How do I promote my small offline business?
This is a very common question small business owners often ask - "How do I promote my business?". In this post, we will address this question for small offline businesses. These are businesses that cater to customers within a specific locality or area. These could be both B2C or B2B. A gift shop, a beauty salon, hardware store, interior decorator, furnishing store, dairy products shop, dentist, coaching classes are a few examples of such businesses.
What are the challenges for such small offline business owners?
Before we jump to the solution and suggestions, let us try to understand their challenges and constraints.
- These are mostly family run businesses or a new business started by a passionate individual or small group of family and friends. They are either good at what they do or passionate about the product or service. An individual skilled or passionate about cooking and foods would start her own cafe. Someone good with teaching skills and subject matter expertise may become a teacher or start a coaching class. Being skilled at what they do and sell does not make them an expert at all business disciplines. They may have very little or no expertise in recruitment, sales, marketing, finance etc. To make it worse, not all may have immediate access to a trusted expert.
- A lot of these businesses are solely managed by one person. At best, it could be a couple of owners or members of a family. They are too occupied with the daily operations to have time for planning sales and marketing. Usually, they just go with the flow.