Marketing Ideas For Products To Get More Traction

Small businesses need effective marketing strategies. These days, they have to compete not only with other local businesses in their industry but with larger, more powerful companies as well as in the online market.

In such competitive environments, even the best products can languish on store shelves or online catalogues, especially without a marketing strategy. With the right plan, small businesses can still reach new customers and sell more products than ever before.

In this article, we're going to look at how small business owners can market effectively in today's market. We'll also list some simple but effective marketing ideas that small businesses can use to get customers interested and get their products moving off the shelves.

Where you can market as a small business

When business owners piece together a marketing strategy, they usually want to find different channels they can utilize to market their products and services. Just as the number of places commerce takes place has expanded, marketing channels have also widened.

Even businesses with limited resources to spend on marketing have many options. Here are some popular marketing methods:

• Email campaigns
• Social media marketing
• Local inventory advertising
• Online advertising
• SEO writing
• Leaflets and posters
• Word of mouth
• Newspaper, radio, and television advertising
• Roadside signs

While there are other marketing ideas for small business owners, the above demonstrates how wide the field is. Few small business marketing funds are large enough to use every resource available, which means decisions need to be made, and managers need to understand which strategies will suit their business.

How to put together a marketing strategy

When it's time to create a marketing strategy, the first step is always doing research. Research, in this case, means figuring out who your target market is, what your competition is already doing (you don't want to look unoriginal!), and what strategies have been successful for other businesses in the industry.

Once you understand the playing field, you can start thinking about what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts. Are you looking to increase overall brand awareness or sell a specific product? Who is your target audience? Are you looking to expand your customer base or market to an existing customer?

Once you have clear goals, and an understanding of the existing materials, building an effective marketing plan will be much easier. Try following these six steps:

1. Do your research
2. Figure out what you want to achieve
3. Tailor your marketing ideas to meet those goals
4. Experiment and track results
5. Adjust as needed
6. Rinse and repeat

What makes good marketing ideas for small businesses?

When it comes to retail marketing, small businesses often need to be a bit more creative to stand out from the competition. Sometimes this means using less traditional methods or taking a more personal approach.

Knowing your business strengths should help find marketing tactics that work for you. These strengths could be social connections (involvement in community events, connections to local groups, a strong, nearby customer base) or advantages of your location (a main road store with lots of passing traffic). They could also be skills you have on your team, like a computer whizz, a great writer, or a staff member with artistic flair.

A personal approach to marketing means playing to your strengths, so think about those resources available to you. You can then apply them to a method of marketing you suit, which can help them make you stand out as a professional organization.

How to measure your marketing strategy's success using a small business's resources

Whether using social media channels, email marketing, or word of mouth, it's hard to know how well your new strategy is going without measuring it. Once again, thinking about the tools you have at your disposal is a crucial step.

Your POS is by far and away the most effective data collection tool that small businesses have to hand. So, even on a tight budget, your business can develop hundreds of detailed reports and understand every product's trajectory.

POS reports can tell you how successful your marketing is. Epos Now's POS system reports can be adjusted for the date and time sold, so you'll know how much impact the marketing has had on product sales. You can also measure how many new customers you're acquiring and who has been buying what.

It's important to know whether your marketing is proving value for money, and getting familiar with your POS reports is the best way of doing so.

Now let's look more closely at some small business marketing ideas and see what they can achieve for your products:

Free marketing ideas you can easily employ in a small business

As a small business owner, you'll likely need to market using free resource options and have limited funds to spend. You may not have your own website, and if you're a new business, you'll be trying to build brand awareness from the ground up. So what are the free marketing materials you might use?

Using Google Business

If you've not entered the realm of digital marketing for retail before and cannot afford a marketing consultant, Google might just be your new best friend. You can create an account on Google Business for free, allowing potential customers to easily find you online, even if you don't have a website.

Google Business helps search engine users see you on Google Maps, so they know where you are and can post reviews of your business. Google Reviews can function as a free customer satisfaction survey and can help you engage with your customers to find out which products they prefer.

Search engines are so widely used that many consumers will Google your trading name as soon as they hear it, hoping to find out more. This makes Google Business an excellent starting point for marketing.

Using social media platforms

Social media accounts don't cost a penny, but businesses that use social media can reach thousands and even millions of people. Businesses can inform consumers about their products and use websites as a sales channel through online spaces such as Facebook Marketplace.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., are key reference points for multiple generations. Users check their accounts many times every day. 

Suppose your business engages with industry-relevant content, such as images of new products and information about their benefits. In that case, you can make those interested in your offer aware of your presence. By posting regularly, you can acquire new, paying customers that you would have struggled to reach in any other way.

Like Google Reviews, social media channels provide a useful platform to engage with existing customers and help you acquire new ones. Customers can post about their experiences, ask questions, find out information, and more. So far as a free marketing idea goes, social media is as good as it gets.

Email marketing campaigns

If you're struggling to gain much traction with your existing customers and want to encourage customer loyalty, an email marketing campaign might prove lucrative.

There are several approaches to email marketing for retail: publishing a company newsletter, running a promotional campaign, or sending abandoned cart emails (for online businesses). 

