Newsletters may seem old school for marketing.
However, they offer relevant marketing tools that small businesses can leverage as they look to expand their audience.
They are relatively easy to create, take minimal effort to deploy, and can offer potential customers a chance to get to know a company.
Newsletters offer several great ways for small businesses to expand their marketing efforts.
Building Contacts
When someone signs up for a monthly newsletter through email, it allows a small business to build a contact list.
Having a contact list lets businesses send targeted emails about products and services at a later point if that’s what they decide to do.
Emails also allow companies to leverage other methods of marketing, like on social media (Facebook and LinkedIn, especially) based on the email addresses they receive. For example, an email comes in with the domain “acmebrick.com.” A marketing agency can then go to LinkedIn to possibly market to people in the niche market that Acme Brick serves. They can also look at the company’s website to generate leads there.
Generating Warm Leads
A newsletter is part of the inbound marketing methodology, meaning it does not take a lot of effort to generate leads. All a small business has to do is create the content every month and send it to their email list.
People who are on that list are automatically warm leads because they took the time to find a website and sign up for the newsletter.
Newsletters are one part of an overall sales strategy that is much less labor-intensive compared to actively weeding out cold leads from warm leads. While the payoff may not be as much as other sales techniques, newsletters do offer a way to increase revenue and sales over time.
Exclusive Announcements
While social media represents an outstanding method for making announcements, a newsletter is also an opportunity to do so with a curated target audience.
Small businesses can announce:
- New products or services
- Discounts
- Offers
- New hires and promotions
- Industry news
- Media coverage about the company
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Upcoming holidays or changes in hours
- Expansion of the company
Anything a small business wants to announce to clients or customers can go in a newsletter.
Building Goodwill & Rapport With an Audience
A newsletter not only keeps a small business at the forefront of customers’ minds every month but also builds rapport and goodwill with an audience.
If an article can make someone smile or laugh, it builds an emotional connection with a brand. Newsletters can tug at heartstrings, build human connections, and help customers see that the small business adds a human touch to their brand.
Exuding Expertise
A newsletter lets a small business showcase its staff’s expertise.
For example, recent events have changed an industry. Someone at the small business comments on the events gives an expert opinion and then suggests solutions to the event if it serves to disrupt the industry.
Similarly, a newsletter provides an avenue for talking about trends. A few months later when the trend comes to pass or gains steam, the newsletter can tout that the team noted the trend earlier because of the expertise of the small business.
Having this type of outlet for talking about trends lets a small business become an expert in its field.
Turning Newsletters Into Blogs
Newsletters offer exclusive content for customers.
When the next newsletter comes out a month later, a small business can convert the previous newsletter’s topics into blogs, news, and insights.
Educational blogs foster great SEO and expand on a small business’ online presence.
For instance, a newsletter has four topics during a given month with around 150 words per topic. It’s not much of a stretch to turn each 150-word blurb into a 500-word blog.
Generating enough blogs on a certain topic can lead to long-form content that engages well with a target audience.
Small businesses can even compile old newsletters as blogs themselves for pillar pages that point to other blog content.
The possibilities are endless!
Everyone Can Play
Every person at a small business can contribute to a newsletter, which fosters internal engagement, collaboration, and team unity.
Heck, it’s fun to contribute to a newsletter. It might be something that staff looks forward to every month. It’s also more than just writing. A newsletter includes images and even videos for even better engagement.
Getting everyone involved, at least once a quarter or once every six months, can make employees feel as if they are important and involved in their company’s goals and strategy.
Need a Newsletter Written?
Vervology offers a full-service marketing team that caters to small businesses. We can help your firm develop a newsletter and email marketing strategy that edifies your brand and helps you to generate leads.
Reach out to our team today, and we’ll see what we can do for your company.