Starting a new business is far from simple, especially since you have to worry about your company’s infrastructure and its market presence at the same time. On their own, each of these tasks is daunting enough but when combined, they become nearly impossible to balance. The most unfortunate part lies in the fact that it’s not all in the effort but experience, which is much harder to come by. In order to overcome this massive obstacle, here are top five marketing tips to keep in mind when starting a new business.
Don’t wait for too long
The first massive mistake that new businesses make is postponing the launch of a new product because they believe it isn’t ready to hit the shelves. Sure, releasing an unfinished or underdeveloped product is horrible, however, most product sales work on the principle of critical mass. As a new business, your product demand will start at zero and it might take a while until you get any attention. Postponing the launch, therefore, also means postponing the work on your brand awareness, as well as postponing the break-even point. The latter might end up being a miscalculation that your business will never recover from.
Having competition is great
A lot of inexperienced marketers and new business owners tend to downplay the importance of competition and proceed to paint it as an exclusively negative thing. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, a tough competition can steal some of your traffic and sale but they also make the market more receptive towards your industry and serve as a reference point of how great your offers really are. In other words, you don’t have to build a reputation from scratch or invent a new business model. All you have to do is come up with a single benefit that you’re going to focus on during your campaign.
Get a professional web design
A great looking, responsive web design can make your company appear much greater in volume and much more reputable from day one. For this reason alone, it’s much better to get a professional web design than to try and DIY one. The problem with the latter is the fact that there are so many drag-and-drop tools out there to help you get there, yet, while they may be good enough for your blog or your fan page when it comes to your business’s official website, you need something more. Even if you can’t find the room in your budget for such a project, it’s definitely more than worth it to apply for start up business loans, just so you can finance building a professional website.
Create a community
While this is easier said than done, sometimes by merely giving your audience a safe space to exchange ideas, you can help them connect. By making a forum or creating a thread on your blog with this in mind, you can give your customers a place to talk about you or talk directly to you. Another hidden perk of having a community forum is that it has the potential of handling most of your customer services. For instance, if someone asks a question on a thread, it is most likely that another user, not a moderator, will give them the answer they were looking for. In a lot of cases, this will be perceived as a preferable (due to its self-reliance) problem-solving method.
Post-sale follow-up
As a new business, one of your main objectives is to generate return customers, unless you’re in an industry that provides one-time-buy products like weights and chess sets. Overall, you need to find a way to engage your customers after they’ve made a purchase either by thanking them for supporting your business or by informing them that they’ll have a discount next time. In some cases, it’s even worth monitoring their on-site activity and then sending them a special, limited-time offer for the item they were inspecting on their last visit. In this way, you’re giving them a direct incentive to come back, as well as personalize their user experience.
Conclusion
On their own, these five tips are enough to improve the presence of your business but no entrepreneur with growth in mind will restrict themselves to these five alone. Therefore, you might want to explore other options that you can use as complementary. Here, you can go with anything from social media to guerilla marketing, depending on your industry, your personal predispositions and the nature of your product or your market. Overall, your options are numerous and all you have to do is find the right combination.
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