The Small Business Secret of Not Being Ignored
Your product or service is great, but you’re still being ignored. You’re the expert, you know your industry, but you’re still being ignored. You know that selling is the transfer of enthusiasm, so you’re enthusiastic about your business, but you’re still being ignored.
No matter how strong you, your products or services are, you will still be ignored by prospective customers, that probably will support your business until you fit one more piece into place.
Let’s take a look at what that might be …
The reality is, small businesses won’t gain real momentum until they’ve mastered the “know, like, trust” factor in the marketing process .
Today I would like to outline the small business secret of not being ignored and what these steps might actually look like from a tactical standpoint for a typical B2B service business.
Note: Marketing should always build trust and/or invite a purchase.
Know
This is the act of creating awareness so while it sometimes starts with a referral received, it’s often the act of putting something out there that gets the attention of your prospect.
If you’re a small business, high-quality content and referrals are your most potent form of advertising.
You may be advertising to attract more clients to a service business. You may be advertising a product. You may be advertising an idea.
Know Tactics
- Podcasting/online radio, or Adwords ad promoting free eBook that is related to your service offering but doesn’t sell anything directly,
- blog posts answering common client challenges amplified in social media,
- Facebook promoted posts for free eBook,
- LinkedIn groups discussions geared towards blog posts and free eBook content.
Like
Imagine two people with an identical product and an identical price.
One person comes across as boring and impersonal. The other is charming, interesting, and makes you feel good. Which one would you rather continue talking to and do business with?
In this step you must move towards gaining permission to continue a conversation. The key here is your email capture activities.
Like Tactics
- Create landing pages for specific networks,
- create eBook landing page with autoresponder that delivers even more information related to eBook or other eBooks,
- offer weekly newsletter to all who download eBook.
Trust
While you’re developing “the Know” through articles, advertising, and referrals, “the Like” through your website, reception, and newsletter, you’re still not selling. But you are paving the road to eventually selling a product or service that’s related to your marketing down the line.
When it comes to small businesses selling their products or services, know and like alone are rarely enough — you need to become truly trusted.
Trust is perhaps the most important step and yet it’s not one you can simply manufacture through one or two tactics – it’s comes together through a collection of things.
Trust Tactics
- Consistently deliver your newsletter,
- educate – don’t promote,
- get backlinks from reputable websites,
- participate on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter by sharing great information and helping others find what they want,
- consistently write educational blog content,
- stimulate reviews on sites like Google+, LinkedIn and Yelp,
- submit press releases to online distribution sites such as PRWeb and
- find industry or local publications that accept contributed content.
Marketing is essentially getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you.
While these tactics are nice, make sure you’re developing a strategy before you decide what to do. Determining a marketing strategy allows you to clearly demonstrate how you’re different, how you bring value and who, precisely, makes an ideal client for your business is the most important element of marketing.
Question: What do you think? Do you have a know, like and trust component in your marketing?
About the Company: Indispensable Marketing , a strategic marketing firm helps small to midsize businesses improve or create a strong marketing foundation that generates more leads and closes more sales.
Indispensable Marketing takes a process approach to developing and installing your small business marketing.