5 Business Promotion/Marketing Tips for small business owners
People often ask owners of small burger joints if they hate McDonald’s. They shouldn’t, after all giant fast food chains introduce the culture of burger around the world. In countries where the burger culture never existed before, new entrepreneurs could find an opportunity to open their own burger stalls in local areas. McDonald’s simply puts the romance into the overall burger experience. In fact, without that kind of romantic notions; most consumers won’t give small-time burger joints a second look. Thank you McDonald’s! Obviously, those huge market leaders make it impossible for small businesses to compete in larger scale and in this case, we shouldn’t try to do that. Instead, we should try to become what McDonald’s, Starbucks and Apple are not. Simply by providing fast service and convenience to local customers, small businesses could become market leaders in their confined geographical areas. We should stop seeing market leaders as sworn enemies and consider them as catalysts to our brilliance. Instead of diverting our precious resources into envying or hating the competition, we should learn from them on how to become better entrepreneurs. Here are five ways to do that:
#1. Give consumers multiple good reasons to choose our products:
Small burger joints should realize that offering tasty burgers wouldn’t be enough to bring more customers through their door. For this reason, we should provide better dimensions to consumer experience. Local MacDonald’s establishments will never have great bands and open-mic nights, so we should consider adding that. They could also open their restaurants for local organization and businesses, not just for families. Small businesses should be able to learn things that market leaders don’t currently offer. New additions can make our products and services stand out even compared to those offered by market leaders. Small business owners need to give customers better reasons to choose their products and services. Small businesses should help their loyal customers beyond those simple purchases and let them truly experience our brand.
#2. Keep your prices down:
When we established our small business operations we quickly realized that we need to bring down the overall cost to allow us lower selling prices. This may cause us to move beyond our comfort zone and consistently negotiate with vendors. Often, we need to find new suppliers and never stop negotiating with them. Owners of small business should never get complacent about their costs and expenses. Just because our suppliers have served us well for many years, it doesn’t mean that we can’t get better deals. We should also look for new materials, supplies, equipment and parts that can help us save money.
#3. Always innovate:
What we sell today doesn’t always sell tomorrow. Many entrepreneurs find that their once lucrative small businesses effectively become cash drains. To stay ahead, we should watch our competition and learn from their success and failures. We should never get complacent with our products and we try to come up with new great ideas to keep customers excited. Unfortunately, when entrepreneurs finally realize their mistakes, it is perhaps already too late reinvigorate their brand.
#4. Upgrade our skills:
It could be difficult to invest in education and training of staff when we allocate much of our human and financial resources to business operations. On the other hand, we need to constantly hone our skills and keep abreast of current technology to maintain and gain new competitive edges. Successful business owners regularly write down a list of their weaknesses and make plans to address them. There are cases where we can’t efficiently acquire these skills ourselves, so we could hire or outsource someone with the necessary skills to help us compete better.
#5. Embrace useful technologies:
Technology always evolves and improves. Marketplace regularly changes and sometimes, drastically overnight. Small business should be ready to change and adapt according to current industry trends or the competition will leave them in their dust. One great opportunity for small business owners is social media and those who lack social media presence tend to be less successful. As an example, a caterer may find their business take a nosedive due to lack of effective online presence. To counter this, they can engage in social media and understand how it could make a huge difference. New technology could help people catch up with the competition to keep their doors open. Always embrace the competition and our entire world may change for the better, It’s important to shift our mindset to keep us engaged, active and hopefully, in the lead, at least in the local area.
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