All marketing for start-ups should be prepared with the idea that you want to build brand awareness, while earning attention and making connections for the future. In this way, when you actually advertise or try to sell something to your audience, they already feel as if they know, like and trust you.
Create a Marketing Plan
Your first step toward marketing for start-ups is to create a marketing plan.
A marketing plan will include the following:
* A short description of your business and the service you offer
* Your mission and goals
* Who your competitors are
* Your core money-making focus
* Who your target market is ~ your ideal client
* The strategy and tactics you plan to use to reach your audience
* A schedule to implement
* Your overall budget
It’s important to do this because without a plan, you’re far less likely to wind up at the destination you hoped you would. You may as well float paper boats down a stream.
If you plan to have a marketing mix of a website, a blog and social media along with offline marketing such as radio and newspaper, you need to write it all down and create a special strategy and tactics for each.
For example: Your Facebook marketing strategy, while it falls under social media marketing, will not look the same as your Twitter strategy or your LinkedIn strategy; because they’re all as different as a hospital and a nightclub.
Be Realistic about Your Budget
If you, like most small businesses start-ups, have a small marketing budget, it’s important to focus on what works. In this case, social media and on-line marketing are going to be more effective for your business as they cost less to implement.
If you cannot do something right, don’t do it at all. It will end up a waste of time and money. The same goes for pay-per-click advertising. If your budget is small, it may not work for you. Small budgets should stick to marketing that is almost free other than the time spent.
I’ve written an e-book on ways to market your small business and you can download it for FREE here..
Don’t skimp on your website.
Today, you can make an excellent website without much knowledge using self-hosted WordPress. You can even hire someone for a few hundred pounds to build a good website using WordPress if you don’t want to attempt doing it yourself.
Finally, create and open social media accounts. There is no point in spending money on your website if you’re not going to try to attract people to it.
Fill out the profiles all the way – include pictures, include information. Remember, this is sort of like a resume for your customers. If you hide who you are, and aren’t “real,” they’re going to ignore you as if you aren’t even there. You want people to learn about your business so be yourself, be likeable, and be trustworthy and accurate in your representation of your business.
