Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses - How To Guide For Rising Among the Ranks

There is no doubt you are probably a little stressed in today's world. With all the news on unemployment, taxes, national debt, price ceilings, laying off workers, foreclosures, etc. It's becoming a scary world out there. Especially as banks are restricting the amount of loans they are giving out. Some businesses are even turning to payday loans that charge an exuberant amount of interest. I was reading about a small business owner that took a $50,000 dollar payday loan, and had to pay back $75,000 within 6 months! That's just ridiculous, and probably hurt him more than it helped him.

So what does this mean for your local small business?

Here I am going to give you several marketing strategies for your small business to follow or adapt to your individual needs. Most of the ideas are free or inexpensive, but still have the potential of increasing your customer base. They are as follows:

1. Create a Facebook Page
2. Create a Google Plus Business Page
3. Get Involved in the Community
4. Create Loyal Customer Program

First Two Steps

So the first two steps are to create a Facebook and Google plus page. Facebook just reached over 800 million users, those are all available at the click of a button. Then the Google plus page will allow you to be in contact with other businesses, and share what is working and what is not working.

When you create the Facebook page, make sure you also install the free Facebook Fan of the Week App. Install it around noon, and then once a week, on the day and time you install it, it will choose a fan of the week that has participated on your Facebook page. There you can have a weekly prize of your choice.

Third Step-Get Involved in the Community

After that you want to get involved in the community.One thing to remember here, is that familiarity breeds trust. So here you want to do anything you can to get involved in the community, and let people know what you and your business are about. A lot of people are getting fed up with companies like Wal-Mart that comes in and drives small businesses out of business, then hires minimum wage employers.
So people will appreciate you giving back to the community unlike the big business.

Fourth Step-Customer Loyalty Program

The options for this are unlimited. You could do a points system, and once they reached the certain points they can redeem them for points. Or you can do the top five customers for the month and you treat them to something nice to appreciate their purchases.

These are all simple and free marketing strategies that you can implement today.