When it comes to marketing your business, there are so many different options available. Many are tried and tested methods that are great when it comes to promoting and creating awareness for your business. Others are more directed to increasing your revenue and generating more income.
In order to really stand out amongst your competitors, you need to have a marketing campaign that is something different and unique. It’s important that you take a step back, and think outside the box. What can you do differently, or how can you add your own unique twist onto an already successful marketing idea.
In this article we will take a look at some creative marketing ideas that can give your business a huge boost, and help you create awareness of your brand, generate more sales and revenue and establish your business as an authority in the market that you are serving.
Advertising your business
The classic marketing strategy for most businesses is based on advertising. You can run many different types of advertising campaigns from radio and television, through to billboards and handing out flyers. But how can you come up with an advertising campaign that is different to what so many of your competitors are already doing?
The first thing is to establish how your competition is advertising. You’ll not only want to do the same as them, but also take things to the next level. If you see that your rivals are doing a lot of advertising in local publications, then maybe you can start advertising on local radio. If they are handing out flyers outside their store, maybe consider hiring someone dressed up in a costume with a sandwich board over their shoulders handing out your flyers.
If you are a large enough business, you could advertise on local billboards and really come up with something creative and unique. Instead of a simple printed billboard advertisement, why not jazz it up and create something that is going to really grab people’s attention.
One idea would be to use neon lights on the billboard. There are a number of quality providers of neon light signs and products such as Neon Mama, and an advertisement using neon is certainly going to be something that a lot of people will notice and talk about.
Be active online
It’s important that your business has a website, and that you are also active on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Social media is a great way to keep in contact with people who are interested in your business, or who may already be existing customers.
Your website and social media accounts are a great way to promote your business and keep people up to date with what is happening in the industry. This will help to build your authority and expertise in the market in which you operate. By providing people with helpful and useful information, you can become the go-to person when it comes to your industry.
Many businesses simply set up social media profiles and do nothing with them. As a customer, if you visited one business profile and saw that nothing has been added to it since 2014, you aren’t going to have the best first impression of that business. But if you can see that the profile is one that is constantly being managed with lots of helpful information being added frequently, you are going to be a lot more positive about that company.
Run an online competition
If you have a large enough following on social media, why not run an online competition? Instead of running a simple prize draw where all customers are given a ticket with a chance to win, you could start an online prize draw instead.
There are many online systems you can use whereby people are rewarded with an entry into your draw with each piece of your content they share on Facebook, or how many of their friends they refer. As well as giving people the chance to win, you are also getting a lot of promotion on social media by people entering your prize draw.
Online competitions like this are a very affordable way to create a lot of buzz on social media, and a chance to get your brand noticed by a lot of potential customers.
Consider using Augmented Reality
If you really want to do something to make your business stand out against your competition, take a look at what you can do with Augmented Reality.
If you have a business card, catalog or print flyers for your business, why not get an AR app developed that can accompany these. There are a number of AR developers that you can connect with, who can provide you with a range of marketing solutions for your business.
Through the use of image recognition, you can bring your printed matter to life. Instead of a plain boring business card, you can have one that comes to life and features video, text and links to your website or social media.
Instead of flyers with basic images of your products, you can provide people with a full experience of what the product or service is about, and all other types of information that you wouldn’t be able to include on a small printed brochure.
They say that video is the best way to convey information about a service or product, and with augmented reality, you can include a unique video with all of your printed materials.
Set up a digital loyalty program
Rewarding existing customers is a great way to keep them coming back to you. The best way to do this is with a loyalty program. The days where you’d need to stamp paper cards for your customers to collect points are long gone. Now you can do everything digitally, which is very important, especially in the post Covid-19 world that we find ourselves living in.
You can run a range of different digital loyalty programs, from one which simply offers your members a straight 10% discount each time they make a purchase, to one where they collect points by shopping with you or referring friends and family, and with which they can then redeem them for various products or special discounts.
For example, if you operate a restaurant, you can set up a points based reward system where 10 points will give you a free dessert, while 15 points is a free salad, and 25 points is a free bottle of wine. You’ll have complete control of what the point requirements are for each offer, and set any rules you want for each one, such as to be used within a certain time frame.
Some final thoughts
There are so many different marketing campaigns that you can run for promoting your small business, and a number of them will be unique to the industry that you are serving.
It’s important to keep an eye on what your competition is doing, and make sure you are on a level playing field, but when the opportunity comes for you to do something completely unique, go for it, as it’s something that has the potential to really make your brand and business become much better known, which will hopefully lead to a greater increase in sales and revenue for you.
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