Depending on the nature of your business, there’s a good chance that you rely on repeat business from the same customers, at least to some degree. That can have a big effect on choosing what marketing tools to use in order to grow your business, and how you use them. To begin with, it may be helpful to conduct some form of customer survey to see what works and doesn’t work for you, among your existing customer base. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things in order to improve customer loyalty and profitability—remember, these are the people who keep your business going—but also be sure that you’re not discarding the things that make them loyal to you in the first place.

One good way to secure customer loyalty and learn a lot about how your customers like what you’re doing is to use a mobile text messaging platform, such as YouTextIt. Bear in mind that customers are often willing to give you their number and allow you to occasionally send them text message marketing, but only if there’s something in it for them. Particularly to get a text message marketing campaign off the ground, it’s best to offer some form of coupon or discount. For example, you could say that “every Monday this month, we’ll send subscribers a unique coupon code.” That will encourage people to sign up, and also to come back in once they get the coupon. Once that’s off the ground, you can use the messaging system to run promotions on certain products or services, or to let your customers know about changes that you’re making. YouTextIt’s second-to-none reporting will allow you to know how effective each of these campaigns are, and you can use that data as if it were a survey—without even asking your customers a single question.

The bottom line is that if you rely on repeat business, or you’re interested in creating some, YouTextIt is a powerful marketing tool that you can’t afford to ignore. Its versatility makes it ideal for a wide variety of applications (check out all the different businesses which use it), and the expertise we use in setting up the campaigns and helping you run them is so involved that it’s like having your own marketing department.

Every small business is a little different, but chances are if you’ve successfully run yours for long enough, you’ve learned what to expect in some areas. In particular, most businesses have a busy season, as well as slower seasons, which could vary greatly from business to business. You probably already plan your staffing and inventory around how busy you expect to be during a certain season, but what about your marketing?

When crafting a marketing campaign or a set of marketing tools such as a web site, we always try to focus on what the goal of the marketing campaign is. This sounds obvious—and it is—but we’ve found that it’s often so obvious that it gets overlooked, or taken for granted. It’s easy to think that because the goal of marketing is to increase sales, and you’re marketing, then you’re effectively working towards that goal. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case.

When you stop to focus more tightly on your goals, you can begin to create more nuanced ones. For example, if your current marketing is enough to keep you busy during one season, perhaps the best way to help your business is to target your marketing and products toward the “off” season.

With the right focus, it could even become another busy season.

Selling your products online can be a daunting task, especially if you’ve never done it before. It can seem like an unwelcome distraction when you’re working hard to keep things moving smoothly off the web, and if you’re not the tech-savvy type, it can seem like an impossible hurdle to overcome. But at Find It Local 411, we’re all about helping our clients overcome seemingly impossible hurdles, and build their business in ways they didn’t even know they could.

Where to start

Depending on your needs and products, the easiest place to start could be putting your products (or even just the most popular ones) on the Find It Local 411 Marketplace. It’s a great introduction for those who want to get their feet wet selling online, and it’s easy to scale it up to sell your whole line of products there! Best of all, it’s completely free to set up an account. Check it out! When you’re ready to take it to the next level, we’re there for you again, with our complete suite of web design and development, plus a wide variety of marketing services to get your products and your brand out there.

Why you need to do it

We love helping businesses thrive locally, but that doesn’t mean that people everywhere shouldn’t be able to use and enjoy your great products. Also, we don’t have to tell you that sales in certain products and regions can fluctuate from time to time; wouldn’t it be nice to have sales someplace else pick up when your local sales take a dip? Better still, there could be entire markets for your product that you haven’t tapped yet, because they have no way to find you—until now, that is.

Whether you’re just starting out marketing your products online, thinking of re-vamping your store’s functionality, or marketing your products to a new audience, our online shopping, design, and marketing team can help you get your business to where you want it to be.