5 Ways to Market Your Business in 2012

business marketing tips
Get ready to market your business!

Trade Show Displays

Trade shows make sense for highly competitive businesses where the technology is always changing. Computers, web, golf, gadgets, cars, etc. These are all fast moving industries where companies are all racing towards people’s pocket books. These are industries where there is a ton of money spent every year. Trade shows are a great way to make new contacts and advertise at the same time.

At these trade shows, there’s going to be a lot of other companies trying to get the attention of attendees. Be that as it may, the only way to get their attention is to dazzle them with your trade show display. It’s has to be great! “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight”. There are a lot of nice trade show displays out there and its stiff competition for the attention span of potential customers.

Social Media Video

Put a video on YouTube or your website. This is one of the best things you could do this year for your business. It’s like having your own TV commercial without the high cost TV air space. People are captured by audio/video stimulation. It’s a valuable tool that few have implemented thus far. It’s going to be commonplace in the future to have one. For the money it costs to make one, it’s an amazing advertising value.

Blog

We all know about blogs by now. It’s a great way to capture more traffic on your website. The more content you have, the more chances there are for you to come up high in the search engines. People get intimidated by the thought of starting a blog because they are worried they will run out of things to talk about. Don’t be intimidated. There’s plenty of news in many industries that is blog worthy. A blog doesn’t have to be Shakespeare. It just has to “be”.

Facebook Page

Start your Facebook Page now! Facebook is so ridiculously popular that my pet cat has a Facebook page! I’m kidding. She doesn’t. She’s not old enough for that yet.

Seriously, Facebook has moved from a personal black book to a valuable business tool. How many websites don’t have the famous blue and white capital F on them? I drove by a van for a painting company the other day. They had the Facebook simple painted on their van next to the words, “Find us on Facebook”.

Facebook is a club and your business needs to be in it, even if you, as an individual, don’t use it. Once you make your businesses page you should place the “Like” Facebook add-on on your business’ website. Each time someone clicks the like button your website gets a little more power. It gives power in a similar way that a link does.

E-mail Marketing Newsletter

Now, I’m not referencing the method of buying ten thousand e-mail addresses and spamming them until they beg for mercy. We all get those e-mails and I don’t think we look upon those companies with fondness. Actually, we tend to find them to be rude. It’s junk.

So, what type of e-mail marketing newsletter is a good? The best kind is where people sign up themselves for your newsletter. You can put a link to a signup for your newsletter on your website. When someone is interested in receiving the newsletter they simply click on it and enter their name and e-mail address. Then, you’re on their radar indefinitely! So long as they do not unsubscribe at any point. And, yes. You do need to put an unsubscribe button on the site. It is ethical. Plus, you don’t want angry people calling your business demanding to be removed from the list. You don’t want that, they don’t want that, and your receptionist certainly does not want that!

The e-mail marketing newsletters are fairly simple to keep up with. The beauty of them is you can do them as often as you’d like! You can write one quarterly, monthly, or weekly. You should write them often enough so your subscribers don’t forget about you but not so often that you’re repeating yourself. If it’s too often your readers may be more apt to unsubscribe.

This post was written by Tammy Young, a frequent writer for business publications