9 Creative Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Business Today!

There is no doubt about it, marketing your business on the internet is evolving every day. But as a savvy business entrepreneur you need to put in place your own strategies to stay ahead of the competition.

Putting in place these strategies don't have to be difficult because you don't need some rocket science to do that. Whether you pick them up in the course of running your business online or you simply decide to put a “twist” on what you see others doing, as long as they serve your purpose they are justified.

In this post I want to present you with a few creative marketing ideas which could help boost your business profits any day! Read them and feel free to adapt them to your peculiar marketing needs. Pick two or three from the list and work on mastering them. I bet you will be the better for it!

So here we go:

1. Increase Your Visibility Through Co-Operating With Your Competitors

There’s one fact about running any form of business and that is, regardless of what business you are in, every penny you earn comes as a result of the cooperation of other people. These could be employees, suppliers, partners or customers. Another group of people who are very important but we want to stay away from are our competitors.  But instead of staying away from them or fighting them, you could team up with them and start an association geared towards your specific industry. By simply partnering with them you could increase your visibility and exposure which will ultimately increase your profits.

2. Leverage The Efforts Of Your Customers

Your customers could actually be your best sales people because satisfied customers will eagerly spread the word about your product or service. However, to better encourage them to do this, start an affiliate program. The benefit of receiving an income for telling their friends about your product will be an added incentive to spread the word. This is a good way of multiplying your marketing and advertising efforts and increasing your profits.

3. Improve Your Business by Being a Good Listener

Customer feedback has always been a powerful tool for businesses in knowing how to better serve their markets. Today listening to what your market is saying is much easier to do.

Do a search for your business name using either Google or the social media sites. Chances are you will find comments that could help you improve your business. A comment complaining about your customer service, your web site design, product, etc will help you know what to improve.

4. Covertly Encourage People to Link to Your Business Website

We all know the importance of backlinks in gaining visibility on the search engines. Online entrepreneurs have always created backlinks by encouraging reciprocal links. How about some creative ideas that will encourage one way backlinks to business website? For example, you could offer a discount on one of your products and encourage your customers to link to your site to qualify for the offer. They could create the back links on their social media profiles or if they have blogs, make a post mentioning your offer.

5. Add A “PR” Page to Your Business Website

One good way you can create more visibility for your online business is by getting into the news. You can do this by adding a “PR” page to your site. Allow your site visitors to submit newsworthy items to be published on this page. This could attract the media and soon your site could be the “go-to” site for the latest news.

6. Provide a Free Online Directory on Your Site

Like the “PR” page, you can add a free directory of interesting downloadable e-books on your site. If people find your directory to be a valuable resource, they will visit it over and over again. This will not only increase traffic to your site but also increase the reach as your visitors spread the word about your free directory.

7. Hold Free Online Classes Or Webinars

I've seen a similar idea being used by Adrienne Smith of AdrienneSmith.net. Offering a live informative training on your site will definitely entice people to visit your web site. If you do this very well, you may just become the go-to expert in your topic area. These classes or webinars could be held weekly or monthly to get people to revisit your web site again and again.

8. Offer Free Consulting For Your Site Visitors

Depending on your business, you could establish your expertise and thereby increase your clientele by simply offering free consulting on your web site. This could be offered via e-mail or by telephone. Skype is another good medium to use. Considering the cost of consultancy, people will place much value on your free consulting and as they talk about it on the social media sites they will simply be offering free promotion for your business.

You could simply add another stream of income to your business by recording or saving the information you give out and creating a product you could sell or give away for more exposure.

9. Create a Free Group on Facebook or Linkedin and Make Your Business Website the Official Site

A Facebook group can be a power traffic generating tool for your business site. Linking your business site as the official site for the group will greatly create visibility for your site. You can also design membership graphics for members to place on their sites. As more and more people come to know of the group and become members so also the popularity of your site will increase. This’ll increase your repeat visitors and sales.

These ideas may not really be new but you can use them as idea generators for enhancing your business operations this year 2012. Your success with these marketing strategies will greatly depend on how you are able to apply them to your peculiar circumstances.

Over to you: Are implementing any of these creative ideas in your marketing right now? Share your experience with us in the comments below.