How do I promote my business?

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.

Sales Case Study with Example

Sales Case Study - Banking and Insurance 

This is a sales case study with two examples. Minu, a banker and Suraj, a relationship manager with an insurance company meet Rajat to convince him for investing in respective schemes. What made them lose or win the sale?

Video Link for the Sales Case Study

Sales Case Study Video

Rajat works as a customer service manager with an e-commerce company. He has two personal items on his agenda for the day:

• He needs to visit his bank to deposit a cheque
• One of his policies with the insurance company is about to mature next week. The relationship manager from the company had scheduled a meeting with Rajat

Rajat decides to visit the bank early in the morning.

11 B2B Marketing Statistics to know in 2020

Marketing and lead generation are dynamic processes. You must always be up to date with the latest trends and developments.

Here we present 11 B2B marketing statistics every business owner and marketing professional should be aware of in 2020.

3 simple tips for leaders to inspire and help their teams WIN more often

All successful teams have an inspiring leader who leads them through crisis. A leader shows them the way when the going gets tough. A leader who enables the team to find answers and solutions.

How do good leaders inspire and help their teams to win?

How do leaders challenge yet motivate their teams to achieve their true potential?

These are three traits of great leaders:

• Don't set TARGETS. Set GOALS: targets are meant to be achieved whereas Goals inspire people to go beyond. Targets can restrict individuals and they only think, plan and strive to reach that number. Goals on the other hand motivate them to surpass their previous best and aim higher

• Focus on WHAT but focus more on HOW and WHY: a lot of managers and supervisors stop at letting the team know what needs to be done. However it is more important to show them the way. How to get something done and Why is it important. Employees take more ownership when they understand the importance of their role and contributions

• Make feedback POSITIVE: giving a feedback is not a fault finding exercise. It is an opportunity to identify and discuss ways to improve. Mistakes and missed deadlines or targets need to be discussed as opportunities

How to market your small business at a low budget?

Businesses are planning their strategies for the remainder of the year with the Unlock phase 1 and 2. The three months long Covid 19 lockdown has put small businesses under a lot of stress. They are uncertain about how and when will customers come back. Marketing and promoting their small business is very important, however the budget constraints need to be handled.

Here we will discuss some DIY and easy ways to market your small business at a zero or low budget.

1. Create or update your “Google My Business” page. If you have not created a Google my Business page yet, put that on the top of your list. If you already have a page, update your profile.
1. Google has marked businesses as “temporarily closed” during the lockdown. You would need to go and change that manually to let customers know that your business is open now. If the status says “temporarily closed”, customers may not call for enquiries
2. Update latest images about your office, shop, team and products
3. If you can come with a good offer or discount, update the details on your page