Don’t Be a Ghost
Regular readers of our blog may have noticed a theme running through the last few weeks of posts. While we haven’t discussed exactly the same topics week after week, we did strive to explain the differences between organically developing a digital brand and online presence through content marketing and supplementing or boosting that development with the use of paid social media advertising.
While developing and nurturing an online brand and presence is pretty much a requirement for small businesses in 2016, it’s understandable that many entrepreneurs become frustrated with the often slow pace of that development. While trying to launch your small business or keep it financially viable for the long term, time is most definitely money, and it may be necessary to grow an online audience and begin funneling and converting your target marketing into paying customers as quickly as possible. Luckily, there are other ways that a small business can give an artificial boost to the development of their online presence, methods that are affordable, easily manageable and even fun. How can special promotions benefit your small business, and what are some of the basic rules and guidelines that you should follow to ensure that your special promotion is affordable, manageable and legal?
The Oldest Marketing In The World?
How long have entrepreneurs been utilizing special promotions? While the Internet is only a few decades old, which would be considered barely a blip in human history, it’s likely that entrepreneurs have been utilizing special promotions since, well, there have been entrepreneurs! After all, the need to differentiate your brand and your product is as old as the very idea of exchanging goods and services, older than even the concept of advertising. While the Internet has fundamentally changed our world and our lives in seismic ways, it hasn’t fundamentally changed the nature of special promotions, which can include a special sale like a “flash sale,” a contest, an event or a giveaway – all of which entice new and existing customers with some sort of promotion designed to pique their interest and draw them to your business, either again or for the first time.
What Has Changed?
What has the Internet, and more specifically social media, done to evolve or marketing special promotions? While it hasn’t fundamentally changed special promotions, it has both expanded, amplified, and in some ways legitimatized special promotions in ways that were inaccessible to small businesses in the past. Social media networks and the Internet at large provide a much larger potential audience and reach for your special promotion, while at the same time providing you with the tools to target a very specific audience. Through the power and scope of ecommerce, you also have the tools at your disposal, such as splash pages and digital codes, to make your special promotions more efficient and effective, allowing you to funnel and convert more potential customers online without asking them to leave their couch. Finally, by utilizing the power of social media marketing and advertising, you can ensure that your special promotion has the necessary legitimacy to appeal to online shoppers who abhor spam and intrusive digital advertising.
In our next post, we will discuss the right way to organize and launch a special promotion, including important guidelines and rules your small business should follow to ensure that your promotion goes off without a hitch!