It takes more than careful planning to achieve your ideal product when you start a business. You also need to launch it successfully. No matter how brilliant, many business ideas fail to take off because of poor execution. The bulk of the failure lies in subpar marketing. Even at its early stages, your business must already be promoted, allowing you to raise brand awareness and build your customer base.
Of course, marketing takes time, money, and effort. Enterprise-level businesses with plenty of resources to spend on marketing won’t have such problems. But for those starting out, you must utilize a ton of creativity, innovation, and resourcefulness to get your marketing strategy going.
After all, you can’t wait until you earn enough from your business before starting the marketing process. If you want to know some low-cost yet efficient marketing ideas for your business, the following tips and tricks are just for you.
Find Your Perfect Pitch
There is what they call an elevator pitch. Marketers must be able to make their point persuasively within 90 minutes, or they will lose the chance to make an impact. You must know what messages you want to get across to your audience to do this. Who are your customers? What motivates them? What are their challenges and pain points? How can you position your product or service to help them solve their problems?
You must determine your value proposition by identifying what makes you different from your competitors. This competitive advantage can be the core of your marketing message.
Start to Grow Your Digital Presence
People do everything online nowadays, so it’s safe to assume that your customers use the internet almost every day. This means you need to make your presence known by raising awareness about your brand online.
Of course, it’s a given that you will have a website where you can house your products, offers, and information that your customers will need. It’s the backbone of your marketing efforts. However, you also need to ramp it up by expanding your reach. A website alone will not guarantee a steady stream of visitors.
You can start with search engines. For example, Google receives countless traffic daily from online users who use the search query to answer their questions, find important information, or research the products they are interested in. You need to take advantage of this phenomenon by thinking of ways to solidify your search engine optimization strategy. You want to be on top of the search results page.
You might also want to consider running effective Google ads that will give you a good ROI (return of investment). You’ll need ads that can generate leads and grow your conversions. This is possible if you use a sound strategy to make the most out of your limited budget.
Harness the Power of Social Media
Another important online marketing tool lies in utilizing social media. Billions of users all over the globe make use of social media to connect, communicate, and even shop for products. It’s only logical to benefit from this by creating a solid presence on social platforms that many of your customer base frequent.
For example, you can create a Business Page on Facebook to help build your brand. Most people nowadays look up businesses they are interested in on social media to gauge their trustworthiness, so you must have a page they can check out.
It’s also worth considering running Facebook ads. Unlike traditional advertising, running ads on Facebook won’t break your bank. You have the power to set limits on your ad spend, making sure your ads are running on a budget you can afford.
You can grow your Facebook page by running a Page Likes campaign, or you can solidify your brand identity by running Awareness ads. It’s possible to increase your leads through Facebook advertising too, and it’s often considerably cheaper.
Make Use of Email Marketing
Once you’ve built your email list, either through leads on Facebook or Google ads, then you want to warm them up to your product or service. You can introduce your brand and let them know what makes you stand out.
By creating an email nurture campaign for the leads you have acquired, you gain an opportunity to nurture them throughout the marketing funnel. Each email gets them through different sales process steps, from awareness and consideration to conversion. You can offer them some good deals before the launch of your business.
Real estate businesses have perfected this trick. They often build their lead generation efforts before launching a property, often through email marketing. They make it a point to convince their prospects to do business with potential clients even before they start selling.
Create a Blog on Your Website
If you have a website, it will only take one more step to add a blog. A blog forms the foundation of your content marketing, allowing you to build on your brand and reach new audiences. When done correctly, a blog can usher in a wealth of benefits for your brand.
For one, it can boost your SEO strategy. Search engines love it when you produce fresh and valuable content. It can drive traffic to your website and allow you to turn visitors into leads and, eventually, paying customers. If you want to establish your brand as an authority in your industry, a well-planned blog that showcases your expertise and positions you as a thought leader is the best way to go.
A blog does not cost a lot of money, but it also requires effort. You want to put forward high-quality content that will help you build brand awareness, trust, and customer relationships. At the very least, your content must be relevant, valuable, and consistent.
Wrapping It Up
Marketing is essential to every business, whether a startup T-shirt biz or an established food venture. Some companies forgo marketing because of the expense it can incur, but they often fail to realize that it’s an investment that will give them their money’s worth if planned properly and run effectively. It’s also worth noting that effective marketing does not always have to cost you an arm and a leg.
There are a lot of opportunities for you to explore if you want to expand your reach, build your customer base, and generate sales.
