leaflet together with your brochures or flyers based on a mutual agreement. The other business will also do the same for you meaning that you will manage to reach a large number of potential customers who can help you increase sales.

Phone marketing
Another way to market what you have to offer is by using your phone to put whatever message you have across. For instance, you can incorporate a special offer you could be running when answering the phone. By mentioning it briefly, you will compel the caller to ask more on the offer. This way, you will manage to spread the word to many people triggering interest hence the desire to check out your business and see what you have for them.

Other tips of great marketing include sending your customers a second offer soon after they have purchased from your business. This will make them come back and probably become loyal to you. You can also use newsletters and take advantage of seminars, but each one of these approaches should be analyzed beforehand to come up with the best strategy.

Real Estate Marketing: The Top Way Realtors Stick To Clients

To understand the absolute best way realtors have found to stick to clients you first have to understand the biggest trend in the current marketplace. A couple years ago the internet saw the official shift in searches from desktop to mobile. Officially, according to Google statistics and various amalgamated reports from Reuters and the other search engines, 2014 saw over 50% of search traffic coming from mobile devices. This was a huge first for the internet, that had obviously been desktop dominated throughout its relatively short history as a mainstream media.

That tells us a very important piece of information that marketers have begun to pounce on, that virtually everyone if not flat out everyone we know has a mobile phone.

I bet you are ahead of me.

How can realtors leverage a tool like a phone to market themselves?

Popups on apps? Gross.

Digital marketing? Good luck breaking through the noise.

Promo products that stick on the back of the phone itself? Now we’re talking.

Screen Cleaner Stickers are a promo product that has taken off at tradeshows and events. Realtors have begun to catch on and various promo product companies have seen a huge lift in those sales.

Benefits to screen cleaner stickers are impressive.

1. Uniqueness

Screen Cleaners that stick on to the back of your phone simply don’t leave your client’s memory. Upon first impressions with a screen cleaner people usually blow their minds on how cool the product is. This is by far the most important aspect of a successful handout.

2. Customizable

Promotional Screen Cleaners like cloths or the stick on cleaners are fully customizable. You can throw your remax (or whatever) info on the back as well as your contact information. These are great for creating a custom message that will set you apart even further than the competition.

3. Everywhere

When was the last time you left your phone at home and went out? Never? I bet if you did you thought about it way more than you thought you would. The point is, people on average look at their phones 150 times a day and definitely take them everywhere they go. Can you imagine how beneficial it would be if your information was flashing around every time someone brought their phone out?

So, Screen Cleaner Stickers are a huge opportunity for realtors to stay in front of the pack by leveraging the almighty and ubiquitous cell phone as a marketing and branding tool.

What Is ‘Connection Marketing’?

Expand With Connection Marketing

What you can do now to thrive in the new economy…

If this has caught your attention it’s because we’re discussing Connection Marketing.

What is Connection Marketing?

In this article, I’ll go into an overview of what Connection Marketing is, and what you can do NOW to thrive in these new economic times.

Connection Marketing: What is it?

Marketing:

My definition of ‘marketing’ is the communication between a business and a consumer. A ‘consumer’ is a potential customer; also know as a prospect. Any type of communication between the business and the consumer – whether it be through a video, through an ad, through a brochure – is what I consider ‘marketing’.

Connection:

‘Connection’ means that the exchanges that take place, between business and consumer, do so in a friendly and humane manner. The interaction is from one person to another; NOT from a corporation trying to jam something down your throat.

A quick back story

The industrial economy brought us the television. The T.V. allowed us to market our products and services to the masses. In order to reach the general population, companies needed to create average products and services.

This is in the traditional marketing sense. It’s the traditional way of doing things.

Back then, we used to buy things that we NEEDED. As long as a company created a product that filled a NEED, they’d be able to advertise it – traditionally – and make money. But what happened is they started making bland and regular products so they could sell as many as possible to the masses.

The internet has changed everything. It has made it possible to reach the most unique groups of people. The mass market has been dissolved – we no longer buy what we NEED, we buy what we WANT. And that means that businesses can now thrive by creating unique products, to unique segments of the population. This is where connection marketing comes in.

