So, you want to start a business? Although this is obviously an exciting venture, starting from scratch can be difficult. Simply stated, building a business will take plenty of creativity and courage alongside hard work. Some of that work will involve wading knee deep in online marketing. Start-up web marketing can be uniquely challenging in that new businesses don’t yet have the resources that more established ones do and this includes contacts, time, budget as well as expertise.
For this reason, it is crucial to take the time to understand and properly execute web marketing strategies specifically crafted for start-up businesses. This is because more traditional marketing strategies won’t work as well for your start-up. So, if you’re ready to take on the challenge, read on!
Here are our 6 best online marketing tips for start-up companies!
1- Knowing your market
Even if you have a product that could be sold to and loved by anyone, it is important to be aware of who you should be selling to before you begin your efforts. If you’re serious about your company, you should be dedicated to identifying a niche market and go after this market first.
Trying to sell your product or idea to everyone around you will waste both time and energy. There are four factors to consider when choosing a market, and these are as follows:
- Size
Is the market you are tackling big or small? Regional or international? Potential customer base? These are all crucial questions you’ll need to answer before you begin.
- Wealth
Is the market you’re targeting on the high-end of things or on the lower end? Will your prospective clients have money to spend on what you’re selling?
- Competition
How many competitors are in your market, and is it already quite saturated?
- Value proposition
If the market is pretty saturated, is your value proposition enough to cut through the market and reach a target audience?
Asking yourself these questions before diving straight into online marketing efforts will help you to aptly define who you’re going to be targeting your efforts towards.
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2- Using Keywords to Improve Your Start-up's Website
Before creating content, collecting a list of keywords might seem unnecessary. However, in actuality, you should adopt the opposite mentality. Gathering a list of keywords and phrases surrounding them will allow you to think about your business from your prospective clients’ perspective.
These keywords will be primarily for blogging, social media as well as your website. To think of some relevant keywords, start by asking yourself: what would someone search on Google in order to land on your website?
Start out with a core list, and this list will work to summarize the functions of your start-up business. From this list, create a secondary list with words or phrases more general to the market you are working within. Use free online tools to do some keyword research, running your core list through apps such as Google Keyword Tool, KwFinder or Uber Suggest.
Determining the best keywords for your market will depend on the results you pull from these tools, and they will be identified by low competition and high traffic. Essentially this means that plenty of people are searching these terms but little to no content exists on the subject.
3- Customers & Audience
When you’re creating a business, it should specifically align with a core audience. There should be no shame in this process, as this is one of the main ways to gain traction as a start-up. It would be difficult to market your business towards companies or individuals who do not work in your field, and further, customers who are not receptive to your venture or product.
For this reason, take the time to identify your target market as well as ways that would best reach them. As we mentioned, it is best to identify a niche market.
Make sure that you spend considerable time thinking up scenarios that relate to your business or product, but those which are not immediately obvious. At the same time, be sure you are not looking too hard towards the fringes. Once you’ve taken the time to identify and understand the target market, interact with your customers.
Blasting out information about your company or products is useless. Instead, look for ways that you can engage with potential customers as nothing will build brand loyalty like real life human interaction. If posting on social media, find a way to engage with the customer.
If sending out a newsletter, make sure it is signed by yourself to show the face behind the business. These tricks may seem small, but they are absolutely necessary to build customer relationships.
4- Determining what success looks like for your business?
The success of every business is different, and this is especially true when it comes to start-ups. When you’re just beginning your company ventures, you may not actually understand the ins and outs of running a business.
For this reason, you should define success in relation to your company early on. For some start-ups, success may mean money in the bank while for others, it may be attracting new customers.
Once established, write your definition of success down and go over it with your team. This way, everyone will be on the same page from the get-go. Further, defining success will help in terms of consistency and goals to reach towards. Pick what success looks like for your business and commit to it!
5- Crafting a well-thought-out pitch
So, we may have already discussed finding new customers as well as influencers in the same market to vouch for your business, but what about media? Finding media coverage for a growing start-up is difficult. One of the main mistakes of most start-ups is in the crafting of the press release.
Make sure that when creating a press release, you include all supporting information as well as a hook that will make media outlets interested in writing about your business.
Make sure to provide links to all relevant profiles, including social media, a working website or otherwise. Also worth noting is that if your company plans on undergoing any huge changes, as this will be very important to any interested media outlets.
6- Managing Your Online Marketing Budget
As you’ve probably guessed, money is fairly important when it comes to starting a business. How much can your company afford when it comes to web marketing strategies?
It would be wise to set a strict budget early on. Of course, you may end up over or under budget, but it is still very important to offer these parameters and accept the limitations of what you’re working with.
After setting the budget, make sure you carefully plan how it will be divided. Consider your most powerful tools and offer the ones that make up the most of your budget. If your blog has been gaining recognition, maybe invest a good portion into it.
In contrast, you may want to invest parts of your budget into issues or roadblocks you’ve come up against. Be strategic but also aware of what your business needs to go from start-up to full-blown enterprise.
