Reach Customers without Spending Much Money

Plan for a spread that includes great food and non-alcoholic beverages. A great way to do this on a budget is to barter services with a local restaurant. For example, if they will agree to provide the food, you can agree to provide a discounted or free service to them. There are many creative ways to make the arrangement mutually beneficial to each business owner. This strategy also enables you to expand your relationships in the community. Partnering with a local vendor also should enable you to advertise the event and share the costs.

The day of the open house, make sure someone is visible to greet guests and thank them for attending. Introduce yourself and ask participants how they heard about the event. Write down their answers, especially if you are using more than one marketing or advertising medium!

A great strategy is to prepare some type of gift bag that you can give to each attendee during the event. Inside the gift bag, make sure you include all of your contact information and something that will make them want to come back to see you within a short period of time, such as a time-limited coupon. Again, make it something you can track or measure that is related to the event.

It’s also a good idea to enter each attendee into a drawing to win some sort of fun prize as a thank you for coming. This gives you another reason for collecting contact information that you can then enter into your customer database. To expand this idea, simply make it an annual event.

As a small business owner, devote yourself to something that doesn’t have anything to do with anything but helping others. What are you passionate about? Bring a little of your philanthropic enthusiasm to work, and ask others to get involved.

Talk to your employees. What is meaningful to everyone? What can your employees become involved in that allows you to make a contribution?

Consider housing projects like Habitat for Humanity, mentoring children through a local literacy program, helping out at the next adoptathon at your local Humane Society, volunteering to coach a special needs baseball team or aiding local disaster victims with clean-up efforts. As the old saying goes, many hands make light work.

When you find the right group, charity or cause and invest and contribute as a team, many wonderful things occur. You’ll do some real good, and doing good is good for business. People will talk about your business and your team. They will tell your story because they want to. They will feel good about sharing their neighborhood and community with you.

Because of this, they will want to patronize and support your business. Doing good deeds is great for your corporate identity. Much of your success can be measured in terms of customer retention, employee retention, referrals and perception.

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