A promising idea and a clear plan are only half the success in business. Even the presence or absence of start-up capital does not always play a decisive role. A huge number of companies go bankrupt within the first year after opening. This is exactly the time when the company is actively “promoting” and building up a customer base. Therefore, it is important to think through every detail about how to promote your business. Without competent advertising, this is almost impossible to do..

Decide on a budget

First of all, an entrepreneur must decide on the budget that he is willing to spend on promoting his own business. If it comes to a large business in which quite large amounts of money have been invested, entrepreneurs spare no expense on advertising. When the start-up capital allows, you can entrust this task to professionals - an advertising agency. They will make sure that information about the company flashes in and on public transport, in the media, on posters in the city center, on the walls of buildings, etc.

If we are talking about a small business, when start-up capital is already limited, there is practically no money left for good and expensive advertising. Therefore, an entrepreneur has to think about how to promote his business on his own. But this does not mean that budget methods of promotion cannot be effective.

Internet

Thanks to the Internet, a lot of problems can be solved, so many people cannot imagine life without it. In the hands of an entrepreneur, the Internet can be an excellent tool for promoting your own business.

Everyone has known for a long time that the website is the face of the company. And the more attractive this site is, the more clients will want to use your services. If you know absolutely nothing about website development and SEO promotion and don’t even know how to quickly promote your business on the Internet, it’s better to entrust this matter to professionals. And those who care about their business and are not ready to overpay into the contractor’s pocket can be advised to undergo an educational program atfree seminars and promote yourself using online services, for example, SeoPult.

In addition to traditional website promotion in search engines, you can use banner and display advertising to attract buyers to the site. Also such a function is needed to make the brand recognizable. But don't forget that no advertising should be too intrusive. Otherwise it will lead to a completely opposite effect.

If creating a good website is beyond your means, social networks will come to the rescue. Some people underestimate all the possibilities of social networks, although many entrepreneurs find their clients there. To do this, you need to create a group or page that advertises the company’s services and start inviting potential clients.

Do not forget that today there are catalogs of companies where you can register your organization for free, describe the features of its activities, and advertise several product positions. You can advertise your services on thematic websites and forums. Free message boards on the Internet will also help entrepreneurs find their clients.

Flyers and business cards

It doesn't take much money to create a small batch of business cards or flyers. Leaflets should display not only the address and telephone number of the company, but also competitive advantages that distinguish your company from the rest. It is better to distribute such advertising in places where your target audience gathers. For example, it is better to promote services for minor household repairs directly at the entrances (put an ad in the mailbox), and information about a new cafe can be distributed next to the shopping center.

Guides for promoting small and micro-businesses teach you to keep a low profile. Are you a copywriter? Go to the stock exchanges, learn 100 secrets of promotion and earn 3 kopecks. But a stable 3 kopecks! Are you a designer? And again go to freelance exchanges, fight for one-time penny orders. Sound familiar?

My name is Kira Kam. I run a content marketing agency called Business Content. We are typical small businesses, like many of our clients. And, like many small companies, we strive to be a leader in our niche.

Until recently, this statement would have seemed inadequate. The leader of a niche in the minds of the majority is a huge corporation or at least a world-famous star. But the world has changed. In the last six months alone, we have developed 40 large-scale content strategies for very small companies. And we see opportunities for serious growth, even if your business is just you and your knowledge and skills.

Undermining Foundations and Breaking Covers

Let's start by debunking the myths. It is with such stereotypical attitudes that clients come to us, whose potential allows us to win, if not the world, then the hearts of many thousands of clients. Only unfounded fears get in the way.

1. Big clients and big budgets go to giants

It is a myth. Many federal and even world-class companies quite successfully cooperate with both small agencies and private specialists. When we first launched our agency, one of our first clients was La Moda. At that time, the agency consisted of two people, and no one had heard of us.

2. You can’t get through to large clients without kickbacks and connections.

And this is also a myth. You can’t get through to clients from the major leagues without just one component - without obvious benefits.

3. “Achieve first!”

Another myth is that first you must rent an office, make a cool website, build a huge portfolio, get a dozen awards and fame. And only after that do you have the moral right to approach clients from the major leagues with your proposal. I won’t promise that everyone has a chance to get Gazprom as a client. But here is our experience.

• We work in virtual office mode.
• Our website is still unfinished and not completed, but this does not prevent us from earning money and participating in notable projects. For example, one of the latest is a newsletter for training organizer Tony Robbins and Jordan Belfort. Try to understand us correctly: the website is important, the quality of the virtual showcase is important, but there is no need to cherish perfectionism. You can get the first results, even if your outer shell is far from ideal.

So where do you get big clients from?

Now let's figure out what to do to teleport from freelance exchanges to the world of large projects and large budgets.

