HOW YOU CAN USE CIVIC MARKETING TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS.

What’s one of the newest, smartest ways for a small business to market itself? By pooling it’s resources and strategically donating time and effort to one cause. This is called civic marketing. With more and more people and businesses interested in social responsibility, the days of only making financial donations are over. Civic marketing is a smart way for your business to be known, seen and trusted in your community. It isn’t a strategy for you to increase your bottom line. It ensures that you help others, while you ultimately help yourself and your business. Your efforts benefit others, with the hope that they may also inspire employee and customer loyalty and eventually pave the way for increased profits.

Civic marketing gives back and also helps to foster goodwill, creates a positive impression and puts you, the business owner, in the role of a leader, it may inspire customer loyalty and improve employee morale, it distinguishes your business from the competition, as you become known, seen, recognized, trusted and remembered, it establishes your credibility and creates a win-win situation. Most importantly it gives your small business the badly needed publicity it wants and this is free marketing.

Interested? Here’s how to start a civic marketing project of your own. Work with causes you believe in, offer something different and donate within your industry. If your business caters to families (bookstore, day care), consider supporting youth sports, child welfare projects, literacy. If it involves food (restaurant, caterer), consider supporting food banks, shelters, orphanages. If it appeals to women (hair salon, beauty parlor, spa), consider supporting spousal abuse programs, shelters. If you sell pets, consider supporting endangered species, animal shelters, zoos. If it involves outdoor activities, consider supporting environmental issues. If it’s computers, consider donating your used computers to schools or other charities. If it’s an accounting firm, consider donating your time to help families prepare their taxes. If it is a healthcare business, consider supporting disease research or fitness associations. Common sense, in most cases, will reveal the best organizations that your business can donate its time or profits to.

You can seek for issues affecting your area or location of business and try to assist them in getting the problem solved. It’s just that simple, look for a problem that affects a great number of people and solve it and ensure that a lot of people hear about it. But you need to be wise. Don’t do things that would cost you money. You need a comprehensive marketing plan. If you need help in doing so call me on 08122351449 and my services are for free.

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