Small Business Marketing

How do I start marketing my small business?

Marketing a small business involves a strategic approach to promote your products or services to a specific targeted, local audience. To get started, CliquePrize® recommends that small business owners follow these 5 steps:

1. Define your target audience: Identify the ideal customer profile for your small business. Where do they live? How far are they from your location? Do you understand their demographics such as their age band, income level and spending habits, marital status, education, number of children, and interests?
2. Establish clear digital marketing goals: Determine what you want to achieve through your digital marketing efforts. It could be increasing brand awareness, generating leads, driving sales, or building customer loyalty. If the goal is to drive leads, what is in your appetite for cost per lead? Do you know? Have you done the math?
3. Develop a compelling brand identity: Create a unique and consistent brand image that resonates with your target audience. This includes designing a memorable logo, selecting brand colors, and developing a brand voice. Don't think of this step as a hassle. Even something as basic as your business name could be holding you back from winning customers.
4. Design a comprehensive digital marketing strategy: Don't convince yourself that one tactic is all you need. For example, flyers, brochures or word of mouth. In almost all cases, one tactic alone won't cut it. Your small business needs to think about casting a wider net to attract new prospects while testing new channels. This may include running a giveaway on CliquePrize®, developing social media content, creating online videos, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and paid digital advertising.
5. Implement and track your marketing campaigns: Execute your digital marketing initiatives and monitor their performance. Use analytics tools to measure key metrics which small business owners call Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and make data-driven decisions.

How does a small businesses allocate and manage marketing expenses?

Start with determining your what you can afford as your Cost Per Lead also known as CPL versus Cost Per Sale also known as CPS. This is known as your appetite.

CPL refers to the average cost of acquiring a lead, while CPS represents the average cost of acquiring a customer who makes a purchase.

The average CPL and CPS for small businesses in the U.S. can vary significantly depending on the industry, target audience, and marketing channels used. It's important to track these metrics and optimize your digital marketing campaigns to ensure a positive ROI. Based on CliquePrize®'s research, if you are under $20 per lead and under $200 per sale, your digital marketing is probably working very effectively.

How does a small business grab the attention of prospects with giveaways?

Giveaways are an effective strategy to grab customers' attention and generate engagement. Why? Because people always like to win free stuff without having to pay to enter. Its the equivalent of a free trial or a free gift. To maximize the impact of giveaways, consider the following 4 tips:

1. Set clear goals: Define what you want to achieve with your giveaway, whether it's increasing brand awareness, growing your email list, or driving sales. For example, do you want to brand the giveaway with SWAG, which is stuff we all get? Some small businesses will sometimes give away hoodies that are branded with their logo and colors. The average retail value (ARV) can range anywhere between $20 to $50. This is a good idea because prospects will wear hoodies and they will essentially advertise your small business long after the give away is over.
2. Offer valuable prizes: Choose prizes that are relevant and appealing to your target audience. But if you really want to capture names in the CliquePrize® database, give away something of high value. The higher the value, the more people will want to win. The more leads you will capture. CliquePrize® hosts promotions that are worth under $1000 since giveaways worth more than that amount often require the small business to post a public bond to guarantee the value of the prize in case the Sponsor, that is the Small Business Owner, fails to fulfill the prize. This law varies by each US state. CliquePrize® does not offer bonded promotions.
3. Promote the giveaway: Leverage social media, email marketing, SMS Text messaging and other digital channels to spread the word about your giveaway. Encourage Contestants, in other words Entrants, to share and invite others to increase the reach.
4. Collect customer data: Use the giveaway as an opportunity to collect prospect data such as email addresses, mobile numbers and zip codes. This will help you build your customer database for future marketing initiatives. CliquePrize® is specifically designed for this purpose.

How does a small businesses allocate and manage marketing expenses?

Start with determining your what you can afford as your Cost Per Lead also known as CPL versus Cost Per Sale also known as CPS. This is known as your appetite.

CPL refers to the average cost of acquiring a lead, while CPS represents the average cost of acquiring a customer who makes a purchase.

The average CPL and CPS for small businesses in the U.S. can vary significantly depending on the industry, target audience, and marketing channels used. It's important to track these metrics and optimize your digital marketing campaigns to ensure a positive ROI. Based on CliquePrize®'s research, if you are under $20 per lead and under $400 per sale, your digital marketing is probably working very effectively.

How does a small business grab the attention of prospects with giveaways?