1. Stop selling services

What is the difference between an ordinary client and a big league client? The first one will buy a selling text, website design, coaching session, but the second one will not pay attention to this little detail. Large clients need solutions to problems.It is for the solutions that they pay, and not for texts, design or anything else. If you can understand this difference, then be sure to learn how to make those very proposals that hit the mark.

I will share my experience of promoting a very complex service, which, at first glance, is not needed by anyone. Among other things, we develop and implement corporate standards for business and commercial correspondence. (It even sounds terrible, right?) It is impossible to sell this service in this form. Clients are not buying corporate standards, they are paying for every manager in their company to write comps and business letters with the same efficiency.

Check what you sell and what large customers really need. And just change the pitch.

2. Test the offer before the official launch

I am writing this part not only for you, but also for myself - for edification. Now we, like some of you, are on the verge of launching a new service. Just a couple of years ago, we simply threw a fledgling idea into the world, for which we often received reality due to our ambitions. And it hurts.

To avoid pain, be smarter than us.

• Test new services on cats. Take your friends' projects and improve them. Feel free to make mistakes and make mistakes. Test again. And again. And so on until you bring the technology to mind.
• Start promoting your business or individual service before the official launch.

The audience needs to be nurtured and warmed up so that at the right time it is ready to buy.

This will make any start easier. For a rewarding experience, take a look at Another Point agency. This is a “daughter” of the very famous Ingate company. This agency officially opened in 2015, and the group Facebook they launched back in 2011! For four years they published useful content on their topic, collected subscribers, and attracted future clients. It is not surprising that the agency’s launch was ultimately successful.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you need to spend the same amount of time warming up your audience. But it’s definitely worth checking demand and interest, as well as working with the audience before start of sales of your new service or set of services of your new business.

3. Give up blind faith in traditional promotion tools

For example, cold calling is still considered the main way to find clients. Is it so? Not at all! This is proven by our experience and the experience of many other companies in the service sector.

We parted ways with our last sales manager and completely abandoned cold calling three years ago. We now have a networking department. Each agency employee who is interested in career growth takes on additional responsibilities and participates in the search for partners and the implementation of partner projects. We do not sell our services over the phone, we do not run contextual advertising that is useless in our case, but we act through partners. And it works.

Try to look at it from the outside. Perhaps your cold calls and the standard “context + landing” scheme work with zero results. Don't be afraid to swim against the tide! Just try replacing a cold call, for example, with a free master class for your partner’s dealer network. Test different methods of promotion and sales, be critical, not gullible.

4. Train your eyesight!

There is one very interesting question: why, in fact, will a major client choose me? It happens that the benefit of the offer is obvious, and the channel for attracting customers is chosen perfectly, but somehow the customers don’t come. There may be many reasons, but here’s what you definitely shouldn’t forget about.

If you have a vision, your chances of leading not one, but dozens or hundreds of clients of the level you need, increase significantly. What does vision mean? This is the ultimate goal of the journey and a set of certain values ​​that your audience shares.

If you write texts to increase sales, this is not a vision yet. Who doesn’t write them! But if you can explain the meaning of your work, if there is one at all, then it will be easier for you to explain to the client why they should choose you. Benefit + shared value = deal of the century.

Try to look for a semantic superstructure in your work. And make it another argument in your favor.

5. Come out of the shadows

The problem with small businesses is not that they are small. And the fact is that it is invisible. Many of us can call ourselves complete introverts: we sit at our computers, work on the quality of our services, but the world knows nothing about us. And we don’t even try to talk about ourselves.

To avoid the need to pester customers with cold calls and eat their eyes out with advertising jumping out from every corner of every site, you will have to come out of the shadows.

• Become an evangelist for your business.

Make social networks a platform to broadcast your expertise and your values. Showcase your knowledge and skills. The main thing is to do it regularly and don’t be greedy. To be interested in you, be useful before how they will buy something from you. There can be a lot of options: online consultations on your topic, checklists and e-books for downloading, free audit...

This article won’t fit all my experience, but let’s talk about the important elements of promotion, without which your business will not be stable.

Step #1 - Goal Setting

The first and most important thing for you as a company leader is to set a measurable and clear goal. Why do you need a business? Many of my clients, by skipping only this stage, lose hundreds of thousands and millions by realizing unconscious intentions.

For example, one of my clients, instead of performing managerial duties, spent 30% of his time programming websites. And when he had a clear goal, the company’s income increased by 1.5 times.

Step #2 - Who is your client?

This is the most important question that you should ask yourself constantly. If you know who your client is: what he looks like, what his habits are, what problems he has, what he is willing to pay for, where he goes, what he likes, then you have the keys to collaborating with him.

Business is a collaboration between you and your clients. If you don't know your client's profile, there are potentially very few points of contact between you and your client.