Since people buy what they WANT (they already have everything they NEED), we should ask ourselves what that is. We don’t need to create something super bland and uniform, and we don’t have to worry about selling a bazillion units to average people. All of a sudden you can make niche products; very unique products, to niche crowds.

Quick Recap:

For the past 100 years here’s how I’ve seen the promotion of a product or service – the ‘marketing’. For the past 100 years, it’s been:

Annoying: You ever watch a T.V. show, and every commercial timeout you see runs the same ad? Whether it be for Pizza Pops or Cadillac cars, they are very annoying and repetitive.

Repetitive: They hope it burns into your brain, so that when you see it, you feel compelled to purchase it.

Interruptive: When you’re looking for information you visit a blog. Within the first second you’re bombarded by pop-ups, asking for your e-mail address so they can send you something great. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for that, but give me a chance to read the headline!

Exaggerative: The best example I can use for this is when you go to a fast food restaurant. How good does that burger look when it’s up on the billboard, or on posters? Of course when you get it, it looks NOTHING like advertised…

Here’s how I see the next 100 years of promotion for a product or service – or the next 100 years of ‘marketing’:

Relevant: Because we’re selling unique products to unique people, all of a sudden we don’t have to advertise our stuff absolutely everywhere. Only those people who have shown an interest or may have looked at something like this in the past, will see our ads or marketing, therefore making it relevant to them.

Subtle: Imagine if you’re someone who loves books, but everywhere you look you see ads for sneakers… That not very subtle, and you’d notice that right away since it’s not very appealing to you.

Anticipated: This is especially true when it comes to e-mail correspondence. Most companies now collect e-mails (which is understandable). The problem is that you get the same 6 e-mails a day, containing promotion notices, sales, and early-bird specials whether you want them or not. Because these messages are not anticipated, it is the MAJOR factor that makes a person decide to ‘opt-out’. In the future, these anticipated messages (also being relevant) will see much better open rates. Also, a person only gets the information they agree to receive.

Honest: This may sound trivial, but a very important example is pricing an item at 49.99$. “Who are you kidding?” “Call it like it is!” You’ll never see two people at a party with the following exchange: “Nice shoes… how much did you pay?” “I paid 49.99$” Your marketing message should be from one person to another.

The good news is that it’s all looking up from here! Taking a look at the past 100 years and the next 100 years, you can see that it’s looking good.

The world is a different place… People want to connect.

That means:

NO MORE bureaucracy

NO MORE ridiculous policies

NO MORE exploitation from greedy corporations

Decisions based on ROI are the ways of old – No more greedy fat-cats, wearing suits, drinking scotch and smoking big cigars making decisions based on how much money they can squeeze from people.

Connection Marketing encourages better values; such as honesty and integrity.

We don’t have to engineer bland products to serve average people, nor should we cater to a general public anymore.

We can be TRANSPARENT. We can be OURSELVES.

I truly believe that we can be successful when we follow this etiquette.

Transitioning to Connection Marketing

You’re probably wondering: “How can I make the transition to connection marketing?… Will it work?”

Well, most aspects of connection marketing are very similar to those of traditional marketing…

You still have things like an online store or website, you still use landing pages to collect e-mails, you still offer products and services, and of course, you’re still making a profit!

You’re still in business; you still provide value for people and for that you get paid handsomely.

It’s the METHOD by which you carry yourself that’s different.

It’s the look, the feel, the layout of the online store… It’s the look, the feel, the offer of the landing page… It’s what you do with those e-mails… It’s the product or the service that you’re offering that’s different.

The 3 Pillars to Connection Marketing

CABBIT – An aspect of your offering is remarkable and worth talking about.

If you were driving down a country road and saw a cow in the field, you probably wouldn’t look twice. But imagine it was a PURPLE cow! (referencing Seth Godin’s incredible book titled Purple Cow)

You’d most likely stop, take pictures, upload them to social media, and call your friends and family to explain what you saw. That’s because a purple cow is remarkable and worth talking about. Whether your product already has a Cabbit, or whether it needs one, it’s something you want to lead-off with. What truly separates you from your competition?

