Using small business marketing to highlight your company's selling points

In order to get ahead in a less than stellar economic climate, it's important for small enterprises to play up their strengths in their business marketing campaigns. For some, this might involve advertising that their products are locally made.

Canadian publication The Globe & Mail reports that companies like the Ontario-based Cambridge Towel Corporation include a "Made in Canada" maple leaf on their labels to let prospective customers know they won't have to contend with long-distance shipping delays.

"We don't have the uncertainty and the risk that exists even today with goods that are purchased offshore," Cambridge Towel's president and COO, Hugh Thompson, told the news source.

"It's a way of appealing to people who are more willing to buy, more willing to pay more for locally made products," added Niraj Dawar, a professor of marketing communications at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, as quoted by the news source.

In addition to attracting customers looking to buy locally, small businesses that are strictly local operations also avoid linguistic and cultural hurdles, save on shipping costs and circumvent foreign laws and financial systems that can get complicated to deal with.

Regardless of how you choose to go about advertising your business, it's important to make your brand unique and engage in diversified marketing that incorporates both traditional and emerging techniques, ranging from classic direct mail campaigns to online advertising.

Using multiple channels increases your company's options of reaching both existing and potential customers. However, no amount of social media outreach or location-based advertising will make up for a weak marketing approach.