You have to know the distinction between brand building ads and lead generating ads. As a small business you should avoid brand building as this only works for the big companies, basically getting your name out there. It includes banner adverts, newspaper adverts, radio adverts. Brand building ads tend to need a lot of adverts before there’s a sale, as it’s more to do with announcing your company to the market than selling. Lead generating is what you want to do, for every advert you have it must generate a lead so you can follow it up with a sale. Pay per click advertising, yellow pages advertising, writing directly to businesses and meeting them face to face.
Email marketing is a great thing to use for promotion. If your website gets a lot of visitors you should offer a free opt-in newsletter. It’s a method of getting customers email addresses so that after they leave the website you can still try and sell to them. Offer a freebie to new subscribers to entice them to sign up, things like ebooks, special reports or a Youtube style video. Publish your newsletter the same time every month or week and always include an advert for your product, remember that each issue has o be worth reading so you’ll need good content. Use a free mailing list provider, there’s plenty available just search Google for them.
When you start your business you should devote half your time to promotion of your services, even maybe more than 50%! Once you’ve built up a successful business you should still spend around 10-20% of your time promoting your services and getting new clients, I take one day every second week just to promote my business. That could be contacting existing clients to offer a new service or to remind one’s you’ve not heard from in months that you still exist, sending out mail shots, reviewing my existing advertising and trying to improve.
Cold calling is scary the first time around. I’ve tried it, and I always try and lessen the “cold calling” bit of the task as much as possible. I send information packs to businesses first and then call them up and start off saying I sent them an info pack and then I ask if they’re interested. That way it’s less of a cold call. Also avoid starting any call with “I’m from recruitment company A and we offer these services…” Instead make your initial opening a question – “Hi, I’m calling to find out if you need to hire good quality staff?” And even add in the local touch if you can “We’ve been working with other companies in your area..”
Building up a relationship with local businesses is a key factor in getting work for most small businesses. Usually a single sales letter posted to companies won’t result in an avalanche of orders unless your services are in dire demand. Send introductory letters to local businesses along with nice looking pamphlets to get their attention and then try to arrange a phone discussion or a meeting. Selling face to face is the start of a business relationship.