3 Understated Marketing Options You Need To Be Using

Marketing your small business has never come with so many different methods or opportunities, and while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, being able to pinpoint what will work for you and where to invest your money will help you to achieve a more significant ROI can be tricky especially if you don’t fully understand all of the options available to you.

However, your marketing campaign needs to be fully inclusive of a few different methods to help you reach your target audience and spread the word. This means utilizing a combination of traditional and digital marketing methods to get the results you need and go about your business.

The following avenues are a few of the more understated but still effective marketing methods utilized by companies to drive results and share their business.

Channel Marketing

Channel marketing is using another established business to connect your brand with customers. You are essentially buying into someone else’s contacts and customer base to help you expand and grow your complaint for little outlay.

There needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship for this option to be effective; typically, this is in the way of the company taking a percentage of the profits from sales. For example, selling your product on Amazon is considered channel marketing as you are allowing Amazon to market and promote your product on their site, as well as via recommend items, emails, and featured listings. By harnessing the power of Amazon for your small business, you can piggyback off their success and get your product promoted to an already established and vast audience.

If you plan on using this method, having multiple channels, not just relying on one, is an excellent idea to help broaden your audience. Good ideal for channel marketing includes partnering with influencers, adding products to a pop-up stand in an established retailer, or if you are a B2B business or manufacturer having an established business promoting and using your supplies or products.

Merch

Branded merchandise is arguably one of the most popular forms of marketing there is, and in this day and age of sharing everything on social media, not only do you get people using your branded merch but sharing it with their audience too, if you’re lucky. You can order custom trucker caps from https://matohash.com/collections/custom-trucker-hats and give them out with orders. Have your staff wear them or give them out as promotional freebies and encourage those who get them to share them on social media. You can give out brand merch on charity drives that you support or leave them with a company you partner with to give out to their audience (this is something that is popular in medical facilities as drug companies leave items to be used, which can then be passed down to the patients and so on).

Whether you have a branded uniform your employees can wear out around town, you leave your branded merch at a bar that sells your drinks or glassware, or you hand out your promotional items at trade shows, conventions or community events for people in the industry or local neighbourhood, it’s a great way to get your name out and about.

Partner Collaborations

Partner collaborations work similarly to channel marketing methods, except that while you are partnering with another business, you aren’t solely relying on them to do the marketing for you and your product. You are working with a similar company in the same niche to cross-promote your products.

The key to this type of collaboration is to pick a business that is similar but not too similar to yours so you can mutually benefit from what you are doing. Your products and/or services need to complement each other but not be the same so you can appeal to each other’s audiences; the aim is to boost sales for both of you.

It could be that you own a pet accessory brand and partner with a dog trainer or dog food brand to offer discounts or deals to both your audiences and expose you to a broader section of the market. Remember you need to complement each other, not offer identical things, and you want to make sure the collaboration makes sense. For example, as a pet accessory brand selling leashes or harnesses, you don’t want to partner with a clothing brand for instance, that doesn’t have items relating to pet owners, who is your primary audience, unless they offer items perfect for dog walking, such waterproof boots for wet dog walks or coats for cold, wet walks with dogs. It needs to make sense to both audiences.