CONNECTION – Opening the channel of communication with your prospects – creating a two-way dialogue.

This pertains to the e-mail sequences mostly. Rather than bombarding people with unrelated, unanticipated messages, you’re creating an open dialogue with consumers. Imagine that you want to upgrade, update, or create a new product. Now imagine being able to ask your fans what they like/dislike about the current version. No more guesswork! Plus, a person might be more inclined to purchase your new product knowing they had a say in its creation. Powerful, and not to be taken advantage of… It’s free research!

CONTRIBUTION – With our newfound success, we’re able to support worthwhile causes.

I believe we all have a need to contribute – amongst others. We all want to help others. We want to do great things together. What if you build contribution into your ticket price? What if you took a portion of profits from every sale and donated it to a certain charity. Some people would like to do business with you merely because they’d be helping others. You’re not JUST doing it as a clever ploy to sell more stuff, but you WANT to do it because you’re helping others – and it’s good KARMA.

I realize just may still have a few questions…

How do I know this really works?

Let me ask you this:

Are you tired of the way you’re being marketed to by other companies?

Are you tired of receiving irrelevant and unanticipated e-mails from companies?

Are you tired of being misled by fine-print and exaggerated claims?

These are traditional methods of marketing.

If you’re fed up, chances are that lots of others are too.

How do I know if this is a good investment?

The fact of the matter is that traditional marketing methods are working less and less – companies find themselves spending more advertising money than ever, to have the same effect they may have had in the past.

On a daily basis, we’re bombarded by 3000-7000 ads. We’ve grown so accustomed to them, we tune them out. Large corporations then resort to ‘ramping it up’. “We’ll just be louder than ever!” (Just look at how we now get ads in our inbox).

I believe it’s possible to reach MORE, while spending LESS. The key is Connection Marketing.

What I’m suggesting is that we stop marketing to EVERYONE though repetitive, average marketing and we instead start CONNECTING to unique markets – offering truly remarkable options.

How Does Marketing Bring Success To A Business?

A business cannot in any way, shape or form make a customer spend money, but they can provide the tools that include “the 4 P’s” to increase a products potential. The 4 P’s include place, product, price, and promotion.

To increase your products potential the 4 P’s should be analyzed and broken apart before they are put in the market. By applying place, product, promotion, and price, your product has a better chance for success.

Product

Product refers to an item that the consumer needs or wants and can include tangibles (goods) and tangible products (services and ideas). Marketing decisions that will be made concerning the products are the product’s design, features, and quality.

Promotion

Promotion goes hand in hand with advertising, PR, direct marketing and sales promotion. Promotion is essential when selling a product. It is the means of making your product and company go public. There are forms of media available to increase public awareness such as television, newspapers, and the internet. One of the most important perspectives of promoting is to make the customer think that they need your product. Promotion includes a message strategy (what should be communicated), media or channel (how to reach customers), and message consistency (how often).

Price

The price variable must be thought through from the manufacturer’s end to the final customer price. Distribution must also be considered, and if the product is to be sold in stores, the retailer’s mark-up will need to be considered. Other aspects, such as business competitor’s prices and payment plans for the commodity, are also included in the pricing variable. Price may also include what the customer might be willing to compromise to get your product. The marketing decisions in regards to price include price strategy, tactics, rebates for distributors, and payment terms such as credit and other methods for payments.

Place

Place which is also referred to as distribution is part of the marketing mix. Distribution is the method of making a product or service available for the customer or business that needs the product. There also needs to be a plan of action in place in order to see what approach is best to distribute the product. There are 3 approaches to distribution which include mass, selective and exclusive distribution. Marketing may also include motivational channels which are offers such as special deals, premiums, and allowances for product display.

Graceful, Eloquent Marketing Strategies for Small Business Owners

Speaking to a crowd doesn’t have to mean marketing your business, to get results. There are many ways to let the crowd know what you really do, without actually telling them.

Let’s review a few of these options and how they can happen gracefully, eloquently, and without actually mentioning your services…

Review the Opportunities –

Specifically I was asked to introduce a group of people who would be speaking, individually to the podium. I was by way of title, the emcee for the speaking portion of the event. Mentioning myself during that process would have been inappropriate, I was supposed to be talking about them.

