Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly
When starting your own small business, marketing is exceptionally important. You can have the best products or service in the world but that isn’t enough to make your business a success. You need to make sure people know about it. Big businesses have a huge budget to employ a marketing team to do it all for them. You might not have the resources to do this in the beginning. Fortunately, there are many great marketing strategies you can implement yourself.
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Social Media
Social media is absolutely massive. As well as the main platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, there are 100’s more you could use. It’s best to look at what your target market uses and start there rather than aiming to have a presence everywhere. Set up profiles for your business using your colors, logo, and other branding and start using them. Post regularly and be sure to include pictures where you can and to engage with your followers.
Influencer Marketing
Bloggers have a huge influence over their followers. Many successful bloggers have an incredibly loyal and committed fan base. These people read every article and value the writer’s opinions and advice. This makes influencer marketing exceptionally useful to a new business.
When it comes to using blogs to your advantage you have two main options. Firstly, you could work with bloggers. Build relationships with them through communication and honesty. Then, ask them to help you with advertising and promotion. Build a working relationship in which they write about your products and services and advertise them on social media.
Your second option is to start your own blog and build your own loyal readership. You could do this either as a separate site or as a section on your business website. Write informative and entertaining posts and then engage with your readers to keep them coming back.
Word of Mouth
Word of mouth advertising is one of the most important ways to grow any new business. Make a good impression through fantastic customer service, engagement, honesty, and openness. Become known for your customer service skills and your clients will soon tell others.
Cold emailing can be a very useful tool. Use online services to find the email addresses of clients and businesses that could benefit from your products and services. Then, send them a welcome email. Try to make this as personal as possible and even consider including a welcome offer. When it comes to cold emailing, it’s important to have a clear opt-out option and not to appear annoying and pushy.
If you are interested in learning more about running your own business consider an online executive MBA. An online executive masters in business administration will help you learn more about up to date marketing strategies, as well as all other areas of running a business.
One of the most important things to do when it comes to marketing is research. Look into your target market, what they like, which social media sites they use and where they spend their money. Look also at what your competitors are doing and what is working well for them. Then ask yourself how you can do it better?
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Great article. Cold email is in particular an amazing and quick way to get more sales