Small Business Marketing Question - Bang for buck?

G'day all,

As a small business, creating awareness and effectively reaching your market is the lifeblood of staying in business.

So I just wanted to ask those of you running small businesses;

1. what you have found to be the most successful avenues to reach your target market?
2. what have you found that's given the best bang for buck for your marketing dollar?
3. do you recommend any particular marketing strategies to reach a national audience?

Being that we have Australia wide coverage/capability, we have successfully used Facebook to generate sales nationally, however Facebook isn't the be all and end all of marketing avenues, especially if it falls out of favour en-mass.

We're just curious as to how others are doing it.


Cheers,
Matt

 

What kinda business do you have Matt? Obviously a service type business will differ from a widget selling business.

I think the best ideas are:
1. Do an awesome job with your existing clients. The referral / recommendation potential is huge and is a fairly low cost form of marketing. This is where most of our business comes from.

2. Do more research on exactly who and what your target market is and isn't. I think if you can reach the target more effectively, your marketing budget will work more efficiently too.

 

Hi Matt, I would not use generalities.

FB works great for some, sux for others.
Adwords, idem.
I know some who still do well with print ads.

You also have a ready target market being previous customers, again depending on the type of biz can be leveraged in different ways.

 

This is a great podcast to listen to for marketing tips.

Marketing Podcast. The Small Business Big Marketing Show with Tim Reid

 

I find going to them rather than waiting for them to come to you works best. I spend next to nothing on advertising but get heaps of work from FB and here just by being a part of a community. If you can make time to contribute to these sorts of things it can work really well - for fencing, maybe reno forums or similar?

 

I find offering exceptional service works for me ... it's not about the product but rather the rapport you build with your customers, which leads to loyalty. Add in trust and ethical behaviour.

I only use my FB page and very minimal, targeted database emails as my main sources of "advertising"

 

very wise words there

adding values, exceeding clients exceptions,