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What's are cost-effective ways for a small business to market their service
Best Answer
- Recommended by:
- Trevor Usken,
- Alex Grinyayev,
- Jason Garcia
In my honest opinion, the best cost-effective ways for a small biz to market their service(s) include:
1. Optimizing your website and related resources for organic search
2. Building a social media presence that's also been optimized
3. Publish a blog and get subscribers
4. Comment on other blogs and link to your website
5. Build a credibility campaign, link building and traffic boosting are extra bonuses, through www.ezinearticles.com.
6. Look into making marketing audio and video
7. Look into creating an App to promote yourself, content, etc.
8. Begin lead generation and list building by creating gated content, mainly white papers and eBook downloads
9. Consider initiating a tele-seminar or webinar circuit
10. Get involved and educated about Social Bookmarking. It can be a great way to generate free buzz!
Hope this helps,
Jennifer Gibbs
jennifercgibbs@yahoo.com
Sell discounted Gift cards to all local businesses (for emplyee prizes) and flyers dropped off at local offices. Offer free gift card to local groups and schools to give as prizes. Also revenue share selling cards with local radio stations.
Yours
George King
I'm with Christine and Dave, develop a strong social media strategy, advertise it the right way (make sure all restaurant visitors walk away being fully aware of your presence) and develop unique offerings that cater only to those who are following you. Through a company FB and Twitter page, you can encourage "rewards" for users recommending new followers, it's a very economical approach for promoting your business (just a time commitment, no fees for the service).
Obviously you need to utilize additional mediums to compliment the social media efforts but you can develop some really abstract concepts to peak interest.
A good e-blast program promoting daily/weekly/monthly specials are also a good avenue for the food industry where print-out coupons can be utilized, making it a very measurable medium to establish the success rates.
Good luck!
Kelly McKenzie
- Recommended by:
- Jason Garcia
Hi Jai,
Let me add a few thoughts to the great ideas you already received regarding inexpensive marketing tactics.
I am not certain who your target customers are but since you mentioned your chain sells casual fast food, I recommend you look at mobile applications, in addition to increasing your web presence with FB, Twitter, and a Google Listing.
1. Jump on the geolocation trend with Gowallla or Foursquare
2. Claim your listing on Citisearch, Yelp, Urban Spoon, JudysBook or any other rating service active in your local area. (Google yourself or your competitors to see where consumers are adding their ratings for your niche.) Design a program around encouraging your customers to add ratings to your listing. Link to ratings on your website.
3. Check into Groupon, Restaurant and the rating services above for inexpensive functionality to create online coupons and promotions. Coupons can now be added to Google Listings.
4. Check into Mobile Restaurant Ordering applications available for the IPod such as GrubHub or CityMint.
5. Consider having a custom mobile application developed for your business which can be as simple as a mobile version of your menu, location, coupons or can involve games and/or loyalty promotions. Can you give special treatment to mobile users?
6. Make sure your current website is readable on the major mobile platforms.
Restaurants are well positioned to take advantage of the mobile/social applications on the market. Best of luck!
Better late than never. While I have great respect for the people who attempted to answer this question, I couldn't disagree more vehemently with every single previous answer. For several reasons:
1. Not one answer comes from anyone who has any successful experience in developing restaurant marketing strategies.
2. They're the same 'lowest common denominator' tactics everyone else uses.
3. While they are, individually, good tactics, they do not have offer any context for aligning them with your existing marketing strategy. Social Media is not a strategy in and of itself. It is a tactic.
A few points of understanding.
1. The best online marketing tool you can utilize is a successful offline experience.
2. Contests, coupons and discount strategies do not work and are not sustainable.
3. Online strategies must be aligned with offline strategic business goals and values to be effective.
4. "Loyalty programs' are an oxymoron. They are referring to frequency schemes and they are the least effective drivers of real, organic loyalty. They are nothing more than a second tier discounting scheme.
5. Social media serves only to amplify your existing level of engagement. If you have poor service, you will only serve to amplify that level of poor service online.
6. Most (95%) of all restaurants and hotels are not ready for social media. They need to first develop better business models and cultures.
7. Social media is no 'silver bullet' for bad operations or poor marketing performance. If you are not having success in your dining room, you need to stay away from social media until you do.
8. Everything hinges on your ability to formally understand, know and analyze your guests and their social preferences and how your brand inserts itself into their lives.
9. Restaurants are not retail businesses and using retail strategies does not work.
10. Social media is much bigger than the "Big 3" - LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook.
11. Yelp, Groupon and Foursquare are the last platforms you want to get involved in.
Jeffrey Summers
Engage@SBL2011.com
Other than buying my book and utilizing those strategies, the best online method is to go to www.GetListed.org and list your business on Bing, Google, Yahoo and AltaVista. Be sure you maximize your listings by using all the options each offers. Then get testionials from current clients and begin collecting emails to announce specials, send coupons, etc...
Links:
http://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Your-Small-Business-Online/dp/1449588166/ref=...
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Related Activity
Hi Jai,
I am by no means a marketing expert, but I do have a couple of ideas from what I've picked up off of industry blogs. As George mentioned, gift cards are always a great option, and so are loyalty cards (e.g.: 5th coffee is free).
You mentioned that you wanted online options - consider Facebook and Twitter. Both are useful for just getting your presence known and they're the top 2 networking sites people use these days. Also, depending on how techy your local community is, you might want to consider getting on a geolocation service like FourSquare or Gowalla. Both of those services bolster company loyalty by making 'check-ins' a competition between users. You can reward customers with the most check-ins with free goods or services. Also, FourSquare just recently launched some SMB reporting tools so you can actually strategize your marketing efforts when using their service.
At the very least, make sure you have a Google Business listing. Most consider Google Business listings the online equivalent to having your phone number in the Yellow Pages. Yelp is another popular site where people review and search for services. Make sure to post a basic listing there too.
In terms of cost, I believe the basic services for all of the companies I mentioned are free. For Yelp & Google you can choose to pay more for better advertising and services, but the basic packages are free. FourSquare might have a similar pricing program, but I can't say for sure.
Hope these ideas help! Best of luck!