Each person had high-level ambitions, qualities, and attributes that I’ve used as keywords, or even names of various business interests of my own. Significantly mentioning those keyword phrases in their introduction left the phrase on the minds of those who heard my introduction. For instance, when introducing a local author, I said, “This ace writer has a top shelf publication named Brute Marketing Force, reviewing his own expert marketing solutions for online business owners.” And then I offered his name.

Did anyone else at the meeting grasp that I had used four of my own key phrases in the introduction? Probably not. Will they search for those keyword phrases if they search for him? Probably. Will they find him? Most likely, they will, because I went home and wrote reviews of his book, referencing specific areas of his writings, on each of the websites.

Frequency of Use –

I didn’t need to use these same phrases with every person speaking at the event, but the more often I could reuse keyword phrases, the more likely the crowd would remember them. So, each time I had the opportunity to use a keyword phrase when introducing a different speaker for the morning, I did.

I referred to one author as a writer for profit, another as a freelance marketing author, another as a top shelf marketing author, and yet anther as an expert solutions author. The key is not to over use your words as you speak, but rather to focus on key elements of your keyword phrases to reiterate until your message is out.

Significant Results –

I kept track over the next several weeks of how many people contacted me, asking about various specific topics, or mentioned the event. The dynamic from the event was that I had been introduced at the event as a business owner, but nobody had said what I did. More significantly, my name was horribly mispronounced, so most people would never have been able to find me by my own name.

15 Roads Leading to the City of Inbound Marketing

How do you attract visitors to discover you? What strategies and best practices do you put into place to convert those visitors into potential customers? Using aesthetics to identify, educate and offer solutions to your visitor’s problem is how you build up your trustworthiness. Using unambiguous representations for contextualizing relevant content on your inbound marketing roadmap indicates how you will communicate your message effectively.

Brand champions respond to change, test and use data to make improvements, collaborate and successfully duplicate without delay. Here are 15 free traffic sources to apply to your inbound marketing campaigns:

1. Media-News

Includes activity from press releases, radio, TV, interviews and PR.

2. SEO:

Attracts more visitors from search engines based on keyword optimization and content relevant to your business.

3. Email Marketing:

Communiqué that is created, tracked and sent to a group of recipients to boost your customer retention.

4. Blogs

Attracts visitors with educational content regarding your industry by using one topic per blog post.

5. White Papers and Research

Marketers create in-depth, persuasive and authoritative reports to educate their audience on a specific topic, that presents a problem, provides a solution and promotes a specialized methodology.

6. Social Networks

Online platforms that build social relations with other people who share similar, personal commonalities (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.)

7. Infographics

Visual information containing eye-catching images/graphics and concise text that is easily digestible and shareable.

8. Webinars:

Seminars or live presentations conducted over the Internet.

9. Videos:

Recording, production or broadcasting moving visual images that are made on videotape or digitally.

10. Forums and Comment Marketing

Marketing methods that are meeting places or mediums where ideas or views on a particular topic can be exchanged. These forms of internet and inbound marketing allow influencers to make comments on blogs, articles, etc.

11. Q&A/FAQ’s

Questions and Answers or Frequently Asked Questions are a list of commonly asked questions with accompanying answers that pertain to a specific topic.

12. Podcasting

Digital recordings of broadcasts made available for users to download to a mobile device or computer.

13. Direct and Referring Links

Traffic that is referred by or directed from other websites such as emails, blogs, social media or other partner sites.

14. Doc Sharing

Write, collaborate and share documents with mass distribution. Services such as Dropbox, Google Docs, You Send It or ShareFile allows links to be downloaded that are generated from uploaded files. These services have different storage capacities, apps, and other functions to make files easy o distribute.

15. Word of Mouth

This type of marketing is the process of passing or sharing information from one person to the next via oral communication. WOM or Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) is an oral review about a business or organization, whether good or bad, that people discuss based on their experience and opinions. Customer satisfaction could boost the success of a business or dissatisfaction can damage its reputation miserably if these word of mouth discussions are unfavorable.

