Day 10 – How to market your business.

There are several methods to market your business or e-business. The two main categories are online and of course offline. In this article, we will discuss a few points about each method of marketing.

Let’s first discuss the online method of marketing.

There are several ways to market you business on the Internet to drive tons of customers your way. Online marketing has a unique advantage over offline because it offers cheap instant advertising that you rarely find in the offline world.

Here are a few ways to get it done:

• Build a website- Many brick and mortar stores and businesses create websites to handle orders and customer service, but you could also use it to market to new potential customers.
• Buy ad space on popular websites- Find similar types of businesses on the web and purchase ad space on those sites. Some of the most popular ad services are: Google Adwords, Chitika, Adbrite, and Yahoo publisher’s Advision.
• Sponsor contests- Use your company’s name on contests around the net. You will have to provide the prize or money to the website holding the contest.
• Forums- Post questions and answers on your trades online forum. Do Not blatantly spam these sites or they will kick you right off! But, there are ways of gracefully working in your business name.
• Service directories- There are online directories that exist solely for the purpose to display companies and what they can do for you.
• Email- Make sure you display your company’s name and info on every email you send out, the rest is viral.

There are many other ways to market your business on the Internet that I didn’t discuss here today, but that should get you started. Now let’s look at the ways to market outside the web.

Offline Marketing methods:

• Vehicle stickers- Slap a magnet or sticker to the back window showing your company’s name and info on it. This can work pretty well depending on how much you drive, the traffic amount near you, and how creative you can get with it’s design.
• Pens, stationary, and letterhead- Make sure you display company info on anything and everything you can. You could even hand this stuff out at a trade show, everyone loves free stuff.
• TV, radio, and magazines- These are all very expensive generally speaking. There are ways to cut cost such as time of day, low cost stations, and choosing a smaller size advertisement. Also, Google Adwords offers a relatively cheap local radio advertising option.
• Billboards- Again, this method is very expensive but effective. People love to read things as they drive due to boredom. Come up with a creative billboard ad and you could drive thousands of customers to your company.
• Sponsor sporting events- You don’t have to sponsor NFL games or the like, just start with small venues like your local high school football game.
• Product placement- This is another method that will cost some real dough, but you will get good results. This works well for gadgets and technology firms. Basically, you approach a television program and ask for the chance to include your product on a popular TV show. For example, if you sell a new CT scan machine, maybe you would ask the powers to be from the TV show “House” to include it on the next episode. They would get a realistic prop, and you would get your logo out there.

Ideally you will want a mixture of online and offline marketing to create the perfect campaign. Test and try different methods to see what will work for your particular business.