Let’s get down to brass tax ladies and gentlemen.

You need more clients, you need more customers, you need more cash, fast.

Being in business and having my fair share of success and failures, I’ve learnt there are marketing ideas for small businesses that work and marketing ideas that don’t work.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, marketing is everything. The more time you spend on marketing, the more chances of you generating income for your business. If you spend all your time designing your website, answering emails, checking statistics, doing admin work, you’re not going to get very far.

Trust me, I’ve been there. Emails, phone calls and interruptions always get our attention and prevent us from doing the most important task of all.

Marketing.

So let’s get down to business.

The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Formula To Generate Sales

8 Marketing Ideas For Small Businesses

One of the best formulas I’ve found when it comes to generating more sales for your small business is this:

Leads x Conversion Rate x Price = Sales

There’s a more advanced formula out there but this is the most basic one you can use for your small business.

Let’s use that formula as an example.

Suppose you have the following variables:

Leads = 1,000

Conversion Rate = 10%

Sales Price = $47

Let’s crack those numbers now:

1,000 x 10% x $47 = $4,700.

That’s it. Done.

The leads is the number of people who are enquiring about your business. They could be website enquiries, phone calls, business card contacts, word of mouth contacts etc. It’s the amount of people who contact you on a monthly basis.

Conversion rate is how many leads you convert into sales. So let’s say that you’re awesome in sales, then your conversion rate would most likely be 50%+ which is good. However, if you are okay at selling, your conversion rate would be between 1% – 10%.

The sales price is the price of your product that you’re selling.

One of the best ways to increase your sales into your small business is to simply increase your leads. This is the most quickest and fastest way to increase your sales without touching your conversion rate and sales price.

In this article, I’ll show you how you can increase your leads using some great marketing ideas you can apply into your business.

8 Marketing Ideas You Can Apply To Your Business That Will Increase Your Leads And Sales

Below is a list of marketing ideas I’ve personally applied in my own businesses. They are affordable, cheap and they generate the goods. Of course, your business may differ, however each of these marketing ideas have done wonders for me and I hope they do the same for you too.

Search Engine Optimization

This is one of my favorite types of marketing. By search engine optimising your website, you’ll be positioned higher on Google and more people will find you. However, consider this as a long term strategy for you to apply while you’re working on other lead generation activities that generate leads fast.

Article Marketing

This is also one of my favorite types of marketing, it’s the ability to create great articles and get them found on Google. By creating a ton of great content for your prospects and readers, many people will find you through your articles and they will contact you. The more traffic you have, the more leads which as a result, more sales you’ll produce.

Video Marketing

By creating your own videos and submitting them into video directories such as YouTube, you’ll be utilizing a brand new search engine that indexes videos. Let’s say you create 10 great videos and submit them into YouTube, you’ll most likely be found and they will visit your website which will in turn generate more leads.

Advertising In Local Medias

Never underestimate offline marketing. I’m very strong in online marketing but I still utilize offline marketing and advertise in newspapers. I once advertised in a local targeted newspaper and generated hundreds of leads from a tiny and affordable ad. However, don’t make the mistake I did once and targeted a huge big time newspaper which didn’t contain my target market, I ended up wasting heaps of money on the wrong newspaper. Target the local, smaller newspapers that has your target market and they will respond.

Seminars

This is another great way to generate leads into your business. I’m a big fan of speaking in front of people and seminars is a great way to find new customers. By setting up your own workshop or even doing joint ventures as I’ve done in the past, you’ll engage your audience and trust me, people will come up to you after your talk and ask for your business card. By people seeing you on stage, people will trust you and get a feel for who you are. This produces quality prospects and clients.

Word of Mouth Marketing

Never underestimate this form of marketing. By looking after your existing customers, you’ll create a following of raving fans who love what you do. They will advertise your services and send you more customers. I’ve generated so much business out of word of mouth marketing and the best thing about it, it’s free. Just remember to look after your customers at all cost because word of mouth marketing can backfire too.

Email Marketing

I love email marketing. You can create a list of prospects and customers who know what you do and store them into a sophisticated database. Once you have a big list of prospects who you have built a relationship with, you can send them promotions and deals to them. Once again, a certain percentage of these people will respond and become a new customer.

Facebook Marketing

No, this doesn’t mean you can spend all your time on Facebook chatting Facebook has a great advertising feature that targets your target market like a laser beam. You can select the gender, country, interest, background and anything else you want and advertise to them. You simply setup a budget and start marketing right away. Facebook marketing has definitely generated me thousands of leads and sales in the past. Try it.

Get Started Today

Now there’s so many other marketing ideas out there that you can apply, however one thing I’ve learnt in business is the problem of information overload. If I give you 100 different marketing ideas, you’ll never implement them all, it would be too much.

Therefore, please go forward and try out the top marketing ideas I’ve given you and watch your sales soar.

Remember, how do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

Good Journey.

Khoa Bui

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About the Author Khoa Bui is a best selling author, international speaker, corporate trainer and entrepreneur. He has been featured on Entrepreneur Magazine, Channel 31, Global News Network and more. He has a passion for writing, traveling the world and building online businesses. Find out more about Khoa here.