Finding new sales leads in a difficult economic climate is particularly difficult and more costly than normal. The good news is that there are many e-marketing tools and techniques are available to help small businesses to achieve this at very low or zero cost.
Websites are becoming an important source of sales leads for many companies. And, prospective buyers are increasingly using Google and online directories to research products, services and suppliers. So, it pays to tune-in and learn how to play the online marketing game.
Fight back against large companies
Bigger companies may have some advantages over you: more money, more staff, more of everything? However they have some disadvantages too and you can turn those to your advantage by using your winning qualities to compete against them.
• Large firms are slow to respond. You may have a much better feel for changing market conditions and customer requirements, and can act quickly.
TIP: Think about scheduling more conversations with prospects and customers (especially at times when you aren’t trying to make a sale).
• Big players are impersonal. You probably have an innate advantage simply because customers can put a face to a name.
TIP: Consider making a virtue of your own experience and expertise and that of your team. Use your website, blogs and social media to tell everyone.
• They aren’t local. Lot’s of people like to deal with local businesses: it can be cheaper, they are usually more convenient to deal with and it helps the local economy.
TIP: Unless you are planning for world domination then emphasise your local attributes. We’ll explore how you make it count from a search engine perspective later on.
We have a lot of experience of helping small businesses to improve their sales and marketing efforts, and we would like to share with you a few practical e-marketing suggestions, starting with website related activities.
Online PR
Getting on-line and hard copy press coverage is another tool that small businesses can exploit very effectively. Press coverage is great at stressing characteristics such as location, personality, difference and success.
Online PR can generate leads and enhance your website SEO by providing inbound links that increase the perceived importance of your site. Some good online PR sites that we use include www.pr-inside.com, www.freepressreleases.co.uk and www.prlog.org.
Email Campaigns
Email can completely remove some of the advantages that big companies have over smaller ones in acquiring new customers. It is very cheap and pretty easy to create sales generating calls to action (“call this number now for your 20% discount).
It is really important to make sure that you focus on the benefits of your offering rather than just features. And think campaigns rather than one-off emails because it is good to go for a few bites of the cherry to get your message across.
Pay Per Click
For some of our companies Pay Per Click advertising can be a very successful method of “punching above their weight”. You need to select the keywords that will trigger an ad being displayed quite carefully and also make sure that their ads are attractive enough to stimulate a click through.
Remember that you can also filter traffic by geographical location so if you want to work locally, then this an option for you.
What can VHQ offer?
E-marketing is just one of VHQ’s management support services. We work closely with our VHQ® WebOffice clients to help them adopt effective management practices across a wide range of business management subjects. Others include sales, project management and operating processes.
If you would like to understand how Virtual HQ Solutions can help your business to take advantage of Virtual Office technology then contact Gareth Edwards on 024 769 8070, via email at
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About the author
 Gareth Edwards is a director of Virtual HQ Solutions Ltd which provides web based tools and support services to start-ups and growing businesses. Gareth has successfully set up several businesses himself as well as working in sales and marketing in the corporate sector. He has worked as an e-Business Consultant for The National B2B Centre at the University of Warwick providing support to West Midlands based SMEs.
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VHQ Article - eMarketing Techniques.pdf