When it comes to running a successful business, ensuring our customers or potential customers know about what we sell and the type of product or service we provide is one of the most important things to do – if not the most important! In order to achieve this many companies, especially large companies try to overcomplicate their marketing strategies and go for the most expensive or bold type of promotion possible. But this is not always essential and can sometimes be accompanied by or replaced by cheaper alternatives. One of the best cheaper alternatives to use is branded pens.

Using branded pens is an effective method of marketing your business. The price you pay for these types of pens can vary but it is almost certainly much cheaper than traditional methods of advertising. Just like most things, if you pay a slightly higher price you will get a better quality pen and this can look good for your business. If a customer receives a pen from you and it is a bit flimsy, dull and runs out quickly then these attributes are more likely to come across about your business too. However if it is more appealing to the customers, writes well and holds a good amount of ink then the customers are more likely to actually use it.

Sales promotion is a good incentive for customers to find out more about your business or purchase your products and services. Branded pens can be used as a form of sales promotion because they can be gifted or rewarded to customers when they have done something to suggest they are interested in your business or even if you are trying to attract new customers. Providing a web address on the pen creates an incentive for further research of your business and therefore could result in a customer purchasing the product or service you provide.

There are other types of cheap marketing with social media marketing becoming more and more popular. This method is often free and customer relationships can easily be made and built up by interacting with customers and providing content that is interesting to them and therefore more likely to be shared on social media networks. By having a good website and being active on online media you are able to reach the people who are actually interested in your business and are your direct consumers. It is easy for people to follow you or like what you’ve posted and it should be an essential part of any business marketing strategy, especially with the ever advancing technology and customer usage of the internet.

This article has explained how branded pens and social media can both be used as methods of marketing which as both cheap but also, if used correctly, can generate you more sales and business because you can effectively reach your desired target market. So next time you launch a big marketing campaign try using social media instead, or maybe branded pens is right for you, and I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the success you get.

Everyone talks about social media nowadays as a part of their company’s marketing strategy. But there are so many companies still not doing it in the right way. Some companies think that social media marketing is only for business that are marketing product or services online to their customers through Internet. Least they know that actually social media is not only limited to online businesses but also can be applied to offline businesses.

Social media marketing can be a very powerful marketing medium for a company’s growth and success. But it can also be a disaster if you do not know why you’re doing it and how to do it correctly. This article will outlined social media marketing blueprint that any businesses or companies can use to have successful social media marketing plan.

Step 1: Do pre-planning

Pre-planning is essentially means that you should brainstorm and plan your business’s goals before you blindly enter social media platform and being labeled as a spammer. You must know what goals you are trying to achieve for your business by using social media.

Step 2: Deciding Your Business Goals

There are 3 main purposes that you could use social media for. First, is to generate and increase financial revenue for your business. Financial purposes can be in terms of revenue, expenses and leads.

There are many big companies that were able to increase their revenue by leveraging the power of social media. These big companies are such as McDonald, Starbucks, and Apple. Some companies are able to generate more leads for their companies from their online marketing campaign. This is because when you bring presence of your company into the online world, more people are aware of your product and services.

Second is getting more customers for your existing product or services and build a community based on that. Third is to brand awareness for your new product or services. Creating a brand awareness using social media is faster by word of mouth marketing.

Step 3: Listen to the Conversation

Define the method that you are going to listen what the crowds are saying. Traditional marketing doesn’t work anymore. If you want to be successful, you have to listen to what people are saying about your industry, your brand and your company. There are few design mechanism that you can choose to follow to know what people are interested in and what they are looking for. These design mechanisms are such as industry trends, keywords or search terms, big influencers in your industry and your competitors.

You can look at what are the current trends in your industry to understand better the needs of your target audience and take advantage of the current and hot trends that are increasing over time. Look for what people are searching in the search engine and collect list of keywords that they are using. Follow big influencers in your industry and learn their strategy. See and listen what your competitors are doing and what could be their strength and weaknesses.

Step 4: Get the tools that you need

Pick your monitoring tools to measure and listen to the crowd. These tools are such as creating a corporate blog, social networking sites and content sharing. There are many companies set up corporate blogs to get their ideas out to their customers. Example is Johnson&Johnson Company. Basically, you could train your employers to write content for your corporate blogs or outsource them to the good writers. As a longterm strategy training your employees is better as they understand the internal operations of the company.

Create a business fan page at Facebook and start engaging with your fans by posting some good information to your wall to create customer’s loyalty. Ask your fans to follow you on Twitter and LinkedIn. Content sharing is powerful to develop market leadership in your industry. You should post videos to your company’s YouTube channels, upload photos to Flickr and so much more.

Step 5: Measure your Marketing Goals

Measurement is important to know how successful your marketing strategy is. Most companies do not measure their strategy to assess their strength and weaknesses. These measurement could include things such as how many leads your company was able to generate online, how much increase in your company’s revenue, how your company was able to increase your brand’s awareness and so on.