An incorrectly chosen target audience leads to a small number of sales. Usually such clients are very complex and you have to spend a lot of time on them.

Step #3 - Delegation

I’ll give you an example of when I myself felt very strongly the importance of delegation. I received orders for training materials, and since I had all the materials on hand, I decided that I would do this work quickly.

It took 30 minutes to print the materials. Another 40 minutes to pack and fill out the forms. And when I came to the post office, it turned out that something was broken and they would have to send it tomorrow.

Having calculated how much time it took me (about 2 hours in total), I realized that during the same time I could come up with a plan and sell three more such sets of materials. And earn 2.5 times more.

The more you take on functions that are not yours, the more you lose.

The amount of NOT delegated Work is proportional to the Amount of Lost Money.

Step #4 - Make a List of What You Already Use to Promote Your Business

This is an important step to take a clear look at what resources you are already using. Don't be surprised if your list consists of 1-4 items. Many of my clients do not even know that it is important to promote their business; some have not even heard of marketing.

Make a list and analyze what results the strategies you use are bringing you. If you don't have a marketer or coach to help you grow your business, then it's important for you to understand what works for your business. How much does it cost for your client to contact you?

Step #5 - Come up with new ways to promote

Why is it important for a manager (owner)? In order to devote it to its functions - thinking through the company’s development strategy.

A good exercise for the brain would be to come up with 2-3 ideas every day on how to promote your business.

Test and implement in the development of your business.

Step #6 - Training

You can't know what you don't know (many great people have said this). This is why it is important to educate. Much of what we are trying to come up with has already been implemented at least 20-30 years ago.

Use 3 sources for learning - books, training and coaching. They are not mutually exclusive, but complementary.

Step #10 - Collect Contacts of Potential Clients

According to statistics, most people will become your clients only from 5-8 contacts (meetings, letters, faxes, calls, etc.).

It's great if you're in their sight. Start collecting a database of potential clients on your website. Create some kind of bonus, gift for subscribing.

For example, people come to your website - you offer them to receive a free report, book, audio, video on a topic of interest to them (related to your activities). They leave their name and email.

And you can send them interesting news, articles and useful material. Use the service to collect contacts and maintain the Smartresponder.ru mailing list

The more difficult you sell a product or service, the longer it takes them to decide whether to trust you.

There are a huge number of ways you can collect contacts of potential clients live. The idea is basically the same.

Step #11 - Collect Customer Contacts

It's great if you maintain a customer base. If you don't lead, then start. You can simply ask your clients to fill out a client card with a confidentiality guarantee.

My clients often forget that, according to statistics, it is always easier to sell to those who have already bought something from you:

1. Your clients already have trust in you
2. They may recommend your services to someone or buy something else from you.
3. Do you have their contacts?
4. You don’t need to waste time on incomprehensible people who still don’t know whether they will become your clients or not.

Correct work with your clients is the key to the stability of your business. To do this, it is important for you to build your sales department, give clear instructions, train, assign someone responsible and sometimes check how they are doing their job.

But this is just the beginning...

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The How to Grow a Small Business series of articles is designed for entrepreneurs who want to gain more control over the likelihood of their small business succeeding.

Control– a subjective concept. In this regard, our approach to reduce the level of subjectivity in the proposed recommendations is to have a strict scientific justification, which was the result of marketing research by recognized experts.

Methodology for promoting small businesses

“Consumption is the only purpose of production; and attention to the manufacturer is determined only until the moment it arouses the interest of the consumer.”

On the commercial market offer similarly engine in vehicle development. Analogy demand most closely defined by role driver. The fact of existence of entrepreneurship already tells about the level offers above zero. However, it (the fact) does not at all mean the automatic existence of demand. On the contrary, often the level of demand for small business products in the absence of targeted stimulation tends to zero, or even has a negative value (discourages buyers). In this regard, the main task of a small entrepreneur is, first of all, promoting demand for your commercial offer.

The How to Grow a Small Business series of articles aims to provide entrepreneurs with science-based recommendations that apply to different (but specific) types of businesses (for example, a retail store or a beauty salon). If you don't find a list of approaches designed specifically to grow your type of business, please leave a comment with your interest below. Priority in further publication of development techniques will be given to the most popular requests.

“Don’t move things around, but the tongue of the hand is shorter.” Folk saying

Any article telling about the possibilities and technologies of business promotion can only serve stimulant to action. Knowledge itself has no value if it is not put into practice. In this regard, we hope to create an active discussion among readers that encourages action and irritates the status quo.

Recommendations related to a specific type of business are developed using a full-fledged systematic approach, which allows us to analyze in detail and determine the role and significance of each element of the business development mechanism (process). This approach was developed and standardized by the collective efforts of several dozen American marketing professors under the leadership of Del I. Hawkins and David L. Mothersbaugh and is used by many leading academic and professional marketing institutions.

