8 Ideas for Promoting Your Australian Trade Business
With the emergence and growth of social media, creators and small businesses are better able to start their businesses and grow them. Social media is just one way that people have been trying to grow their businesses and there are a lot of other avenues to get exposure for a trade business. Growing a business can be done in any country, and of course, that includes Australia.
While there are definitely a lot of different ways to promote an Australian trade business, it is important to understand what those tactics are and how effective they can be. Keep reading to understand how to use these ideas when promoting your Australian business.
Know your Audience
The very first step to promoting a trade business is to identify and understand your audience. At this point in your business, you should know exactly what your business is about and what trade service you are providing. Being clear about what your business provides is super important for you and your customers, but you need to know the specific audience that you are planning on marketing to.
Being clear about who your audience is and knowing what they would want from your business will help you as you create all of your other promotional strategies and materials. Whether you sell a product or provide a service, you need to know the kinds of people who will be patrons of your business and market towards them.
If you sell custom jewellery, you are probably marketing towards women and teenagers, not to dads who like golfing. If you offer plumbing services, then you want to market toward people who own homes, or to apartment complex managers instead of college students who live in dorms.
If you know your audience, you will find it easier to promote your business in a lot of different ways. You will know how to style an advertisement, and what platform to advertise on so that it reaches the audience that will actually purchase a good or service from you. When targeting the elderly, try advertising in a newspaper instead of online. When targeting parents, try advertising on Facebook or on store bulletins.
Now that you know your audience, you can decide what kinds of marketing strategies to use. Here are some more ideas for promoting your trade business to various audiences.
Social Media Pages
Social media, as mentioned before, is one of the most far-reaching and relevant ways to promote your business. There are so many businesses on different social media platforms that get a lot of traction from providing content in a place that so many people look at every single day.
If you have a younger audience especially, a social media page is one of the best ways to reach that audience. If you provide a design service or educational service, then social media is a great place to advertise. So many young adults and maybe even teenagers will see your page and be interested in it. If you spend time creating a well-thought-out social media page, then those younger people that you market to will see that you understand how to use the tools of their generations and will be more inclined to trust your business.
A social media page is even great for when you are not targeting a young audience, particularly because it is free. If your offer a cleaning business for older people without the time or energy to clean their homes, then a social media page can still be effective. Your audience still has a chance of seeing your business, and it comes at no cost to you besides a little time.
Image-heavy platforms like Instagram and Facebook are great for advertising businesses and especially products that people might be interested in. Video platforms, like Youtube and TikTok, can be used to advertise as well, but it takes more time and effort to make a video than just a still image. It’s also harder to gain notoriety on these platforms, so it may be better to focus on other social media channels at first.
Social Media Ads
Social media pages are one way to utilize that platform to communicate your brand’s value, but you can also literally put your ads on social media sites. While actually advertising on a social media site does have a price, it is more far-reaching than just having a social media page. Advertisements on social media get shown to a wider audience. Even though a social media page is free, you have to grow the amount of followers and you have to post frequently to get new people to see it.
With a paid advertisement, you can have the algorithm show your ad to people who might be interested. This is a huge benefit that comes along with advertising on social media. The ad will only be shown to people who are more likely to purchase from your company. The ad can also take the interested viewer to your website with one tap so that they can see more of what your trade business is about.
Finally, the great thing about promoting an Australian trade business on social media, whether through a page or an advertisement, is that social media can easily spread word of a business around the world. So if you are finding that promoting your business locally is not working very well, you can offer your business’s products over a wider geographical area, where it will reach a much bigger audience. Social media reaches farther than local marketing would.
Make sure you are set up to meet increased demand though if your advertising campaign is successful! If you are a local company, maybe it would be best to stay within smaller networks at first.
Updating your Website
This idea is kind of related to social media, but it is applicable and effective for a wider range of age groups and audiences. Before we talk about why updating your website is important, you should make sure you have a website to begin with. If you don’t already have a website, you will need to create one. Websites are one of the primary ways people can contact your business or just learn more about what you provide.
Once you have created a website and secured a domain name, you need to make sure it is properly updated. This means refreshing the formatting to make it easier for a visitor to navigate, cleaning out any features that cause it to load slowly, and making it attractive for your target audience. If a website is difficult to navigate or takes too long to load, most people will give up and look elsewhere. That is bad for business!
