| SUCCESS TIPS |
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| MARKETING |
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| BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT |
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| EVENT MANAGEMENT |
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Top 10 Ways to Market Your Business |
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It is essential that your business is in the public eye. After all, you need customers! Customers need your services or products – it’s a mutual alliance for mutual benefit. Unless potential customers or clients know you exist, your business won’t last long. So, marketing is a necessity.
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Here’s FMI Marketing’s top 10 list of
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Contact five past customers or referral sources to thank them for their business and ask them to evaluate the quality of your service. Let them know they are the most important part of your research and development program. Listen to their suggestions!
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First impressions are the most important! Therefore have quality business cards, letterhead and sales literature. Even if you are small, you can give the impression that you are much bigger!
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Announce a new program, new products, new service, new personnel or new policies. So long as it is real and improves the quality and level of your service, this is news that customers, clients and the media will want to know about. Sometimes it is the picture, and not the story that help persuades the editor– so always have a quality picture.
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Attend and participate in networking opportunities. From business open-houses to workshops, conferences or exhibitions. Remember you can probably see more people in a networking event that you could in the office, making those calls, when half of the people are on ‘voicemail’.
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Set up alliances or partnership agreements with other organizations to enhance your name and branding that you probably wouldn’t achieve recognition on your own. I recommend you sponsor a local softball team, join with a radio station to sponsor a contest, or participate in a charity golf tournament. Partnerships can bring huge rewards!
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Offer a seminar, class or workshop. Local or trade media will often cover an interesting topic, and it’s a great way to make people aware of your services. Charge little or no admission, have great handouts and materials, and get a crowd together.
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Use direct mail. With so much mail being received it is important that your message doesn’t reach the trash can. Be smart and make your mail shot interesting, personal, and remind them of your special niche or unique services. Include a coupon or certificate. Be even smarter, and create a campaign of letters, so that your customers are eagerly waiting for the next communication.
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Form an agreement with your suppliers, colleagues or (even) your competitors to offer a "combo" package that neither of you could offer alone nor share the marketing expenses. Once this starts to go well, organize a user-group event or workshop and spread the costs.
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Complement your literature with an easy to follow web site that highlights your excellent products, services or solutions. Of course, you must make sure that you have good meta tags so that your company gets picked up on all the search engines.
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Exhibitions are good, but also expensive. Generally there is a conference that runs alongside the exhibition. Offer to be a guest speaker and then you gain the exposure for a fraction of the price!
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