1 Creative mailings
Develop something new and fun to send out as a hard mailer. How many flyers do you put in the bin without reading, but at the very least you will open a creative mailer.
Need inspiration? This Pinterest Board has a great selection.
2 Move!
We tend to stick to local networks, but try moving! In this day and age, the internet means your customers can come from anywhere. Take your business on the road for a week and visit a load of new networks. You can develop your own journey story through social media and create your own hashtag!
3 Refresh/rebrand with a quirk
If you are refreshing or reigniting your brand, try sending something quirky to your 100 best influencers – clients, potential clients, local influencers, sector influencers, in fact anyone you want to connect with.
4 Be brave!
Run a course, give a talk, put yourself out there as an event speaker or write an article.
5 Giveaway your product
With a view to gaining new customers! Think about the people who connect or are connected with your ideal customers, give some sample products to them and they might endorse or refer your product for you. Examples: Any company which offers free products to the friends of their customers – HelloFresh, Craft Gin Club or Glossy Box.
6 Get reviewed
Offer your product to a relevant platform, blogger or journalist for review. There are plenty of platforms you can link with which will help you get products reviewed by target audiences. Mums are a fantastic audience for this! Some cost, some cost a lot and some are free but they are worth investigating particularly if you have a suitably targeted product.
7 Get a bill board!
For local or geographically targeted marketing, creative bill boards can be great fun. There are bill board bikes, ad-vans, inflatable billboards, promopeople, segways, buses or scooters – a bit like a tuktuk.
8 Be charitable
Partnering with a local charity can bring huge dividends. For instance, a local photographer partnered with a local rescue centre. She enjoys taking pet and animal portraits alongside her main offering to businesses. So, she takes credited images of the pets which need new homes and offers a discounted session to their new families and refunds a good percentage of that fee to the shelter. She raises funds for the shelter whilst giving the new adopters a special opportunity and gets her name in front of many new potential ideal customers.
9 Create your own social media hashtag
Create a hashtag which is relevant to your audience, your campaign and your business. Every week, post information and photos related to this hashtag. If you are into to wedding events and crazy new ideas, how about #WeddingWhimsWednesday, or if you want to give tips and you are called Trevor, how about #TipsfromTrevor. A really successful example I follow is #FreelanceHeros
10 Get your staff involved!
OK, it has its dangers, but getting your staff engaged in your social media can reap rewards. Develop a system with enables your staff to get involved with creating new stories for social media. Take advantage of their creativity! Reward them by setting up some competitions and prizes which encourage everyone to suggest ideas for new social media initiatives. If they have to do it, it’s really dull! Imagine having to write a blog post or think of something riveting for Instagram when your day job is really taking up all your work time! However, if they get rewarded, it’s so much more valuable in so many ways.