Giveaways are an effective strategy to grab customers' attention and generate engagement. Why? Because people always like to win free stuff without having to pay to enter. Its the equivalent of a free trial or a free gift. To maximize the impact of giveaways, consider the following 4 tips:

1. Set clear goals: Define what you want to achieve with your giveaway, whether it's increasing brand awareness, growing your email list, or driving sales. Do you want to brand the giveaway with SWAG, which is stuff we all get, for example. Some small businesses will sometimes give away hoodies that are branded with their logo and colors. The average retail value known as ARV can be anywhere between $20 to $50. This is a good idea because prospects will wear hoodies and they will essence advertise your small business long after the give away is over.
2. Offer valuable prizes: Choose prizes that are relevant and appealing to your target audience. But if you really want to capture names in the CliquePrize® database, give away something of high value. The higher the value, the more people will want to win. The more leads you will capture. CliquePrize® hosts promotions that are worth under $1000 since giveaways worth more than that amount often require the small business to post a public bond to guarantee the value of the prize in case the Sponsor, that is the Small Business Owner, fails to fulfill the prize. This varies by each US state. CliquePrize® does not offer bonded promotions.
3. Promote the giveaway: Leverage social media, email marketing, SMS Text messaging and other digital channels to spread the word about your giveaway. Encourage Contestants, in other words Ontrants, to share and invite others to increase the reach.
4. Collect customer data: Use the giveaway as an opportunity to collect prospect data such as email addresses, mobile numbers and zip codes. This will help you build your customer database for future marketing initiatives. CliquePrize® is specifically designed for this purpose.

How do you know when a small business marketing campaign is successful when running a giveaway?

Think of digital marketing as similar to traditional marketing but executed with more efficiency and at less cost. There are 3 major signs in which you can tell your giveaway is running smoothly with minimal operational costs and hassle. They are as follows:

1. Giveaway Management: How proficient is the giveaway tool at managing the giveaway end to end. CliquePrize® is custom designed for small businesses and artists. Everything from the one-click Enter to Win capabilities, tight security on the Microsoft Azure Cloud, custom background images and logo on the Prize Details screen to custom summaries, entry rules, privacy policy and terms of use. And if you aren't prepared with those assets, CliquePrize® has boilerplate templates that can you use for free as well as rules, privacy policy and terms that you can edit and customize.
2. Fulfillment: Prize fulfillment is critical spoke in the giveaway campaign wheel. CliquePrize® gives you the flexibility to run a private giveaway, which means a giveaway that you offer on an invite-only basis or a public giveaway which would reach everyone in the local Metro Market. Private giveaways are unlocked using QR Codes and you can share these codes with your customers via email or you can print out a free 8x10 PDF poster that CliquePrize® has prepared for you. When your promotion ends, you can either choose the winner or winners or you can have CliquePrize® automatically choose for you. Either way, the process will be fair with no favoritism as Contestant's are listed in the app as 2 letter 6 digit IDs when you pick winners. You can also choose to give away a digital prize or a physical prize. Digital prizes are provided to the Contestant using a QR code for you to scan inside the app when the Contestant appears in person at your small business to redeem the prize. Alternatively, CliquePrize® offers digital gift cards that can be redeemed online at major retailers like Amazon. Physical prizes, on the other hand, are sent to the winning Contestants by major US mail carrier such as FedEx, UPS or the USPS. These too have QR codes attached to the prize inside the package. However, as a fail safe tracking codes are available by the carrier to ensure prize delivery and fulfillment. Likewise, you can also track prize shipments using a major Prize Fulfillment warehouse. Whichever the case, the giveaway tool should be capable of all small business preferences like CliquePrize®.
3. Analytics and Reporting: If your giveaway is running successfully, it should easily be measurable. This is why Analytics and Reporting capabilities are crucial. With CliquePrize®, you can track key metrics such as Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Marketing Qualified Leads are those prospects who have taken at least an interest in your small business. Sales Qualified Leads are those prospects who are past the interest stage and are ready to buy from you. CliquePrize® measures both of these metrics automatically for you. Typically, SQLs are 10% of MQLs for most small businesses in the US. Accordingly, CliquePrize® defaults the SQL percentage under Settings to 10%. You can however change this percentage to whatever custom percentage fits your small business.

In conclusion, marketing is a critical function of small business success, and CliquePrize® offers a comprehensive iPhone mobile app to manage these prospect acquisition marketing efforts with ease. By following the steps to start marketing a small business, understanding marketing costs and budget allocation, utilizing digital marketing channels, and leveraging giveaways, small businesses can effectively reach their local target audience, drive engagement, and achieve their digital marketing goals. CliquePrize® provides the necessary features to successfully manage and run giveaways, including prize fulfillment and analytics as well as help you manage customer relationships in the post promotion phase. The world is changing and you can stay ahead with modern small business digital marketing tools like CliquePrize®.