Marketing a Small Business? Don’t Play the Imitation Game! Your mother was right. You shouldn’t try to be something you’re not. This is an important lesson for small businesses, as well.
Many small businesses believe that in order to be successful, they need to do things like much bigger companies. However, the companies they try to emulate usually have much deeper pockets.

When it comes to successfully marketing your small business the key is to accentuate the fact that you are a small business. By capitalizing on this fact you will be much more successful than if you try to be something you are not!

What follows are five ways to make the most of your status as a small business!

1. Dive into direct mail. With more and more big companies using email marketing, consumers’ regular mailboxes aren’t as crowded as in the past. This means your direct mail campaign will stand out more. Further, research shows that direct mail has a higher response rate than email marketing. Combine your direct mail with email marketing and your response rate will increase even more.
2. Implement a customer loyalty program. Customer loyalty programs are easy to set up and are a great way to track and reward your customers. Further, since retaining current customers is more cost effective than finding new ones, these programs pay off in more ways than one.
3. Purchase Facebook ads. Facebook allows you to target your ads to reach an audience based on a variety of demographics, including age, gender, interests or geographic location. These ads are a cost-effective way to get your small business in front of those most likely to do business with you.
4. Engage the media. Establish a relationship with your local media outlets so that when reporters are looking to do a story on holiday shopping, for example, they turn to you. You also can send a press release to media outlets to announce new product launches or other events that the public may be interested in.
5. Engage in complementary advertising. Joint promotional campaigns allow you to partner with another business to boost sales for both of you. For instance, if you own a pet boarding business you could partner with a local pet shop and each of your businesses could give away coupons for the other’s products or services. The possibilities are endless and by adding another business to your marketing mix your reach can be dramatically increased!

Instead of trying to compete with national companies that have resources you can’t match, take advantage of your status as a home-grown and local business. After all, this is something much bigger companies will never be able to do as well as you!