Newsletters can help encourage customers to feel attached to your business, while promotions can excite customers back through the door by raising awareness about your new deals.

Email marketing won’t always help obtain new customers, as you're limited to those who have consented to your marketing emails). However, sending email receipts to customers can help you build up a wide net of consenting customers to remarket to, which can prove invaluable.

Cultivating word-of-mouth marketing

Thinking about word-of-mouth publicity as something you can work to cultivate can be useful. Some businesses with subscription services benefit from a referral program, which leads to people spreading the word about your products.

If that doesn't suit your model, then thinking of the customer experience as part of your marketing and selling strategy can help bring new faces through the door by ensuring visitors want to talk about their experience with your business.

Employ in-store marketing strategies

Many business owners focus so hard on getting customers through the door that they don't think about the way they market their business in the store itself. 

In-store retail marketing ideas help push customers into making those extra purchases and can help provide a subject for wide marketing materials. They can create intrigue, highlight value, and keep customers walking your aisles.

Some simple in-store marketing tips will cost nothing, while others will cost you. Nevertheless, they can prove good value for money, often with tangible results.

• Window displays can show your products at their best and help capture as much of your passing traffic as possible.
• In-store events can transform the store’s atmosphere. They can be particularly effective in bringing new visitors inside with a memorable first visit.
• Free samples of your products or trial products (depending on your product) can seem expensive, but carefully selected products can also improve relationships and boost sales. Customers will view a free gift as a demonstration of your confidence in the quality of your product and as a generous, unique selling proposition.
• In-store displays, promotions, and shelf designs can prove very effective. Promotions cost very little to run but can inspire large boosts in sales on the right product. Meanwhile, shelf design can demonstrate the value in your prices and encourage customers to spend more time in the aisles.

Low-cost marketing ideas for small businesses

If you've put aside funds to market your business, you may already be using the free resources available and looking to find more ways to entice customers through your doors or onto your website. So what other small business marketing ideas provide good value for money?

Running competitions for customers

One way to draw in customers and keep them engaged with your business is to hold in-store and online competitions. Competitions can take various forms, but the basic idea is to give customers a chance to win something by participating in a contest or simply spending time in your store.

There are a few things to keep in mind when planning an in-store competition. First, customers will need to spend money to enter, which can ensure you make your money back. Competitions based around commercial holidays can gain you attention when consumers are already spending more. Competitions can consequently be a key part of your Black Friday marketing or Christmas marketing.

Secondly, how much will the prize cost you to offer; depending on the expected uptake, you may be able to offer a more attractive prize. Too small a prize will not gain you much publicity, but too big a prize will not necessarily offer much value if it fails to draw equal attention.

Make the rules and process for participating easy and simple to understand. Nobody wants to spend time filling out complex entry forms or trying to decipher convoluted contest rules. They want to enter quickly and then get on with their shop.

Finally, you should showcase prizes and winners across your website, social media pages, and other marketing materials. This will help attract new customers and generate positive word-of-mouth publicity for your business.

Creating SEO articles to boost your website

If your business sells online or has a website, then search engine optimization could help your small business marketing efforts by winning you more website visitors to your landing pages.

To boost your website in this way, you'd need to conduct keyword research using analytics tools (Google Analytics can help you measure the success of your web pages) to figure out what might improve web performance.

Just like using Google Business, a professional-looking website has more benefits than providing a sales channel. It also offers a communication tool with online forums and comments sections, is a source of information, and can be an important part of a small business marketing strategy.

Conducting research to help produce effective SEO articles in the form of industry-relevant blogs can be valuable. It's also important to make the website easily navigable on multiple devices. Websites can be expensive to maintain, but they are a sign of professionalism and build brand awareness effectively, all while widening your potential customer base beyond your locality.

Leaflet and poster-based advertising around local business

For many small business ventures, online sales and marketing the business beyond the local community would not help. The target audience of these small business owners and managers is strictly local.

This makes leafleting, posters, and partnerships with other (non-competing) local businesses a good foundation for their marketing ideas. 

Given that local foot traffic a such a key part of their customer base, putting marketing materials where they will see them while out and about can be lucrative and cost-effective.

Producing leaflets and posters come with a small price. Still, they can hugely improve your prominence within the local community, ensuring as many potential customers as possible become aware of your business.

Small business marketing and trading made much easier with Epos Now

It can feel hard as a small business manager trying to compete with the bigger competition without the same resources. But with a top-of-the-range specialized hospitality or retail POS system, running every part of your business becomes much smoother and enacting your marketing plan is easily achievable.

Epos Now offers fantastic business technology at world-beating prices. As an Epos Now customer, you can:

• Create a full business suite on a solid POS foundation with integrated payment processing service, online store, multi-site and multi-channel options
• Sell your way with hardware and software options for your industry
• Market your business with integrable apps like Mailchimp, and an exportable customer database for a quicker customer relation management
• Know your business better with hundreds of detailed, easy-to-read business reports so you know where to allocate your marketing resources

To find out more about Epos Now retail and hospitality POS solutions, submit your details below and speak to a member of our expert team.