Small Business Marketing Ideas: Discover Your Niche

Small Business Survival: Wage War on the Competition with New Marketing Ideas

In these difficult economic times, small businesses are closing their doors everyday. But there are a wealth of low-cost or free marketing possibilities still available to aid small business owners.

The low-price offers of big retailers like Target and Walmart on items from clothing to electronics in an effort to dominate the market has forced countless small local retailers to shut down. When small businesses lose the competitive battle against these massive companies, hard-working entrepreneurs lose their shirts and irreplaceable establishments are lost by local communities. I live in a remote community of 10,000 people and I have certainly experienced this. It has been a terrible blow to watch people I know suffer. Our community has lost many businesses near-and-dear to our hearts and we are left with few shopping options.

So, how is a small business to make its mark n these difficult times?

Business owners who run a physical business location are fighting an uphill battle, particularly if they offer anything which is sold by corporate giants. To carve out their own niche in the marketplace, they need to be well-versed in their product or service, endeavor to be unique in their approach while delivering the finest customer service to attract and retain customers. Certainly a massive undertaking, but one that will pay off.

Determine what your large competitors don’t offer: that’s where you, as the small business entrepreneur, can find your niche, or your targeted segment of the marketplace.

1. It is clear when visiting chain stores that they do not place value on customer service.
2. Every location looks the same.
3. If they don’t carry what you want, there is nothing they can or will do to help you.

Find a better way to serve the market in at least 2 and possibly 3 of these ares.

1. Provide the FINEST service possible to your customers. Always keep an employee available in the store or at the register to answer questions. Hire friendly and courteous people to answer incoming calls. Try your best to learn the names of your frequent customers and address them by their name. That’s a great way to endear yourself and your business to your customers and will encourage shopper loyalty!

2. Make your location a destination-a pleasant place to visit. Paint a mural inside. Provide free water and cups. If you are in the food business, hand out samples. Isn’t it fun to visit Trader Joes to taste the new food they are sampling each day? Setup a comfortable sitting area for people to relax who have come along with their friends to the store. Set aside a little area of the sales floor for a kids corner with toys and possibly a TV or DVD playing. If your customers’ children are being entertained, they will spend more time at the store and visit your business more often. I personally have chosen to shop at a specific store because my children enjoyed coming and I could look forward to a half hour of uninterrupted alone time to concentrate on what I wanted to buy!

3. You are hopefully in the business you are in because you are excited about your product or service and interested in helping others learn more about it. Make yourself available to your customers. Give them tips and suggestions. Display signs that say “if you can’t find what you need, let us know and we’ll order it for you.” Now there is something Walmart and Target can’t provide. A personal touch.

How Google & The Web Can Expand Your Reach

1. Google is pulling out all the stops to entice small local establishments to develop an internet presence. Sign up to be listed on the Google Local service. If you serve a very specific market niche, your website can jump to the top of the search page for Your Town and your exact product or service. Just this easy-to-execute, low-cost marketing strategy can attract plenty of new shoppers.

2. For a minimal cost, get listed on local directories and your city’s Chamber of Commerce website.

3. Try getting connected to Angie’s List.

4. Make sure your business is listed on Yelp with stellar reviews! Yelp has a great reputation among consumers and is a trusted source for finding local business options. Place a link to your website on Yelp and provide directions so those searching on Yelp can find your location. Ask your loyal customers to write a glowing review for your business. You can even create a promotion or coupon that you email to customers when they write a Yelp review for you.

5. Setting up a website and keeping it updated is not hard to do or cost-prohibitive. These days, a professional-looking WordPress page can be created in just a few hours. The only expenses include monthly hosting fees and purchasing a domain name. You can use GoDaddy or NameCheap for these services.

6. Once you have your domain and site setup, another way to generate income is through affiliate marketing and adding Google AdWords to your site.

7. Your company can build an email list by placing an opt-in box on your site. Use the email list to send promotions, special offers and coupons to your customers. This will promote good will and increase customer loyalty.

8. Get online visitors, or traffic. To establish a stronghold on the top of the search engines, you need to get a high-ranking and then stay highly ranked so online surfers will come across your website when searching for your particular niche. Some of the factors for staying at the top of Google and other search engines include: the online age of the site, the total backlinks to your site, the price and relevance of your offerings and how often you update the site’s content.

A small business website needs to pride itself in top-notch customer service and relevant and up-to-date information. A successful business website must position itself as a unique brand online similar to a local business. The common thread in the above marketing ideas for small business is that they all promote what is known as attraction marketing.

