9 Tips to Promote Your Small Business

What are you doing to promote your small business? In an effort to provide your customers with the best offerings and experience, it’s easy to let promoting your business fall to the wayside. It might be time to refocus and refresh the ways you attract new customers and make a name for your business in the community.

There are many easy and affordable ways to successfully promote your small business without spending a lot of money. Keep reading to learn 9 tips that will grow your customer base and give your business a boost.

Build a professional website

In today’s world, the first action people take when they want to know something is to search for it online. The same thing happens with your business. And if no one can find your business online, many people will assume it doesn’t even exist. This is why it’s so important to build a professional, easy-to-navigate website that matches your brand.

A basic website should include:

• Your product or service offerings.
• How to contact you.
• Resources customers might need, like appointment booking links or payment portals.

Don’t be intimidated by the prospect of building and designing a website! There are many applications online that make it easy to create a professional website for your business. You might be surprised that, in many cases, you won’t even need to hire a web designer!

Make your website easy to find

Just because you build a website, doesn’t mean that people will know how to find it. If you promote your business well, chances are that people will go looking for your business. But, what about those times when people are searching the internet? Will your brand appear in those search results?

This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important. Many website creators give you simple tools to help ensure that you include some necessary SEO elements in your website. However, if you are in a competitive industry, you may need some help getting your website to appear ahead of the competition.

To do this, you may need to hire an SEO professional to assist you. Your other option would be to learn more about the subject. There are a number of online courses to teach you. However, if you are running a small business, it might be best to hire a professional if your business is not showing in the top results when you search for the product or service your business offers.

If your business has a physical location, you’ll want to create an account on Google Business. This allows you to enter specific information for Google to present to customers. This helps ensure that you appear on Google Maps and local searches for products or services that your business offers.

Additionally, you can always consider running ads for people who are searching for your products or services. Google Ads is a fairly simple tool to manage. Google even offers classes on how to use the tool. However, you can also hire a professional to manage the account for you. When you run ads, you can set a budget to ensure you don’t spend too much. Google can even limit the ads to people searching in your area.

Regularly post on social media

Posting content to social media sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn, can be a great way to grow awareness about your business. When you’re just starting to engage on social media, choose one site at first. Consider your customers - which social media site are they likely using?

Then, post content that would most appeal to your customers and best reflect your business and brand. Keep shareability in mind. What would your audience want to share with their own social media followers? Not everything you post has to be an obvious advertisement for your organization.

When posting to social media, consider sharing the following things:

• Helpful insights or tips related to your organization’s offerings
• Pictures of your offerings, special events or staff in action
• Informal videos or quick GIFs of you and your team
• Information about new or lesser-known product or service offerings

Your customers will love being able to find and connect with your business on social media. It’s a great way to make your business feel like part of your customers’ community.

Make it simple for customers to book an appointment with you

The easier you make booking an appointment, the easier promoting your business will become! If customers have to wait to call you during business hours and negotiate an appointment time with you over the phone, they might not do it at all. Instead, set up online appointment booking that allows customers to schedule an appointment at any time, on any device and from anywhere.

There are a number of online scheduling applications that allow you to set up your schedule and provide customers a link to choose the appointment themselves. Customers will love the flexibility of online scheduling and the ease with which they can book an appointment with you at their convenience.

Participate in local and community events

If your business operates locally, attending events virtually or in person where your target customers will likely be is a great way to network. It provides a way to meet fellow business owners and prospective customers while promoting your business in person.

You can find local events by searching sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or Meetup. If you can’t find any in your area, consider hosting your own event! After a few years of cancelled events and remote activities, people are excited to get back into the community and learn about their local businesses.

Invest in a CRM system

It’s important to build relationships with new customers, but it’s just as important to maintain your connection with existing customers. Keeping track of your customer base can help you provide personalized service, communicate quickly and gather data on your business. The best way to do this is by using a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Your CRM stores information about your leads, prospects and customers. You can use it to:

• Record customer interactions.
• Identify sales opportunities.
• Communicate with customers about new offerings, sales and information about your business.

A CRM is an efficient way to maintain records of both your customers’ contact information and their interactions with your business. It’s an invaluable resource to promote your business by allowing you to create pointed, personal communication with customers. This helps you nurture a relationship and can reduce customer churn.

Create automated email campaigns

An email campaign is a form of automated sales outreach. It is composed of a series of emails that get sent to your customers automatically and uses the contact information you’ve already collected from customers.

You can make a campaign for anything, such as reminding customers when to book an annual appointment, providing follow-up information or advertising your business’s offerings. There are no limits to the type of campaign you can create, which makes automated drip campaigns an easy, flexible and low-cost way to promote your business.

Use an online software like TimeTap to set up campaigns that automatically send on the date and time you wish. The best part — you can set all the emails up at once and forget about the campaign until you notice your customers growing in number!

By leveraging this easy-to-use feature, you can create personalized communication with customers delivered directly into their email inboxes with minimal time, effort or money spent.

Reward word of mouth

Reviews, referrals and word of mouth are your cheapest forms of promotion — but they can bring in the biggest gains for your business. If you consistently provide a great experience, your customers will be more inclined to recommend you to their friends and family, automatically increasing your customer base simply by doing good business.

Encourage existing customers to spread the word about your business by rewarding word of mouth. Offer a discount or small gift to any existing customer who refers a new customer to you. This way, everyone wins from word of mouth, and your business grows as a result!

Partner with other businesses

There are likely other businesses in your area that complement or align with your business offerings. A great way to promote your business is by finding existing customers that already match your ideal market. A great way to do this is to partner with non-competing businesses that are marketing to the same people as you are.

Find businesses whose offerings could potentially add value to your customers. Or work with other businesses that could help your customers with related tasks. This is a win-win way to promote your business — customers minimize their leg work when searching for products or services, and businesses like yours get the benefits of sharing a customer base with other businesses.

Whether you own an established small business or one that is just starting out, there are always new ways for you to reach customers. Promoting your business doesn’t require a huge budget or a lot of time — try these tips to get your business’s name out into the community. Small changes to the ways you promote your business can make a big difference!