It’s important to have a solid marketing and public relations (PR) strategy that builds a strong brand of the company and maintains the image you want to project to the public. But sometimes these efforts can be quite expensive if you’re running a lean operation and just starting out. In an article on Inc.com, author Murray Newlands explains some basic affordable PR and marketing tips to successfully increase sales and grow your consumer base. When you’re a small business or just starting out, people might not know the excellence of your product until you tell them about it—they may not even know about your product at all!
Effective PR and marketing include proactive methods to “spread the message to your market and attract potential customers to clients.” Marketing is understanding which audience to target, how to target that audience, and how these potential customers will be engaged with your brand. Maintaining good public relations ensures good press with regard to business concerning its most recent services, brands and innovations. The following are four cost-effective strategies to try:
Follow up with customers through email: It is important to always keep in touch with your customers and update them with new products and developments. Newlands explains that “Because of the high quantity of spam out, you must make the email communications informative and interesting.” A month-to-month email newsletter targets the different segments of your audience and can help to build a new base of prospective customers.
Harness the power of social media: Social media engages customers in a highly valuable way and promotes the company’s initiatives and efforts in a language that’s in sync with the audience. SEO techniques help optimize your company’s digital presence and drives the traffic to your website.
Build the brand through blogging: Blogging gets your company’s message out there and helps you to establish a relationship with your audience. Relevant blogs with content management strategies (which can be as simple as creating a link to automatically share posts on social media) all helps towards positive branding and messaging.
Be a part of the conversation online: Additional low-cost Internet marketing instruments like Hootsuite can be used to expand the base of customers. By effectively managing posts and engaging with people who follow your brand, you can grow your customer base. Try setting up search phrases and terms relevant to the industry, which can help you to engage with a community of individuals who can benefit from your expertise.
Maintain relationships with journalists: Maintaining good relationships with journalists is natural way to maintain a good relationship with the press. How a brand engages with media outlets or journalists reflects in the stories that appear in the press. A brief thank you email to your contacts in the media helps to show that you are grateful for the coverage.
Follow these tips to build a good foundation for your marketing and PR (and save a lot of money by doing so!). For the full article, please read: http://www.inc.com/murray-newlands/public-relations-tips-and-tricks-for-your-business.html.
Thanks for reading, and until next time… stay WISE!
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