Marketing Advice By Business Type
Marketing a Shaved Ice Business
Marketing a shaved ice business isn't as simple as it seems. To get noticed, you'll need to invest time, energy, and resources in an innovative marketing plan.
A high-quality marketing plan connects your company to your customers. Without it, you'll quickly find your shaved ice business cut off from the marketplace.
What to know the characteristics that distinguish leading shaved ice businesses from other businesses in the industry? Surprisingly, the ability to create clear brand messages often outweighs product quality and other considerations.
Leveraging Print Ads
Print ads have always been a popular way to promote shaved ice businesses. Historically, Gutenberg's invention has been used for a broad range of commercial and promotional applications. Online advertising has clear benefits. But that doesn't mean you should stop advertising your shaved ice business in printed media. These days, the key to effective print advertising is to align the publication with your business goals and ROI requirements.
Promotional Calendars
Uncoordinated and disjointed marketing plans tend to backfire on shaved ice businesses. A strategy chocked full of time-sensitive ad placements and other tactics can devolve into a tangled mess of overlapping deliverables unless it is coordinated in a promotional calendar. Good calendars include not only tactical deadlines, but also schedules for the inputs (e.g. staff assets, vendors, etc.) that are required to execute strategic objectives. When used in tandem with a quality mailing list provider, promotional calendars can ensure the continuous execution of direct mail campaigns.
Hiring A Marketing Firm
Eventually nearly all shaved ice business operations turn to marketing firms for guidance. Unless you have a marketing background, you won't be able to touch the ROI you'll receive from a professional firm. Does a marketing firm cost money? Sure, but not as much as you may think. When it's time to look for a marketing firm to represent your shaved ice business, experience should trump other considerations. Marketing firms that lack industry experience are sometimes unfamiliar with competitive marketing channels and may not understand the value propositions that dominate industry messaging.
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