Small Business Tips for Success Marketing
Network like Crazy
Having a professional network is essential for long term success. By creating connections with others, you raise awareness of both you (as an individual) and your brand. Networking opportunities are always available – you just have to take them up. Some common ones you can encounter include:
- Finding professionals in your industry through LinkedIn
- Use other social media platforms like Facebook to grow your connections
- Reach out directly via email to people in your industry
- Attend industry conferences
- Join educational webinars and talk with others there
Once you make these connections, when possible, meet with people “in real life.” A chat over coffee can be a great way to grow your relationship, and sometimes even trigger discussions of where you can offer services together.
In our little world, we consistently meet with other photographers and wedding vendors. We sometimes shoot together, too. This collaboration mindset has led to some great opportunities – including our work being published on popular blogs and magazines.
Grow Your Social Media Presence
Social media marketing is a HUGE part of running a business these days.
It is one of the easiest ways to get people exposed to your brand, your services, and your products.
Big companies like Coca-Cola engage their social media audiences frequently and consistently. Even though they are a popular brand and offer products most of us already consume, they have been forced to participate in this new method of marketing to stay relevant.
Growing your social presence isn’t particularly difficult, but it does take time. A few steps you should take:
- Setup social media accounts. There are so many networks out there, but the best of these are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.
- Actually use the social media accounts. There is no point in just having an account to have it. You should plan to use your social media on a consistent basis.
- Schedule posts. Posting on social media can be tedious day in and day out. Use a post scheduler like Later to pre-plan your posts and have them automatically posted.
- Respond to comments. Anytime someone interacts with your posts, it’s important to be responsive and interact with those users. In particular, when people leave comments on your posts, you should respond back.
- Learn about social media content types. Post Planner put together a great resource to teach you about The 9 Types of Social Media Content You Need to Use. This is a great place to start because not all social media posts are equal.
- Create valuable website content to post on social media. One of the best uses of social media is to post links to your brand’s website. Writing solid blog posts that actually add value to your readers is one way to attract people to your site.
For more social media growth hacks, check out How to Use Instagram to Market Your Photography Business.
Start a Website
If you haven’t already, starting a website is essential for getting your brand out there.
Fortunately, starting your own site is easier than it’s ever been. We’ve put together a quick guide for doing this yourself below:
How to Start a Website in 3 Steps:
- 1). Get web hosting through Bluehost (our web host of choice – used here on FFL). This gives you server space where your website will be setup. Included in this purchase is a domain name!
- 2). Setup your website through WordPress. You can use a free theme to get started, or purchase a premium theme. This can be done in one click through Bluehost!
- 3). Create valuable content. Once your site is looking great, all you need to do is start posting. Write content relevant to your audience.
Do a Giveaway to Attract New Clients
Let’s face it – people like getting things for free!
Because of this, giveaways are a great way to attract a larger audience and promote interaction with your website’s content. A great tool for creating an engaging giveaway is Rafflecopter. By using a tool like this, you can enable people to get additional entries into the giveaway but making them do things like leave a comment on Facebook, retweet a post on Twitter, and so on.
What you give away is also important. The more value you offer, the more likely you will be to have people engaging with your giveaway. Sometimes, you can reach out to different companies for promotional items to give away to your audience.
Know the Value of Word-of-Mouth Referrals
Of all the small business tips we can give you, the best type of marketing is the type done by your clients on your behalf. Offering serious value and surpassing client expectations will often translate to word-of-mouth referrals. This means: clients you’ve done work for talks to their friends, families, colleagues, etc. and recommends you. Those people reach out to you, already pre-qualified because they’ve been told you are great, and are likely to be the easiest sales you will ever make.
In the wedding photography industry, we have started to build our word-of-mouth referrals by simply doing a great job for the clients we’ve already had. It’s crazy when we receive a new inquiry that says something like…”You shot my friend X’s wedding. We really loved the photos you took for them, and they told us they had a great time working with you! We’d love to book you ASAP if you have our date available!”
Was this article helpful?8 Posted by: 👨 Robin L. Jackson
