Article by Mike Anderson (NSBC Founder & CEO)
It’s now time to be unconventional and bold so you can get your brand out there with style and impact. Start applying your thinking and risk-taking creativity into your everyday environment – Then get ready to make a marketing splash.
You can achieve exceptional results on a restricted budget. I don’t want to waste time on talking about the conventional methods and the big costs attached to it, let’s rather focus on a new beginning and what we need to do now to get those results through energy and imagination.
Here are some of the key elements that will assist you to get big results with a limited budget. Put some time aside to establish a stand-out, effective, on-going campaign.
Be controversial
Go straight to the heart of a controversial industry topic, define your stance and defend your perspective, participate in some healthy discussion and listen to opposing viewpoints, to take full advantage of this strategy. Get your business known in unusual ways, change the status quo. Just be unique and different and above all, stand out.
Give it away for free
Give away your product or a service to benefit from increased referrals and word-of-mouth marketing. For example, you can have a weekly Facebook competition. In this way you can determine your recipients of the give-aways. Then announce the winners with pictures.
Follow-up aggressively
Don’t be afraid of annoying your prospect. If you don’t follow up aggressively you will lose out on opportunities. Daily follow ups are vital to building the top line. In the process, adopt the attitude of not taking no for an answer. Just keep going and eventually your prospect will respect your tenacity and do business with you.
Throw a networking party
Hosting a party is one of the best ways to network. So, consider throwing an end-of-year party, autumn party, mid-winter specials party etc. and invite clients and prospects to mingle and get to know one another. As the common denominator at the event, you and your business will likely be the focus of conversation.
Do something wild
Do something your community has never seen before. You want your promotional event to attract many customers and potential customers. Send out a press release and attract the media. Who knows, you might even get on the front page!
The following principles are the foundation for a successful high-impact campaign:
- Instead of money, the primary investments of marketing should be time, energy, and imagination.
- The primary statistic to measure your business is the amount of profits, not sales.
- Concentrate on how many new relationships are made each month.
- Create a standard of excellence with an acute focus instead of trying to diversify by offering too many different products and services.
- Instead of only concentrating on getting new customers, aim for more referrals, more transactions with existing customers and larger transactions.
- Put the competition aside and concentrate more on cooperating with other businesses.