Hawaii is the home of many with different cultures streaming from the Polynesian Culture and the United States. With such a vibrant aloha community, businesses that exist in Hawaii are mainly small businesses.
These small businesses stretch from the local community to the tourists that come visit. But it takes more than just starting a business for it to work. The real question is, how do you grow your small business in Hawaii?
1. Grow Your Small Business In Hawaii By Marketing In Your Local Area
To grow your small business in Hawaii has to start with letting your local neighbors, friends, and family know that your business exists. Chances are, you probably have already done that if you started your business. But there are other ways that you can promote your business around your island to get more eyes on you.
Working With Other Local Businesses
This works really well to grow your small business in Hawaii. Since Hawaii has such a family-oriented culture, all of us here are trying our best to succeed as we give back to the island. Connecting with other local businesses can be a smart move to get your business known. In exchange, you can also market their business for them! But how can you do that?
Word Of Mouth
One of the most common ways is that people love to “Talk Story”. Getting acquainted with other local businesses showing that you are reputable and great to be around can go far. They can even start recommending your business for other locals and tourists to come visit.
Marketing Materials
A flier seems nice doesn’t it? Creating a flier that you can give to trusted local business owners to put on their shop can give you more exposure. Especially if you list where they can find you and how you can give them the best service!
You can also offer business cards if you are a service based industry to market your service to the local and tourist community.
Marketing materials are a great way to grow your small business in Hawaii, though it may take some investments or time to make it. But in the long run, it can serve and position you more to run a successful business.
Collaborating with Local Businesses
Depending on your type of business, a collaboration with other local businesses can grow your small business in Hawaii.
For food and entertainment businesses, working with the hospitality industries and business associations with upcoming events can boost the amount of eyes that come to your doors.
For service based industries, attending networking events, attending conferences, and offering your service with other local service businesses can get you in front of your customers’ doorstep.
Attracting Tourists To Your Business
But what if the tourists already had made their plans. Because as we all know, we love to be prepared before we go on vacation. Chances are, they already made their plans ahead of time. And those businesses who came prepared already sold them to work with them.
Word of mouth can only travel so far. Meaning they only travel as soon as they get here.
So how do you attract them to your business to be added in their travel plans?
2. Grow By Marketing Online
According to ConsumerAffairs, 97% Of Americans in the United States own a mobile phone which is 325.4 million people and a study by Statista claims that 63% of those people use their phone to search for things. Meaning that it is ever more valuable to start marketing online.
To grow your small business in Hawaii, you need to start attracting the audience in order for them to become your customers. We will share some of the common ways you can do that.
Social Media Marketing
There are tons of people that exist on social media and that use it on a daily basis, but most businesses that use it target their audience wrong. Social media marketing is not just about creating posts on Instagram and Facebook. It’s about “how do I target the right audience to buy my stuff?”
Posting on social media builds more brand awareness. In-fact, to grow your small business in Hawaii, you should start posting somewhat frequently. But that alone does not get the job done.
Influencer Marketing With Social Media
Chances are, most of the people that follow you are your local neighbors, friends, and people around your town. To really get a new type of audience, you need to start marketing by letting people do the marketing for you.
How exactly?
Think of it this way, you and I have different followers that look at our stuff. Meaning you and I have two different audiences. If you and I were to partner together and say, you give me stuff to promote about your business. Then you get a new type of audience. That’s it. This is some of what marketers call influencer marketing.
Digital Advertising
Advertising has a cost, but if you do it right, the cost is worth every penny. Digital advertising stretches mainly in social media but also works in search engines like Google. Depending on what you want to sell to people (whether it is a service or a product) you need to make sure you have a good marketing campaign strategy.
Digital advertising can be extremely effective if you hit the right target audience. In fact, The Local Shepard claims that 66% of marketers said that digital marketing tactics helped their business to succeed. So why try it and help yours?
Email Marketing
To grow your small business in Hawaii, an email marketing campaign can actually do the trick. Email marketing uses emails to be able to sell their products or service to their customers. Having an email list enables you to create newsletters that people may read, and topics they would be interested about.
But how do you start and get an email list for your business?
Every marketing strategy is different. In order to capture your audience emails, you need to think strategically. Put yourself in your customers shoes and think “How can I benefit from listening to you and your business?”. If you understand that within your business, it should enable you to start getting an email list.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is important for your business. You ever go on google search and type in something you were craving and found a nice restaurant right away that you can go visit. Well, that’s the power of SEO. SEO is a weird acronym but it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
We’ll give you a quick breakdown.
SEO is a way to make your website and social media pages stand out from your competitors so that these search engines (like Google) will say, “This business knows what they’re talking about, let’s give them the credibility they deserve”.
SEO is predominantly a huge part of marketing, because at the end of the day, it can reduce the amount of advertisements you spend. Giving you more eyes, and less price in the long run.
SEO is a long-term strategy so building your website’s SEO can take many months to years. But you have to ask yourself this question when you consider SEO. Do you want to spend a ton of money on advertisements throughout your business life, or would you want to decrease that amount of time by spending a few years working on your SEO?
We’ll leave that question for you to find out.
Why You Should Invest In Digital Marketing.
To grow your small business in Hawaii, you should extremely consider getting your business known in the online world. In fact, Kauai Growth uses all the techniques discussed to build an empowering marketing strategy that is fit for every business. Creating a long-term strategy that increases more sales in your business is important if you want to stay in business. Otherwise, you might eventually get bought out, which is not necessarily a bad thing if you want out.
But if you are very entrepreneurial and want your business to flourish, we created a checklist for your business to sell more. Tying in your business brand, how you can serve customers, and digital marketing together can be the secrets to your success.
