5 Easy Marketing Activities for Your Small Business

Email Marketing 

Never underestimate the power of email marketing! While you're setting up shop, don't forget to create a dynamic and engaging website to coincide with your small business. Maintaing relationships with new customers is a sure way to build customer loyalty and retention for your business and the best way to do that is through email marketing. Now it might not be a "new concept" in itself, but there are ways to spruce up your email marketing game to stand out from the crowd and not get lost amongst people's spam and junk mail. Here are some important email marketing tips:

• Put thought and creativity into your subject lines and Introduction. Essentially the subject and intro to your email are basically your first impression and it's important that you make them count. Adding a fun and engaging writing style to your emails will grab the attention of your customer and make them want to actually read them! Instead of getting dropped into the trash bin, you'll keep bringing people back to your site. 
• Don't Forget Your Call to Actions! These are crucial to getting your customers to engage. A marketing email without a CTA is essentially a waste of time. You might as well send the customer a "hello" letter. All of your marketing activities via email should include a promotion, a sign-up sheet, a response ask...something that encourages the customer to act. 
• Promotion, Promotion, Promotion! Email marketing is the best way to promote your goods or services. Yoga classes are 25% off this week...? Promote it. Your boutique is having a sale...? Promote it. Customers would get a discount code if they refer a friend...? Promote it!! Anything that could potentially draw a customer in can be sent in an email or newsletter, so don't waste an opportunity. 
• Track your performance. Tracking your key performance indicators or marketing retention is important for understanding your customers and their wants and needs. Maybe one newsletter went relatively unnoticed with little to no website visits. Or maybe it took off and customers kept coming back hungry for more. It's a learning curve, and tracking your performance is the best way to optimize your marketing strategies going forward. 

Guerilla Marketing 

Guerilla marketing is the act of implementing unique or "unconventional" ideas in marketing. Most of the time they can be relatively low cost if performed and researched correctly, and they have a habit of helping businesses gain brand recognition, and boost sales! Guerilla marketing often involves methods of in-person accounts with a potential widespread reach. Just a few examples of Guerilla marketing are: 

• Using street art to broadcast your social media handle or brand name 
• Creating custom stickers or flyers to be handed out around your city or town. 
• Publicity stunts. 
• Treasure hunts around your city or town. 

Get creative! The more inventive a guerilla marketing campaign, the better! 

Blog Content 

Creating informative or fun blog content is a great way to draw in customers. You can start off with good-old-fashioned "How To" articles, or informative pieces about your products; and then later work on areas surrounding your business but don't directly pertain to it, that way you can suck them in and then promote your goods or services later. Blog articles are a great way to keep up with both recurring and potential customers as well as keep your site and store up to date. But make sure it's worthwhile content and that you have your best writer on the job! 

Social Media Giveaways 

Low cost for a higher reward. Creating contests or giveaways on social media is a great way to boost your online brand presence as well as draw in recurring and potential customers. Social media giveaways or contest are relatively simple: usually, you, the business owner, offers a select amount of products or services in exchange for free promotion online. You can make up your own rules. Maybe people need to be following you on Instagram and repost the "contest" picture with your IG handle to their story. Or maybe they have to create a short video and hashtag your product. Whatever you decide to do, it's an easy way to gain recognition online and promote your business for a relatively low price. 

Keep Generating Promotions 

Whether it be discount codes or referrals, promotions are always a great way to hook people in. It's just psychology people love free or discounted stuff, so the more promotions you come up with in the beginning, the better. The profit you lose will be made up for later on when you have loyal customers that keep coming back for more. Make sure you get creative with how you advertise your promotions. Emails, Social Media and Guerilla marketing techniques are great ways to keep promotions alive, but they aren't the only ways to do it! You can post about them on your website, hang banners or stickers in your store, send out snail mail even! 

Or if you had the Surfpay app you could even promote your business every time you made a transaction. Surfpay not only accepts contactless card payments with a tap to the back of your smartphone but also administers QR receipts which can be used to send promotions long after the customer has been to the store! That way you always stay ahead of the game and keep your customers engaged with your business. 

But no matter how you choose to promote, it's important that you do your research and make the content engaging! 

Interested in the Surfpay app? Click here to sign up and start accepting transactions for your business!

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