How Your Small Business Can Reach A Wider Audience

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It’s hard to show the world what you have to offer, particularly when you are a one man band or a small operation. The online world is saturated and expensive, meaning that it is often off-limits or an unrealistic way to get an immediate boost in sales.

One of the challenges of advertising as a small company and trying to cast a wider net to capture an audience is that you are not capturing a valuable consumer. A valuable consumer is someone who is at a crucial stage in the conversion funnel and are more likely to spend money with your business, ensuring you get the maximum ROI. We’re looking at everything from giant inflatables to giveaways and the benefits of handing out samples!

Local Advertising Techniques

Are you a local business with a good customer base, but need to get your name out there more? Whether you’re a small retailer with a concession in a local store or an independent eatery, you need to get your name out there. The positive is, you have a targeted audience already – you just need to reach them.

Physical advertising techniques, such as billboards, kerbside promotions, handing out flyers and using giant inflatables will draw relevant and valuable traffic to your business. The best bit is that you can choose a method that fits the services or goods you provide, you can be as a fun, bold or as conservative and eco-conscious as you need it to be!

Giveaway, Competitions & Samples

Running a giveaway or hosting a competition doesn’t just have to be online. Although that is a great way to boost your brand visibility online and a fantastic way to earn some authentic, user-generated content (which is a big vote of confidence for a lot of consumers), it does require you to have an established audience already.

It is possible to run a fun and beneficial competition or giveaway offline, too. This can be more suited to small or independent companies looking to establish themselves in a specific industry or amongst a key demographic. It could be anything from organising a pop-up in your local high-street or running a competition with a local festival or event for people to enter. This will give you face-to-face time with your audience, give your visibility a boost and also show off the quality of your goods or services – all with very low overheads!

Show Off A Personal-Touch

The rise of the small business is ongoing. It’s not peaked. One of the thing consumers love about the ‘shop small’ movement or platforms like Etsy, is the personal, artisan touch that comes with their products. It’s the level of care, craftmanship and relationships that can be built. Make sure you make a little, noticeable effort with your clients. This could be something like including a hand-written note in packages. It helps to build a positive reputation that is bound to get shared on social media and spread fantastic word-of-mouth marketing – still one of the most valuable channels in localised marketing.

Don’t Give Up With Building An Online Persona

As much as it can feel like a shot in the dark, building a social media community and establishing your brand online can have such a pay off. This is because the people who follow you have shown an interest in your business, they are valuable consumers. Your business has the opportunity to regularly target and re-target consumers as well as interacting with them, building a loyal customer-business relationship. You can also get a better insight as to what your audience expects of a company, the products they need and would like to see. You can create more specific audience profiles by analysing the data of each follower, ensuring your online and offline marketing efforts are as efficient and targeted as possible.