Important Things To Know About Fitness Marketing

Healthy living is a necessity for all of us. But there are factors that are constantly making this impossible to carry on. We have to sustain on unhealthy atmosphere, psychological stress and not so healthy foods. Thus the craze for getting our fitness standards up to mark is rising. The fitness centers and gyms are gaining popularity, and as an owner of such brand it is our responsibility to create a place and promote it effectively to take care of the massive problem related to health and figures. To gain that leading edge we need to keep ourselves updated with the latest trends and fitness regime. A few of the factors that affect these are as follows.

1. The first point that should be taken care of is the marketing of the brand. Using pamphlets, offering free perks and incentives, free trial and social media promotion can actually make your brand quite famous. Using technology such as YouTube and Instagram can have a huge positive impact on your business. This tends to bring a lot of recognition and can be helpful in displaying the full potential of your fitness center. You can also offer to organize contests and seminars on fitness by roping in some of the well known fitness once in a while that is definite to grow your brand reputation.

2. Always display the equipments or product you use in your place. It provides a lot of information about the type of fitness goal you are trying to provide. The brand recognition and brand endorsements too help your customers to get a better understanding of the routine they want to expose themselves to.

3. Always make it a point to select the target audience. That must include a proper idea about the number of people joining, their age group, gender, and even their working out style. They can be overweight or too underweight. Some could be a pro, while others could be starting their first day at your place. Arrange proper trainer and make sure every need is addressed to. Try to make the sessions as interactive as you can. It will help you to create a sense of personal care for your fitness center.

4. Despite making best efforts you are bound to have some people who won’t be satisfied with the whole experience. Make it a point to listen to their grievances and try to implement their views if possible. Encourage the other joiners to have a positive approach and ask them for a good review. Remember, one negative comment can ruin your reputation than a hundred positive comments. Give your justification as to what constraints you have that lead to their dissatisfaction and assure them to improve the service. Also, keep reviewing your equipments as well as trainers to tackle any genuine issue that may crop up.

Local Marketing Efforts That Will Gain You Strong Foothold In Your Community

If you are a small business looking for ways to trounce your biggest competitors in the industry, it would be a big idea to focus first on dominating the local market. The local strategy does not mean that you do not have big dreams for your business, but it is rather a plan to gain that strong foothold to the people closest to you before spreading your wings to the rest of the world.

Businesses that have a strong presence and good reputation in their localities have better chances of easily penetrating other areas. A local marketing plan will therefore always get you great rewards as long as you know how to best approach it. Below are some of the ways you can localize marketing efforts to find strong grounding and foundation right at home before exploring other markets.

1. Enhance Google local profile

Google is the most popular search engine and using the local tab you can ensure your business pops up in the searches relevant to your location. The search engine makes it very easy for businesses to verify local listings for their companies and from there you can improve your business profile so as to attract new customers who find you from the local listings. You can improve rankings by adding photos, videos and real time news whenever possible.

2. Bring local media on board

When it comes to marketing your business locally, you cannot do much alone. Considering that local radio stations, TVs, newspapers and local blogs are ever looking for some good content, consider sharing your knowledge in line with your business to reach out to your target markets. Landing interviews with the local media can go a long way in letting customers know that you exist and the kind of products or services you have to offer them. Valuable content will not only gain you exposure but will also set you apart as an expert among listeners, viewers and readers and this is good for your business any day.

3. Partner with other local businesses

Business alliances can be tricky, especially with competitors, but establishing them with local small businesses can gain you the kind of exposure you need. Remember that these businesses interact regularly with the same target audiences you are targeting. When you get into alliances you can promote each other’s business in the respective storefronts. You can create referral programs to reward every customer refer from the local businesses. You can also consider running joint promotions and events with other businesses.

4. Create a strong online presence

A huge number of people use the net to locate local businesses and you want to ensure that you can easily be found. Avail your business information on the relevant online yellow pages and list the business on the county business website and other listings. When thinking online presence you really cannot forget social media platforms. Make proper use of every online resource open to you to gain market base for your business and you will grow.