How to Market your Small Business to Potential Customers & Drive Sales

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/jc/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAafAAAAJGMxNTI2MTViLTM3NzYtNDI2NC04NDIxLTg3ODJkYzM0OTUxMg.jpg For your small business to have any success in generating sales, you have to know four things:1Who can buy your product or service?2Who are the decision makers?3 Where are these decision makers going to make buying decisions?4 How do these people make buying decisions?I covered the first two questions in a previous post. Lets focus on questions three and four. To find out where the decision makers go to make buying decisions you need to do following:Ask them, how did you decide on buying product XYZ? This will be easier to with your existing customers but prospects will respect you for asking questions that other people dont. Another place to see where decision makers go to buy your products istradeshows. You could attend as either an exhibitor or an attendee. Try to get a booth at the show. Exhibitors are provided with demographics of who attends the show and have a chance to interact with buyers directly. Does your customer base have a specific incentive to make purchases at a certain time period? For example, when I was a sales rep in the Dental industry, the IRS allowed dentists to write off capital equipment purchases they made up to a certain amount. If you cannot afford to go as an exhibitor then go as an attendee. This way you can see what goes on first hand.Now on how these people make buying decisions. This information could be obtained by asking them or it could be obtained by looking for published research. If none exists, conduct a survey and offer a free gift to fill it out. You could even include questions on how they came to a decision to make a purchase. SurveyMonkey is a good way to do this.Social Media MarketingMarketing your business using social media is a great way to build your business and reach potential buyers. Before I discuss more about this, I want to ask you some questions?Do you have awebsite? If not, why not? Websites are easy to put together. I put mine together rather quickly. Having a site helps your business come up in searches. When IGoogleyou and your business what comes up? Go ahead and try it now. If nothing comes up, thats not good!Now youre asking what do I put on my website. I would put basic information that sells who you are and what you do. I would also upload information on your products and services. You should include a resume,testimonialsand a blog. A website is like fashion, it is never finished. You can look at my site as an example. I also write a blog and publish online newspapers. I use my blog to give my followers a value massage. This blog is published onWordpressandTumblr. I share the content throughout my social networks. I will cover how to build a website and a blog in future posts.The Social Networks that I would have a presence on are the following: LinkedIn, Twitter,Facebook, andGoogle+. I also have social sharing buttons on my site and blog. Pinterest is also a good network; however I have focused on the first four.I would try to build a following on each these networks. Your best bet on how to do this is to share good content with people. When I started, I shared other peoples articles, and then I wrote my own. However, I still share others content that I find interesting. You can market your business with these updates. Search for people who are have an interest to what you have to offer. I have provided links to articles I have wrote on how to do this on these networks.These are the basics on how to market your small business to potential buyers.