Marketing tips for SME

I found a good article in the Sydney Morning Herald which gives great marketing tips for your small business.  The article was written by Larissa Ham and contains recommendations made by the following sales & marketing experts:

• Ciaran McGuigan, Founder and Managing Director, Strike Force Sale
• Carl Bellamy, Group Sales Manager – Small Business, Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Michelle Gamble, Founder and Director, Marketing Angels
• Rob Hartnett, Managing Director, Selling Strategies International
• Lauren Brown, Founder and Managing director, Pulse Marketing

The tips can be summarised as follows:

Attitude

• Don’t be shy:  be fearless and relentless
• You’ve got to believe in what you’re selling

Generating leads

• You should cold call 10 potential customers before 10am each day
• If you find rejection intimidating try to place the calls at a time when you know the recipient won’t be there. That way the challenge becomes leaving a message enticing enough for them to call back.
• Hire the right sales people – don’t try and train the wrong ones
• If you can’t afford sales people invest some money in getting your own sales training so you can sell your product or service
• Targeting your audience multiple times is also the way to go (Don’t talk to 100 people once, talk to 10 people 10 times)

Strategy

• Understand how your business plans and marketing plans work together
• Realise that marketing covers anything that communicates with someone who might do business with you
• Make sure their marketing is relevant and getting through on the right channels – whether that be traditional media, websites or social media
• Aim for media exposure  – Don’t be frightened of chasing down media opportunities

Search Engines and Google Alerts

• Test your search terms in all the search marketing engines – not just Google – before investing all your marketing cash
• Enter your competitors names into Google Alerts –  that way you will be alerted every single time they do anything on the internet

Email marketing

• Use it!

Awards

• Enter competitions and try and obtain rewards to prove credentials

References

Ham, L. (2011). Goodbye to shy: how to spruik your business. Available:
https://www.smh.com.au/small-business/smallbiz-marketing/goodbye-to-shy-how-to-spruik-your-business-20110411-1dao6.html.
Last accessed 20 May 2011.