Are you ready to boost your marketing strategy?

Effective marketing is a key ingredient in the success of any business. But unless you’re a major brand, with a huge marketing budget and a skilled team of marketing professionals at your disposal, you’re quite rightly very careful about what you spend your time and money on. So which ideas are worth their salt, and which aren’t worth the paper they’re written on?

Read on for 8 inspiring ideas that really work when it comes to marketing your small business and taking it to the next level. 

1. Update Your Website

Digital marketing has to be at the heart of any business’s marketing plan these days. Therefore, ensuring that your website looks new and innovative is crucial. Too many websites are built and then never updated. Whatever sector or profession you work in, it will constantly be changing, just as your customer’s expectations will be too. While nobody can be updating their site every five minutes or even every year, don’t let your online presence look dated.

2. Try Using a Chatbot

Chatbots are the new email. They are great for getting a conversation started with your visitors and they are much more likely to leave a message in a chat window than emailing you from your ‘Contact Us’ page.

3. Use an Email Autoresponder

Email marketing is a vital part of any business’s marketing strategy. Make sure that your emails provide real value to the recipients. Don’t try to sell all the time as this puts people off. If you gain their trust, you’ll find that extra sales happen organically.

4. Use Promotional Giveaways

Promotional giveaways are a well-known way to drum up business. You can use inexpensive items to get an email address and more expensive ones to get people to place an order. According to a recent survey conducted by the BPMA, 89% of customers can still recall the name of the brand which gave them a promotional product, even two years after receiving the item. For a great choice of promotional items, check out the homepage on this site. 

5. Use Social Media

If you’re not using social media, you need to start. If you have a product that you can use great images for, consider Instagram or Pinterest. If your product tells a story, set up a Facebook page. To keep people updated on all your latest news and offers, and for unbeatable social interaction, go with Twitter.

6. Start Advertising Online

Once you have got your social media sorted, you may want to start advertising online as well. Facebook advertising can be very cost-effective but do a course or two before you start; it’s not as easy as you may think.

7. Become a Journalist

If you have a local paper, you may be able to become a resident expert for them, depending on your business, of course. You can build your credibility and boost your profile this way, which will undoubtedly lead to increased brand awareness, and sales. 

8. Local Directories

Whether you have a website or not, you should have your business listed on as many local directories as possible. It will help bring leads into your website and people will trust your business more if it’s listed.

It’s Time To Boost Your Marketing Strategy

Almost all the above ideas require very little marketing spend or expertise. But all can bring a real return on investment, and are therefore worth incorporating into your marketing strategy, or at least researching further and seeing whether they could work for your business.