Senior Entrepreneurs: How to Market Your Business
Senior entrepreneurs – people 55 and older – own 50.9 percent of all small businesses in the United States. Whether you’ve been an entrepreneur for some time or you’ve just launched your company, naturally you want your business to succeed.
If you’re ready to propel your company forward as a senior entrepreneur, here’s a quick how-to guide for marketing your business.
Hone Your Business Skills
Maybe you worked for years at a company, school or non-profit but never had a chance to develop true business skills. This is the time to expand your knowledge base so you can grow your company financially. Great marketing materials are important, but building a solid business foundation can make a huge difference in your long-term success.
One place to start is to get an online business degree. Working on an online degree allows you to balance work commitments (if you’re still employed), family demands and other responsibilities.
Business degrees encompass a wide range of expertise including marketing and sales, accounting and administration. You won’t just learn how to market your company successfully. You’ll boost your business acumen as well.
If you want to sharpen your skills even more, getting an MBA can take you to the next level. You’ll increase your understanding of marketing, human capital management, leadership and strategic planning.
Try a Bundling Campaign
In the world of cross-selling, bundling campaigns can be a great way to boost sales and cart values. More than 65 percent of consumers state that BOGO (Buy One Get One) deals – a type of bundling – are their favorite kind of discount. By using a modified BOGO, such as buy-one, get-one for “x” amount off, you can capture shoppers looking for a bargain while keeping margins up.
While BOGO programs offer some choices, you can also go with set bundled offers. For example, you can pair a top-performing product with a lesser-performing one. That can be an excellent option for moving stale inventory and boosting sales.
Just make sure you don’t list the second product as a “free gift.” Studies suggest that strategy causes consumers to devalue the “free” product. By going with a bundle approach instead, you keep the perceived value of the products intact.
Attend Local Events
Engaging with customers directly is a potent tool in your marketing arsenal. Head to local trade shows, farmers’ markets or craft fairs and you’ll have the chance to speak with consumers one-on-one. Plus, you can demonstrate your product or service, answer questions and otherwise spark their people’s interest to move the sale forward.
Along the way, you can get feedback about your product or service, your marketing materials, brand voice and more. It’s a unique chance to probe the mind of shoppers. It allows you to hone your approach and improve your results moving forward.
Make Sure You’re Represented Online
Whether your company is focused on your local community or a broader audience, an online presence is essential. Many consumers are suspicious of companies that aren’t online in some capacity. If you want to boost sales, you must have a digital presence.
If you aren’t sure where to begin, start with a Facebook business page. That can work as a stand-in for a business website in the short-term. It also allows you to establish a presence without any extra costs.
Creating your own website from scratch can be daunting. Fortunately, numerous design templates that help you develop a website are available on the internet. If that’s too overwhelming, website designers in your community can help you get started. Many of them are surprisingly reasonable.
Once you’ve launched your business site, consider adding other social media platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn to help reach your target audience.
Save Successful Campaign Materials
If a particular marketing campaign has a strong ROI, it’s wise to save all of the materials and strategies you used to generate that return. That way, you can easily replicate the results later without reinventing the wheel.
It’s best to store the information digitally. Take screenshots of social media posts, save documents to external devices, scan print ads or otherwise digitally capture the materials. Then, compress your files into PDFs to save space before saving them to your hard drive or in the cloud, using a clear file naming system to keep everything highly searchable.
Explore more resources on how you can live your best life in retirement at Senior Influential.
Our thanks to Mary Shannon with www.seniorsmeet.org for contributing this article.