How To Succeed At Online Product Creation The Easy Way

Product creation could be a frightening subject for a lot of Internet marketers to face. Some folks who get in the game with the intention of making a full time income are completely ignorant as to how an online business operates. One of the most profitable ways to create online cash is by creating a product that others are happy to pay for.

Product creation is legitimate method of generating money through internet marketing but many entrepreneurs get it wrong. They start by imitating their Internet marketing gurus by creating information products on Internet marketing in hopes of getting rich the way their heroes did. The problem is that they usually don’t know what they are doing and enter a highly competitive niche with very little marketing experience or connections.

Here are a few tips for effective product creation that may help you get on the right track:
Start by finding a profitable niche with low to moderate competition. If you conduct some rudimentary market research and keyword research, you’ll find many opportunities in areas that will surprise you. Amazon and eBay are two great places to brainstorm for product ideas.

Developing Your Product does not have to be a difficult project. You can find experts in the right field for your niche and pay them to write the material while an artist designs the packaging and website or blog. You can outsource the entire product creation part of the project after you conduct the research and testing to ensure profitability.

Sales and marketing strategies should be created while developing the product and learning about the market. Some experienced marketers use pay per click to drive traffic to their offer page; some folks outsource the entire marketing campaign to affiliates through ClickBank or other affiliate programs.

Product creation does not need to be hard, particularly when the merchandise is electronic. E-books, videos, audio and multi-media products sell very well. They are distributed immediately to customers electronically. Once you have a good feel for a niche market, try to service your customers with associated products and upgrades. If you want to earn money online through product creation, you must understand supply and demand. The majority of new online marketers fail miserably because they go after highly competitive markets or forget to research their chosen niche properly. You have to create your products according to the needs, wants and desires of the prospective customers.

Information Product Creation: Never Compete on Price Because There Is Only One You

Information product creation requires extensive preparation, no matter which niche you work within and you want to make sure that your information product has a successful launch. That probably sounds scary and intimidating but here’s the thing: this is a one time effort and it will pay off in a foundation that is strong enough to get your ideal clients to invest in your high-end programs and services without the perils of a traditional funnel. This article will teach you a few of the things that you need to remember if you’d like to invest in yourself and start on the information product creation path using your unique talents and abilities. Remember that you never have to worry about anyone ripping off your ideas because if you understand how to properly position yourself around your story.

Understand Both Strengths and Weaknesses: It is good to have an impartial view of your own strengths and weaknesses when lay the foundation of selling yourself within the information product creation process. It helps you figure out where you are, what you lack and how to move forward so that you get as much growth as possible. It is more than important, it is urgent if you want to create fast success for yourself to have personal positive reinforcement and deep belief to provide yourself the support you need so that you can get over your own limitations to ensure that your information product is as valuable as it can be.

You also need to know exactly who your competition is so you can study them and use their methods to help you improve your own standings. Down recreate the wheel, but understand the wheel and position yourself going uphill from the competition. Check out which kinds of opportunities you’ve already got and try to figure out how best to use them while taking care to remember your strengths and weaknesses. This is a great way to figure out where you stand against your competition which helps you figure out how best to grow.

Launch on Time: No matter what, even if you haven’t officially announced your “launch date” you should launch the site when you’ve said you would. This will force you to stick to your goal and actually work on it. Thinking that “I’ll launch it when I think it’s ready to launch” will only hinder your efforts. You’ve got a responsibility that you need to live up to with your launch, and you can’t move back on that one. If you get close to your launch date and you are getting hung up on your self limiting beliefs in your information product creation, don’t worry this about getting it out there and not perfection. As long as it is usable you should launch it. Launching on time is the professional thing to do and it is more important than creating a “wow” effect in your site visitors. You can always update/upgrade your website when you have to, so there shouldn’t be any issue with that.

Analyze Your Own Concept: If you want to make your information product creation successful you need to understand how good your concept is: is it really going to work for your chosen audience or would something else be better? You already know about your competition; how does your concept measure up? If you haven’t come up with your own idea and are trying to work with someone else’s concept, do some more work on your own before your launch. People want original ideas because they’ve seen too many other me-too websites already.

Test Your Concept Before You Commit To The Information Product Creation Process: One of the biggest failures people have with information product creation is not testing an idea before putting a lot of effort into producing an information product. PPC to a small 5 page site with a landing page is a great way to test an offer before you even produce it. If people will sign up to get it, you can be sure that you can create an information product that will target eliminating the pain of your target market. The small amount of money will be invaluable in using crowd sourcing to direct the final outline of the information product creation process.

You’ll have lots of hurdles to clear after the launch of your information product and the only way to truly take care of them is to follow the advice in this article to work smarter. Plenty of people work hard, but it is the ones who work smarter who make real money online with the information product creation business model.