Marketing a small business in 2011 - ten tips

I am going through the process of updating my own marketing plan (its ALWAYS much easier to be objective and create marketing strategies for other people!) and it has made me think about & question some of the things which I do routinely to promote my business.

So I’m going to put these down into a list - its by no means a top 10, must do action for every business, but I hope that reading this will give food for thought and encourage you do make conscious decisions to try something new to add to what you do already.

The important thing is to make sure you are consistent, use a few of these things together to give an integrated marketing approach and plan ahead to target the right audiences.

2011 is coming up on us very fast and November is traditionally a busy month in business - do you have an eye on what will happen to your revenue in the New Year? Now is the time to lay those foundations and get your marketing plan written now so that you can be ahead of your competition and hit the ground running after the festive period.

1. IDENTIFY your target audiences
2. UNDERSTAND what messages will work most effectively for them
3. attend some NETWORKING events to promote your business to the right audiences
4. create an OFFER which you can promote to your audiences
5. use ONLINE marketing tools: website, blogs, facebook, twitter, articles
6. use your EMAIL SIGNATURE to promote the main message you are communicating
7. arrange some FACE-TO-FACE meetings to explore future orders
8. think about what news your company has which would be interesting to send as PRESS RELEASES
9. find out if there are any opportunities to give PRESENTATIONS to groups
10. be CONSISTENT, communicate REGULARLY and be CLEAR about your story

If you are clear about what you are going to do, then it makes it much easier to follow through on your actions and create the momentum that you need to have a brilliant 2011.

We’ve only got 10 weeks of 2010 left, so make the most of it and PLAN AHEAD

Cheers!

Alison x

This entry was posted on 28/10/2010 at 01:48 am and is filed under Social Media, networking, Business, Marketing, Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.