It’s Small Business Week April 30-May 6. In my opinion, every week should be small business week since we employ almost 53% of Oklahomans.
Over the 18-year history of Anglin PR, we’ve worked with a lot of small businesses—hundreds. When it comes to marketing, we’ve noticed missed opportunities – things that bigger businesses have figured out along the way—that any small business can, and should, do now.
Capturing data on your customers. It sounds simple, but capturing data is one of the biggest missed opportunities. Start with potential customers – capturing the basics such as names, emails and other contact information. As you make a sale, collect more – their household income, where they live, if they have children in the home, what they do for a living, etc. Collecting psychographic information – why they are making a purchase, what need it will meet and if they compared you to competitors – can also be useful. Use the data to better understand your current customers and help find new potential customers and “look-alike,” or similar audiences, in your future marketing efforts.
Tying social media back to your physical location. Give customers more value and a reason to visit your small business by tying your social media to a call to action. For example, a kitchen store could offer cooking classes. A construction company could offer estimating workshops. Any retailer can offer a special for an in-store visit. Social media value is difficult to measure if your audiences never think to call you, visit your website, make an appointment or stop in your retail location. Developing a personal relationship is an advantage that small business can have over large business.
Making sure your website is working for you. A website is a 24/7 representation of your company. Large businesses often have a person assigned to manage the website. Small businesses, busy with day-to-day operations, rarely review the content on their websites or look at analytics -the data that tells you who comes to your site and what they do or look at. As a result, you don’t know what needs to be “fixed” or updated and you could be losing potential customers. Reviewing your website regularly can take as little as an hour a week. Look at the website from your customer’s perspective and by looking at your website’s analytics. The information will give you as much insight as the big business web marketer.
With today’s technology tools, small businesses can compete with big businesses to reach potential customers, develop more personal relationships and increase sales.
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