Are you starting a new business or a new part of your business? Here are four top marketing tips for startups. All marketing should be done 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 a new business is to create a marketing plan. A marketing plan will include the following:
- A short description of your company
- Your mission and goals
- Your core money-making focus
- Where you are today within the market
- Who your competitors are
- Who your target market is
- The marketing mix
- 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 far less likely to wind up at the destination you hoped you would.
Create a Marketing Strategy and Tactics for Each Channel
If you plan to have a marketing mix of a website, a blog and social media along with offline marketing such as TV advertisements, radio and newspaper, you need to write it all down and create a special strategy and tactics for each. Your marketing mix offers different ways to reach your audience as it should, but they can’t all live together in the same individual strategy, and your tactics will be different for each channel and sub channel.
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 as different as a nightclub and a barn.
Another Marketing Tips for Startups is Be Realistic about Your Budget
If you, like most small businesses, have a small marketing budget, it’s important to focus on what works. In this case, social media and online marketing are going to be more effective for your business because it costs a lot of money to get involved with TV advertising.
If you cannot do something right, don’t do it. 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.
Create an Awesome Website
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 about $500 dollars to build a good website using WordPress as long as it doesn’t have too many bells and whistles like forums, membership options, and shopping carts.
So be realistic about that, too. If you need those things, spend the money that needs to be spent to ensure the website works. Many businesses fail before the get started due to a bad website.
Finally, create and open social media accounts. 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 likable, and be trustworthy and accurate in your representation of your business.