Before we look at this system, we are advised to expand . Customer value is the difference between the benefit/benefit (both tangible and intangible) received from a product and the cost (financial, psychological, time) of its acquisition. To survive (and thereby develop) in the market, an entrepreneur needs to create or offer greatest value (from the consumer's point of view, of course) in its industry segment compared to competitors' offerings.

Since the relationship between cost and benefit from a product is usually directly proportional (that is, the greater the benefit, the higher the cost), in order to maximize profit, the customer value offered must noticeably surpass that of competitors, but no more than what needs to be convinced. This is precisely why the use of a system is necessary, which allows you to calculate and clearly direct limited resources entrepreneur for production noticeably competitive customer value.

Let's look at the process of creating customer value that we use when making recommendations to a typical entrepreneur in a series of articles “How to promote a small business”:

1) Market analysis. In the first step, we conduct a detailed study

a) small entrepreneur,
b) its competitors,
c) consumers,
d) market conditions.

2) Market segmentation. At this stage

a) consumer needs are identified,
b) consumers are grouped according to their needs,
c) priorities are determined for the needs being considered,
d) the most attractive segment(s) for the entrepreneur is selected

3) Exploring the purchasing decision process. This step is to study the process by which

a) the consumer recognizes his problem/need,
b) finds information to solve this problem (product or service),
c) evaluates the alternatives available to him,
d) makes a purchase,
e) uses the product (or service result) in practice,
f) forms the final assessment of the product.

4) Marketing strategy. Here, based on information from the previous analysis, a targeted policy is developed regarding

a) positioning of a commercial product,
b) its properties,
c) its prices,
d) consumer access to the product,
e) stimulating consumer interest in the product,
f) issues of pre- and post-sales customer service.

In other words, the answer to the question is formed - How an entrepreneur will create competitive customer value.

5) results. The final stage evaluates the achieved effectiveness

a) consumer,
b) small entrepreneur and
c) society as a whole.

Working out the final marketing strategy for promoting demand consists of bringing the concepts of marketing activities into the most productive alignment with.

Core consumer behavior models serves Lifestyle And consumer self-awareness(in our case, those that we segment at the second stage of the customer value creation process). In the model on Lifestyle influenced by:

1. External influences which include

a) Public culture/mentality(where sometimes it is necessary to go deeper and identify subculture). This is expressed in traditions, concepts, values, skills, habits formed in society.
b) Demographic characteristics, which are expressed in the size, spread and structure of both the segment itself and its social “container”;
c) Social status, which is expressed in the hierarchical division of society regarding the lifestyle, values ​​and relationships of its “members”;
d) "Help" group(stimulating individual relationships to something), which has informational, normative And identification influence on members of the segment in question;
e) Family environment, which is similar to the “reference” group, but with additional motivations and levels of commitment;
f) Various marketing activities(the impact of all marketing messages present).

2. Internal influences which include

a) Peculiarities of perception(how stimulation of the consumer’s senses is transformed into information for him);
b) Features of the knowledge acquisition process(consumer behavior is determined primarily not by innate, but by “accumulated” knowledge, and therefore it is important for us to understand how it is formed);
c) Memory(how detailed and for how long the consumer retains the information conveyed by the marketing campaign);
d) Motives(goals and directions of consumer behavior);
e) Character traits(in other words, type consumer behavior, determined to achieve set goals);
f) Emotions(whose nature is explained by the interaction motives And character traits with external factors);
g) Personal relationships to objects/objects (long-term organization emotions, motivations, perception And accumulated knowledge in relation to certain aspects of the environment).

Further, Lifestyle And consumer self-awareness determines needs and desires, which in turn initiate The process of consumer formation of a purchase decision. This process can be organized into the following stages:

1. Situational circumstances(impact of factors related to time And place, and not permanent for the consumer);
2. Recognizing a problem/need/desire(result of discrepancy desired consumer state with reality, which is sufficient to activate the process of developing a consumer decision);
3. Finding information to solve a problem(depending on the perceived importance of the decision, the consumer resorts to either nominal, limited, or expanded searching for information);
4. Evaluation of alternatives(depending on the type of information search, the consumer may resort to or avoid considering alternatives);
5. Final choice(analysis of preferences in the process of solving a problem, which consists in determining priorities for the characteristics, size, usefulness of a product in question);
6. Making a purchase(analysis of the choice of sales channel (retail, Internet, advertisements, catalogues, or other channels);
7. Post-sales experience(analysis of post-sale satisfaction, brand loyalty, disappointment).

Obviously, the outcome of the purchase decision process generates consumer experience. Obtained in this way experience closes the considered model of consumer behavior by influencing, in turn, the initial external And internal factors.