Small Business Marketing Ideas

[divapromotions]

What's your best marketing tactic, and why did it work for you?

Mine has been strategic alliances. It has worked best for me because what I offer is a bit different, and the clients I work with would rather get a recommendation than anything else.

What about you?

[mike@engagemarketing]

As I market to other businesses, by far the most successful marketing tactic for me would be networking - whether it be at chamber of commerce meetings, internet forums such as this or by attending events and seminars where other business owners are present - it gives a chance to make a fantastic impression (especially in face-to-face networking).

Every business is different though - i have clients for which creating a word of mouth plan has been by far the most successful and others in which being found in google has lifted them to where they want to be.

[MissieK]

Networking, both online & offline, has worked best for me

Melissa

[Burgo]

Definately word of mouth, and from others in the industry (networking).

[LeelaCosgrove]

It's hard to say, because all of my marketing tactics are a pipeline feeding into my sales strategy ... so some things have been good but they've all worked together to feed into success ... so I don't like to say one has been more successful than the others, because it's a compound effect.

A list of stuff I do includes:

* cold calling
* warm calling
* events - my own and other people's
* networking
* products - free and paid
* direct mail

I did an interesting campaign a couple of years ago where I sent gift boxes to 10 of the people on the BRW Young Rich list that I was interested in working with ... It was an expensive exercise, but I got one big job out of it, so worth it!

[Tina]

So far (and I'm only a short way in) completely word of mouth. Happy people talk too!

[Jexley]

Networking, far and away the most valuable.

I found that taking that little bit of time to offer something of value to a colleague, or even competitor, won over some folks in the long run and my business has never been happier because of it.

Good luck.

[Lisa Murray - Biz Coach]

Networking - online and off - has been extremely valuable for me - both for finding clients and for meeting people who can offer strategic marketing alliances (eg writing for other people's blogs, speaking at other people's events)

I find its important to be proactive though - I'm systemising my networking followup at the moment and already seeing outstanding results.

cheers
Lisa

[rrjnsy89]

Originally Posted by Burgo

Definately word of mouth, and from others in the industry (networking).

That has definitely worked for me also, but I think it all depends on the type of business you run, some have a better shot at doing internet marketing and no gain from word of mouth.

[mike@engagemarketing]

My company has developed a blog post on Small Business Marketing Ideas if some of your are interested:

http://www.engagemarketing.com.au/blog/?p=3

Cheers,
Michael