Effective Small Business Marketing Does NOT Have To Break The Bank
In our tighter, more cut-throat marketplace, it is absolutely CRITICAL that you figure out highly effective methods of small business marketing for your business to continue attracting and keeping ideal customers.
Being a small business owner, you may be wondering how this is possible when you do not have the budget to afford big-time media advertising and expensive, long-term branding campaigns. Is it just me or does the world seem to be dominated by fast-moving visual images, giant billboards and two-page glossy spreads in magazines?
As a businessperson, how are you possibly suppose to compete with this relentless information blitz? My answer may startle you, so bear with me, because I STRONGLY suggest you…
“DON’T”
That’s right! I’m suggesting that you do NOT try to compete with this type of small business marketing or advertising AT ALL. Don’t even contemplate it because you’ll likely go broke trying to make even the smallest dent. Just close your door or hang up the phone to anyone trying to sell you “branding” or “image” advertising.
What Kind of Small Business Marketing
Should You Be Doing Instead?
Instead, what you want to do is beat the giant corporations at their own game simply by refusing to play in the same field. By using newsletters as the backbone of your Relationship Marketing efforts, you can leave blanket advertising to the big boys while you specialize in marketing to highly targeted individuals. While the corporate types or your uninformed competitors are hard at work trying to daze the masses with too much image advertising, you’re flying beneath the radar and using simplicity and sociability to increase your business – one customer at a time.
Welcomed and well received monthly newsletters works to develop relations because they provide an intimacy that blaring announcements and flickering screen images never will. They allow a customer to kick back and connect with your message on his or her own terms. They connect with your clients on an emotional level over time and at their pace – and they will appreciate the voice of a real person behind the newsletter.
Small Business Marketing 101: We all find it easier to relate to a product or service delivered by someone we feel we know, like and trust.
Newsletters make the customer feel as though he or she is still in control of what will happen during the buying experience. Customers don’t have to wait for the commercial to repeat itself or for that 1-800 number to flash on the screen again before they can find out more information about a product or service. If your newsletters are well written, they will easily engage your customer, continue to add value to your relationship with them and keep you and your business top of mind.
When your information is valuable or fills some kind of need, customers will also “work” for you as unpaid advertising agents by sharing your newsletter with theirs. This is one of the main reasons why monthly newsletters, targeted properly are a proven way to increase repeat and referral business for local businesses.
Some people feel that newsletters seem old-fashioned, but in an age of increasing stress, conflict and information overload the truth is they are one of the best forms of small business marketing if you want to connect with a customer in a competitive market.
If you’re not using newsletters, don’t quite understand the rules of effective Relationship Marketing or just want to learn more about this form of small business marketing download our free report “Insider Secrets To Effective Newsletter Marketing” so you can start reaping the rewards.
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July 27th, 2011 at 9:11 am
This was an eye opener. I was looking for a template to reactive old clients but realized like you said that a useful newsletter is WAY better. More fun to do and will be better received because of value.
July 29th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Absolutely Ray. And the best newsletters are the ones that stick around, actually get read, get past around and wind up on the back of the toilet
The bulk of the content can be loosely themed around your broader subject but should not focus on your particular niche because that is almost always way too boring to actually get read. Welcome and anticipated is the order of the day in effective newsletter (and relationship) marketing.