BUSINESS MONITOR
Ideas for marketing
successfully on a budget
Marketing and advertising can be expensive, can’t it? And even then there’s no guarantee of success. This month marketing expert PAUL CLAPHAM explores how you can market your business on a shoestring budget.
F
or each time Iʼve heard small business owners say ʻthat really workedʼ, Iʼve heard ʻI got very few enquiriesʼ rather more often. In business-to-business sales, that is particularly true: the potential customer may be genuinely interested but, for a host of good reasons, never gets round to calling you.
So what can you do for no cost or very low cost? I addressed this subject here some years ago but the world has turned and there are new and other ways to work the ʻno-lowʼ angle.
Do not stop advertising Let me start by stressing that if you entirely stop advertising (or donʼt start), it sends a negative message. How serious a business is this? Are they in financial difficulty? Are they small time? You need to keep your name in front of people, at least from time to time, whether thatʼs in the local media or magazines for business sectors where you specialise. Hereʼs a print media recommendation that will surprise you: parish magazines. Under that heading I include churches and chapels of all denominations and all
| 20 | August 2015
faiths. You could never have convinced my younger self (working in an advertising agency) that this is a successful advertising route for local businesses, but it is.
There are three reasons. First, a parish (or any other religious community) is definably local. Second, the faithful are often small business owners. Third – and the biggie – they support people who support their church. One heavyweight marketing manager in that congregation could feed you for years. Use your product. Iʼve visited a fair spread of printwear businesses over the years and I can promise that I have not been into one where everyone was wearing the product – smart, branded and maybe funky. Iʼm sure they exist, but, for the others, would you frequent a pub where all the staff were teetotal? Since it is a requirement for staff at many of your client businesses to wear your product that should surely apply in the printwear trade. It also makes huge sense. Visitors to your premises could see a range of product being modelled by human beings – better than any photograph.
Everybody has business cards and
nearly everybody could make them work far harder. They should be a marketing tool. Itʼs likely that this is the first thing you give a prospective buyer, so it should be selling for you.
Consider having a double-sized card that folds to standard size. It gives you space to tell your story in summary. Keep it simple and focus on key business areas. Such cards also look rather smart and distinctive – a former employer of mine used them and those cards were definitely given more attention than the standard variant.
Read the marketing press. Plenty of people in the sector just look at the job ads at the back! If on the other hand you fillet the mags, you can create a very valuable email, relevant to everyone. Clearly, youʼd like the items you include to focus on printwear and/or use of premium items, but it will be better read if you broaden the scope.
The content should be a series of short summaries, with references of where to find the full story, including date and page of publication. This might sound like a lot of work, and the first time you do it will be time consuming, but, trust me, youʼll speed up significantly.
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
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