In addition to updating the visual aspect of your website, you should also update the keywords on your website and even on your blogs. Google and other search engines have algorithms that bring up the most relevant results for the searcher based on keywords and formatting.
You can look up guides on what to follow to make your website come up on the first page of google when terms like “bathroom plumbers” or “backyard landscapers” are typed into the search bar. People often click on only the first few pages before changing their search keywords, so you want your business’s website to be as close to the top as possible. See if. you can rank for several related searches as well.
List your Business on Google
This method for promoting your business might seem like using social media or a website, but it is actually very different, as well as more accessible to people. Listing your business on Google is a great way to promote your business to people who are looking for a specific product or service. If you are looking to get more exposure locally, a Google business is a great way to do this.
When someone looks up “event venues” or “yard care services”, Google will provide them with a list of businesses, usually local ones first, that provide the service that they are looking for. This list has names of businesses, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and web addresses that the customer can refer to when selecting a business. If you list your business in this way, you can come up on the very first page of Google and people will look at your website more often, which usually provides you with more business.
Newspapers
While some people might claim that newspapers are too old-fashioned and that no one really reads them anymore, that is not completely true. This is where really knowing your audience is helpful. If you know that your audience is mostly older adults and the elderly, then a newspaper can be a super effective way to reach that audience. Older adults and senior citizens tend to prefer reading a newspaper over looking at social media or news on their phones. Many don’t even have social media or even a smartphone!
Not only are newspapers capable of reaching those elderly audiences better, but they can also be a more certain way of assuring your advertisement reaches people. While you never know if one person will see your social media ad, with a newspaper, you know that everyone who has a copy will at least have your ad available to them if they just look. Your advertisement also won’t be lost if someone wants to find it again later like it sometimes does when on social media.
Offer Deals
Something that really brings new customers in is offering deals every once in a while. When people see that a business has a sale on what they offer, they are much more likely to take that offer, even if they don’t really need what you are providing. Offering a deal tells people that they can try out your product or service for a cheaper price.
This makes people feel like they can take a chance on your company, which is new to them, because they are not spending as much as they normally might have to.
You can offer deals in a lot of different ways that can reach a lot of different people. One way uses the newspaper that you might already advertise in. You can include a coupon in your advertisement. Coupons catch the attention of people more than ads because they get something out of it.
Another, more modern way to offer a deal is to use Groupon or a similar coupon provider. This way, a lot of people can see your offer and know that a company like Groupon stands behind your business. Finally, you can offer deals by using social media. You can promote a sale on your products or services instead of just telling people what your business does. With just one click, they can be taken to the sale or discounted options.
Government Support
Every idea to promote an Australian business that we have covered so far are measures that you can take yourself to promote your business, and a few of them are even free. However, another way to help promote your business is to bring in some financial or expertise through government support.
Grants are a very common way for governments to supply direct financial support to Australian businesses. Grants are offered by all levels of government for a wide variety of purposes that Australian businesses may require funding for.
Applying for grants can be a time consuming, so you need to establish if the financial benefits outweigh the effort required. Applying for a grant not only involves filling in and supplying the initial application form and supporting documentation, but there are commonly post completion questionnaires to complete. Sometimes you may even be selected for audit and need to substantiate that the funds were spend in the intended manner or provide further proof of product delivery and usage.
The Australian Government Business website provides a grants and programs finder tool or you can use a search tool to filter grants and programs by name. In the search tool, if you type in terms like business, marketing, or growth you will be able to get an idea of what grants may be available for your business.
Many state government and local also have similar tools to help people and businesses find grants. For instance, the Queensland Government has the Queensland Government Grants Finder. A very popular grant by the Queensland Government during Covid-19 was the Business Basics Grant. This grant was to provide support to business to increase core skills and and adopt best practice. Business growth activities the grant funded included website builds/upgrades and strategic marketing services.
Government assistance to help your business can also be found in a number of other forms. Austrade for example can provide assistance to help your business expand internationally. AusIndustry also has an Entrepreneurs Program aimed at helping you innovate and grow your business.
