Increase Business Visibility
One of dozens of strategies listed and linked to here:
How to Make More Money
From Your Business
By Steve Gillman
In some cases there are obvious ways to increase business
visibility. For example, a flower shop hidden away in a slow
part of town can choose to move to a better location with more
traffic. But not every business can so easily find ways to make
more people aware of their existence, and do so without breaking
the marketing budget.
Here are a few suggestions for ways to increase the visibility
of a business. They may or may not apply to your particular case,
but they should get you thinking. If you afterward look for ways
to make people more aware of your company--starting with cheap
solutions--you'll almost certainly find a few.
Use Signs
A few signs can help a lot. A bigger sign out front can help
with a business that operates from a retail location, but there
are also other ways to use signs. Sings for your car are relatively
cheap and give you a lot of exposure if you drive much. Signs
placed in clients' yards are used by landscapers, painters, roofers
and others. These are inexpensive and are reused many times.
Move
There are times when it can be worth hundreds of dollars more--or
even thousands of dollars more--per month for rent, just to be
in a better location. This obviously depends on the nature of
your business. In thinking about a move, remember that it is
the additional profit that has to cover the rent increase, not
the revenue. In other words, if your operating margin is 25%,
you need $2,000 more in monthly sales from a new location to
justify an additional $500 in rent. Of course, nothing is so
simple in business or life: you also have to consider the long-term
value of the new customers you might gain.
Sponsor an Event
It doesn't have to be expensive to sponsor an event of some
sort, and this can be a great way to increase the visibility
of your business. How you do this depends on what you sell, of
course. A pizzeria could donate free pizzas as prizes for a competition,
for example.
Write a Column
As the owner of a business, you are most likely an expert
in one or more subjects. As such, you might offer to write a
column for a local paper. If you owned an auto-repair shop, for
example, your column might be "Car Care Tips." If you
owned a pet store you could write about pet care. Be sure that
you offer useful information, and that you are allowed to mention
the name of your business in each column.
Cross-Promote
If your business is one that does regular billing of customers
by mail, you could include flyers advertising a non-competing
business. Why? Because in exchange that company will do the same
for you. You both increase business visibility for the minimal
cost of printing small flyers.
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