What’s the quickest and most effective way of letting my customers know about an offer?

What’s the quickest and most effective way of letting my customers know about an offer? Should I email something out or do something in-store?

Great question. If you’ve been in business for a few years and have dedicated a significant amount of time to your marketing, you’re likely to have an array of marketing tools at your disposal.

Whether it’s your Facebook page, networking group or a trusty old database, you’re hopefully sitting on a goldmine of leads.

One of the most common problems that small business owners make when executing a marketing promotion is not committing wholeheartedly and only utilising a fraction of the tools on offer.

If you are going to create an offer or promotion, you must really mean it. Sending out an email or jumping on Microsoft Publisher to print a quick poster isn’t enough.

Your market simply won’t pay attention to one or two little messages in a single medium. Studies have suggested that your brand needs to be seen up to 23 times before action is taken.

A multi-channel approach where customers hear about your offer through a variety of marketing channels is far more effective than any single thing that you can do.

Imagine a past customer walking through a shopping centre and walking past your store and brand new window display.

What are your chances of them firstly recognising your offer and secondly, acting on it? Now let’s imagine the same past customer receiving an email with a link through to your website.

They log on Facebook and see your offer. They jump on their iPhone and see a friend retweeting your offer.

They go to the cricket club and hear a teammate talking about the creative promotion that you executed earlier in the week.

Marketing is an art, not a science but the variety of marketing channels used and the frequency of promotion puts you in a great position to make the sale.

Now the rest is up to the value of your offer.