Every small business needs promotion to attract new customers, and luckily, there’s no one best way to promote a small business. Taking advantage of multiple strategies at once means that you can turn around immediate sales and foster long-term, sustainable growth at the same time.
However, it is important to choose the best strategies for your particular business so that you spend your limited resources wisely. To help you understand your options, we’ll review 20 of the best ways to promote a small business. When you’re ready to turn your promotional ideas into a campaign, develop your marketing materials easily with VistaPrint.
Small business promotional checklist
- Goal: Every aspect of your promotional campaign should be tailored around a specific and measurable goal.
- Target audience: Identify which segment of your current or potential audience you need to reach to avoid wasting money on expensive, catch-all promotions.
- Customer journey and sales funnel: Effective promotional messages are relevant to what stage in the customer journey or sales funnel the listeners are in.
- Value proposition: Articulate what you offer customers that they can’t get elsewhere to ensure your promotional pitches resonate.
- Marketing basics: Review the basics of marketing principles and how to develop a marketing plan.
- Resources: Calculate your resources—your budget, workforce availability and time commitments—to identify promotional strategies that are both achievable and yield the highest return on investment (ROI).
Develop your brand identity
Although branding establishes a small business’s visual identity, it is also a form of promotion. Through strong, consistent and effective graphic design, small businesses make their products stand out from the competition with brand logos, packaging, merchandise and marketing materials.
Not only does a solid brand identity convey professionalism, but it also makes the business more memorable, which keeps customers coming back.
Source: Design by leighwill via 99designs by Vista
Hand out business cards
Business cards are more than handouts for contact information—they promote small businesses through one-on-one interactions. While this may not be the most wide-reaching promotional strategy, it’s more personal, and it bolsters your other promotions.
Whenever your business is at a public event like a trade show or festival, it’s always better to have business cards on-hand than to get caught without them.
Source: Design by GoodEnergy via 99designs by Vista
Put up effective signage
The whole point of a sign is to call attention to your business. Because good signage succinctly displays who you are, where you are located, what you sell and any other promotional details, it is especially useful for attracting spur-of-the-moment buyers.
A-frame signs draw foot traffic from the sidewalk, while standing signs or banners draw in traffic from the road. Because signs are reusable, they are a basic promotional tool small businesses should take advantage of early on.
Source: Design by GayanMH via 99designs by Vista
Invest in a website
The majority of shoppers use the internet to research businesses (including local businesses)—so website presence is essential.
For small businesses, launching a robust website is much more affordable and efficient with website builders like Wix. And if you already have a website, there’s always room for improvement. Review the best practices for website design and customize your website with the most robust tools for visitors.
Source: Design by deandesign via 99designs by Vista
Stay active on social media
Social media is now the leading channel where shoppers discover brands. There are many social platforms for small businesses to join, but you should invest only in those relevant to your audience and steadily build your following before expanding to new spaces.
While social media platforms are free, you will need to factor in the cost of premium accounts (which often come with advanced tools for businesses) and the cost of producing content. Even on a budget, there is no shortage of content ideas for small businesses. Develop a scalable strategy, like developing template posts that you can upload quickly and consistently.
Source: Design by Pepper Pack Design via 99designs by Vista
Launch a promotional campaign
Sales events, buy-one-get-one-free deals and gifts-with-purchase promote your business by offering an immediate incentive to shop. This promotion is perfect for introducing new products or shifting attention to slower selling inventory. While slashing prices might not be ideal for small businesses with tight budgets, limited-time sales events can mitigate profit losses while creating a sense of urgency.
Put out print ads
Print advertising provides a straightforward promotional pitch that is generally lower cost than video commercials.
Flyers are useful for promoting specific products or sales, postcards promote business within specific neighborhoods through direct mail, and brochures give extended information on a topic related to small businesses. While this promotional strategy casts a wide net and will not be relevant to every viewer, it quickly builds brand awareness.
Source: Design by Luz Viera Studio via 99designs by Vista
Upload digital ads
Because they are intangible, digital ads like pop-ups and banner ads are designed for momentary viewing. But, they do provide interactive elements like CTA buttons that can generate immediate sales.
Businesses can also track analytics to see in real time how a digital ad is performing and tweak or replace it if necessary. Digital ads are especially useful for small businesses with an invested online presence, like product landing pages CTAs can link visitors to.
Source: Design by Maryia Dziadziulia via 99designs by Vista
Start with pay-per-click advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a type of digital ad typically used for algorithmic platforms, such as social media, search engines and shopping websites. Businesses advance their products to the top of an algorithmically generated list (under a heading like “sponsored results”) and pay only when users click their links. This makes PPC advertising invaluable for small businesses without large advertising budgets, social media followings or SEO traction.
PPC ads have different names on each platform—look into social media ads, paid search ads, promoted and recommended listings.
