Marketing the right way can be an incredible advantage for your company's net income. Badly done, however, it may seem to be throwing money into an enraged bonfire. Since small business owners need to be whatever their small business needs at any given time, it can be difficult to master all the nuances of sales or marketing. If you are not a natural seller, it can be even more difficult. Fear not, the following nine startup marketing tips can help you increase sales, improve the market, and waste less money.
1. Sell the advantage, not a comparison
How you market yourself is all regarding lightness what causes you to totally different.
There are 3 major ways to try and do that.
- Cost (you know how to evaluate the price of a product better than the competition)
- Quality (you're better)
- A combination of these (offer the best value)
But how you sell yourself is different from how you market yourself. You can tell someone you offer a cheaper or more effective product or service than that of another company, but that doesn't say how much better you can make the customer's life.
The sale is about the advantage. A comparison may highlight the features you offer, but you're always selling benefits.
2. Listen to your customer.
Wal-Mart's famed mass retail titan Sam Walton started his empire in rural America. This is despite the business logic that there is a mass retailer anywhere but a city with a concentrated population will fail. The logic is that if you want to move bulk items, you need a large number of people.
But Walton knows his customers because he often listens to them live. He knows that people who live in rural and suburban areas often buy in large quantities because they have large families or need more goods to store and run their own small businesses. Walton listened to the words of his customers and the result is the world's largest, most powerful brick and mortar retailer. The customer may defy logic at times, but they are always correct. Listen to them.
3. Market your product before it’s ready.
Some companies wait for their product to be perfect before doing any marketing or awareness campaigns. This can be an expensive mistake. Many companies plan to sell their product as soon as it is ready. But if nobody knows, demand will start from scratch until you undergo a marketing campaign to create brand awareness for potential customers.
It is best to do a preventative awareness campaign, even if minimal, to let potential customers know that your product is coming. You can sell the benefit before the product arrives. In this way, when the product is ready, customers are ready too!
4. Think outside the box.
The marketing landscape has changed dramatically since I started my first business over 30 years ago. At the time there were no search engines or social media platforms. There was no internet as we know it. Now, startups can use a variety of free, creative, and effective online marketing techniques. For example, you can use online video marketing, social media, blog influencers, crowdsourcing, competitions, content marketing, thought leadership, and more.
5. Test fast. Fail fast.
Some Marketing you can't measure is failed marketing. Of course, you could spend money doing some advertising and you might even see an increase in sales in the same period you ran the ads. But how can you be sure of what you spent on sales-related ads? Maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe there is a natural and seasonal increase in what you sell that will disappear in a month.
If you plan to spend time and money on a marketing campaign, make sure you can measure the results. Establish ways to track conversions that result from each marketing campaign. Besides, run multiple types of marketing campaigns in separate small batches. This will allow you to compare marketing channels and see which ones work best. Eliminate those that don't work and keep those that do.
6. Advertise from multiple angles.
As mentioned earlier, it is helpful to test multiple channels and marketing ideas to see what works best. Often, it is not a single thing, but a combination of all of the above. When your customer is listening to the radio, you can see in the results of a search engine, and then you'll find mentioned in a blog that he likes (content marketing), begin to accept your brand as a solid entity, reliable and known. They may not immediately need your product or service, but when they do, your name will come to mind instead of a competitor's.
7. It’s always time for PR.
When you advertise traditionally, it is your marketing material that sells your product. When you do PR, or you have a member of the press or a media house that covers the sector that speaks about you, it is the construction of the brand and the approval.
Some people call it a landing page style or credibility building, but if your company is featured in Mashable or The Wall Street Journal, you would be foolish not to put the name of that document on the front of your company's website. Even if your company was mentioned only through a quote from your CEO, you are still "as mentioned in the Wall Street Journal". When customers see the name of that publication next to your company name, it creates credibility.
Even small PR successes, such as local news or blogs, add up. And unlike most traditional marketing, PRs hold out far beyond the dates of the hype. A good PR can do a lot for your brand credibility and awareness.
8. Give customers a place to talk to/about you.
Good or bad, you want to know what your customers say. If you don't offer your customers a place to complain or praise you, their thoughts and opinions don't seem to matter. Remember, even if a customer comes to you and is furious, it is a great opportunity for you to publicly show how willing you are to correct a mistake or make an esteemed customer feel that he is PR gold.
By providing a place on your site for this type of exchange to take place, you can solve the problem and control part of that narrative. The alternative is that the customer accesses a third party site and complains if the problem cannot be resolved or a modified response can be customized.
9. We look forward to seeing you again.
Loyalty or interest. I tell my employees of Worberg stores, my on-line E-commerce store, that our customers are our sales division.
Word of mouth endorsement and customers who are our brand advocates are better than any sales panel you could put together.
Therefore, I still reward customers with competitive costs, unimaginable client support and automatic updates to enhance the system.
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