These uncertain times have surely brought us despair and frustration. Same is the case with local and small businesses around the UK. With Lockdown, most of the businesses are shut and are not able to trade. I have few marketing tips for small businesses that can help you prepare yourselves for when this crisis is over and everything will be back to normal.
Take a Deep Breath!
First of all, DO NOT PANIC! STAY CALM. It is ok to take a bit of break from work. You all deserve it. Just use this time accordingly to plan for the future. I will not bore you with all the tips that people give you when starting a brand new business. Instead in this post, I have decided to share with you the marketing tips for existing businesses who already know their audience
Make a Plan!
Once you have decided to take on a challenge to market your business. You need to have a step by step plan to ensure that you get most out of your hard work. If you don’t have a plan and work haphazardly, you will not be able to achieve anything and waste your time, money and resources. Once you have the plan, divide it into achievable goals. Estimate the time and money you need to complete each goal. I cannot emphasise enough as to how much it is important to estimate the cost and time of each goal. Doing this, will tell you what is in your budget and what is not? If something is not in your budget try to do the same thing at first but on smaller scale. Once you start getting clients and your budget increases, you can implement same marketing strategy on the large scale. So don’t worry, just start small! Following is my go to marketing strategies for Lockdowns:
Design and print Marketing Letters
We all think that in the era of digital technology, letters don’t play an important role. It is completely wrong. People who are busy mostly don’t check marketing emails. One look at the sender name and they know that it is a spam and with a click of a button, emails from you will be in SPAM folder forever. Whereas, letters are something that most people open no matter how busy they are since its a habit for most of them to not to leave any letter or package unopened. Therefore, I am still in favour of spending money on printing and sending letters to your clients.
Since, business owners are mostly free during this lockdown, I suggest no, I Implore you to write a excellent marketing letter for your business targeting your audience and inciting them to contact you to discuss further. I own a website and mobile app development business in London and Pakistan: Rising Tech Dev. I have used this time to write a letter for my clients and plan to post these letters by the end of March.
A plain marketing letter will not leave an excellent impression on your clients. Therefore, it is important for you to design a proper marketing letter for your business. It has to be appealing to eyes but should not contain any graphics other than logo of your business. It should also not be very lengthy letter. Try to keep it as simple and as short as possible. When it comes to marketing the less is more principle works like a charm. People don’t have time to read lengthy marketing letters and will loose interest if the text is boring or very long. Therefore, please keep it to the point.
Design and Print a Brochure
Next, for those businesses who have a bit more budget and can afford to send brochures along with their marketing letters. They should definitely design at least a trim-fold business brochure and post it along with the letters. This will help their clients to understand better what you are offering and at what prices?
When writing a brochure content make sure that you include:
- brief introduction of your business
- services which you offer
- How much time for each service?
- why they should hire you?
- How much money will it cost them?
- How to contact you?
The only goal you should have in your mind while designing is to deliver all the information about your business to your prospective client. While website and social accounts are important and you can mention these in your brochures, you should not leave it to your client to go to your website and get more information about your services and offers. Since, most of your clients will not bother to go to website to get more detail after reading your letter or brochure. You only have one chance when a person opens your letter so try to make a strong impact on them. Therefore, it is imperative to include as much information as you can in your brochure but in fewer words.
Keep everything to the point and short. One more important thing, try to be as honest as possible. Only promise what you can deliver on time.
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