Encourage word-of-mouth promotion with referrals
Because it’s outside of your direct control, word-of-mouth promotion can seem elusive and unpredictable. However, there are steps small businesses can take to ensure customers are talking about your store with their friends.
For starters, invest in your current customer base instead of chasing after new markets. Loyalty programs like frequent shopper discounts incentivize repeat customers through accumulated rewards. Additionally, hosting an online forum or social media group gives customers a shared space to meet each other and connect over their love of your products or general industry. And once you’ve bolstered that existing customer base, use referral marketing to turn those customers into word-of-mouth ambassadors for your brand.
Source: Rewards card design by Edy Wijaya via 99designs by Vista
Reinforce your SEO efforts
SEO promotes your business website in search engine rankings. Start with the basics of SEO and ensure that strategic areas of your website (like product pages) are optimized with the keywords shoppers use when searching for products like yours.
In addition to optimizing your main website, consider adopting a content marketing strategy. Through a website blog, you can craft informational articles on topics relating to your industry using SEO keywords. At the same time, you promote your business as a knowledge resource.
Keep in touch through email marketing
Email marketing promotes your business directly within customers’ inboxes, and because the correspondence is ongoing and conversational, it has more lasting potential than a quick advertisement.
Building your subscriber list involves putting a prompt at strategic points throughout your website and incentivizing sign-up. Likewise, you’ll need to compel receivers to actually open those emails—research best practices for subject lines and craft newsletter content that will hold readers’ interest.
Source: Design by SFicu via 99designs by Vista
Claim your local listing pages
For as much work as you put into official business channels, many customers discover and research local businesses on platforms you don’t own—like Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook and TripAdvisor. While customers typically submit photos and reviews to these sites, small businesses can claim their own local listing pages, upload professional promotional photography and publicly address any negative experiences. Similarly, filling out profiles on Google Business Page and Bing Places boosts your local SEO efforts.
Partner with other businesses
Through strategic partnerships, small businesses can cross promote their products with other businesses or influencers. By working with a business whose products are complementary but different from your own, you get access to another business’s audience in exchange for promoting their products in your own business. Plus, partnering with industry influencers for sponsored content creates ads with the authority of a peer recommendation.
Source: Design by Fe Melo via 99designs by Vista
Create an affiliate marketing program
Through affiliate marketing, independent marketers and content creators earn a commission by promoting your business with an affiliate link. Because this is a passive strategy, it allows busy small businesses to leave the promotion up to their independent marketing partners.
Unlike PPC ads, commissions are paid out only when a product is purchased through the affiliate link. Small businesses simply set up an affiliate program (usually advertised on their website) and generate affiliate links (through affiliate management software) for accepted partners. With that said, securing top-notch partners may mean putting effort into recruitment.
Get media coverage with a press release
Press coverage provides free promotion through an outlet with a sustained readership.
To get coverage:
- make a list of the outlets you want to be featured in
- find the best contacts for editors and journalists
- craft effective pitches
These pitches often involve something newsworthy about your business that will be relevant to the outlet’s readership (such as a grand opening, new product or community partnership) in which case, you’ll want to put together a press release. Additionally, entertainment outlets provide an opportunity to pitch your products for listicles or seasonal gift guides.
Encourage product reviews
Reviews promote small businesses by encouraging customers to recommend or improve the product.
Positive reviews can be repurposed as quoted testimonials, adding peer authority to your other promotional content. On the other hand, negative reviews are an opportunity to respond and show excellent customer service in action. In addition to securing reviews from everyday customers, reach out to content creators in your industry for authoritative product reviews.
Source: Design by Terry Bogard via 99designs by Vista
Host an in-person event
An in-person event provides a way to promote your business face-to-face with customers. A grand opening gives you an opportunity to create a first impression, both with your products and the people behind them.
Events that are related to your general industry, like hosting a guest speaker, draw in traffic outside your typical customer base. In addition to hosting events, you can take your business on the road to trade shows, outdoor markets or festivals.
Sponsor a local event or charity
Through local sponsorship, small businesses can promote their community in addition to their own business. Consider offering sponsorships to local festivals, parades or sports events like marathons or children’s leagues. In doing so, you can get your name on the event’s promotional products or secure permission to distribute your own products at the event.
For a more charitable sponsorship, partner with a local nonprofit for a fundraising campaign, such as donating a percentage of sales.
Open new distribution channels
Once your small business has grown substantially, the next big promotional strategy is expanding your business operations through new distribution channels.
These can include new pop-up locations, delivery routes or franchise store locations. New distribution channels expand your brand’s local visibility and allow you to grow your business using the same proven model.
Source: 3D design by HTM13™ via 99designs by Vista
Promote your small business the smart way
Choosing the best way to promote your small business involves selectively targeting your audience with resonant campaigns and high quality marketing materials. Fortunately, with so many promotional strategies available for budgets big and small, there’s room to experiment. After that, the next step is to identify those promotions that have worked and develop creative ways to replicate them.
