What’s the point in working for somebody else’s company when you can create your own? More and more people are realizing how foolish it is to devote their lives to somebody else’s profits when they could be making their own.
Start-ups have never been more common. New businesses crop up on a daily basis. Unfortunately, very few actually succeed. This is not because the ideas behind them are not good but instead because people don’t know how to market themselves properly.
This post will tell you how you can ensure the visibility of your new start-up.
Website Creation
One of the first steps you need to take if you want your business to get more visibility online is to create a website. Your website is your start-up’s base. It is the first place consumers will go when they are looking for products. The easiest way to create a website is to use a template service, like WordPress. When searching for WordPress hosting, make sure that you choose a reliable service. A poor-quality host will negatively impact your site’s user experience. Consumers won’t want to return to your site if they have a bad time on it.
Using Influencers
Influencers are digital personalities, many of whom have huge followings. More often than not, influencers make money through sponsorships and endorsements. Some do have their own businesses, though this is rare. Influencers will market a sponsor’s product to their audiences on social media (and ‘influence’ them into purchasing the products, hence the name). Influencers can be a highly effective way of increasing your business’s exposure and visibility. Make sure that you only work with popular influencers, otherwise, there’s no point. Ideally, the influencers you work with should have audiences in excess of a million people.
Creating Content
On your website, you need to create content. If you don’t then your audience won’t consider you an authority in your niche. The content that you create doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to demonstrate expertise in your industry. A lot of business owners actually employ content writers to produce written content for them. It is certainly true that content writers can be expensive to hire, but they are an invaluable asset. You should find a content writer who has experience in SEO, for reasons that will be explained next.
SEM
SEM (search engine marketing) is a very effective marketing solution. Underneath the SEM umbrellas are SEO and PPC (search engine optimization and pay-per-click, respectively). SEO is highly effective and involves manipulating search engine algorithms, so as to rank one’s site higher than one’s competition.
A content writer will be able to insert popular keywords in the content that writes for your website, which will increase your site’s ranking. There are other things that you need to do in order to increase your site’s ranking through SEO, however. One of these things is mobile optimization. A large percentage of internet users browse on their mobile phones, so not optimizing your site alienates them.
Paid Advertisements
Another good way to increase your site’s visibility is to pay for advertisements on people’s blogs and websites, as well as in your local newspaper. However, it is only really necessary to pay for newspaper advertisements if your business is localized (as in, if you own a café, restaurant, or any business with a physical location, frequented by people from one specific area). Paid advertisements can help to spread the word about your business. When you get advertisements posted on other people’s websites, you also get to draw customers from their existing audience.
Business Collaborations
If you are a fashion or lifestyle business, then you might be able to increase your start-up’s visibility by collaborating with other start-ups. The good thing about collaborations is that you are able to draw from their audience (and they are able to draw from yours). However, you should never collaborate with another business that is directly in your niche, otherwise, they could end up stealing customers from you. You should instead collaborate only with businesses in your industry, but that focus on a different niche, i.e., if you are a fashion business that sells long-sleeved shirts, then work with a business that sells undershirts, or T-shirts.
Promotional Sales
Every so often, you need to hold promotional sales. Holding promotional sales can help to attract people who are interested in shopping with you but don’t want to take the leap because your prices are too high (or because they are unfamiliar with your products). When you are holding promotional sales, make sure that you don’t drop prices too low. Holding too many promotional sales or lowering the prices of your products too much can seriously devalue them in the eyes of customers.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is only possible when you already have an email subscription list. You can get this by offering customers a 5 or 10% discount for signing up. It is common for businesses to do this. Offering discount codes to incentivize signing up for your newsletter is not something that can devalue your brand. However, in order to prevent abuse, make sure that you log the IP addresses of the consumers signing up so that they can’t make new email addresses and attempt to abuse your discount system. SMS marketing is also very effective and works in the same way as email marketing.
Retargeting Consumers
Retargeting is when you send a visitor to your site notifications with a promotional code or a prompt to buy a product after they have left. You can sign up for retargeting services that can help you to do this. Many such services will send emails out to consumers automatically, so there is nothing that you actually need to do. Again, so that you don’t get your coupon codes abused, make sure that the codes you send to people are unique or can only be used once per IP. Retargeting can be a very effective way to increase your sales.
If you are the owner of a start-up, then you need to work hard to increase its visibility. The more visible it is, the more customers you are likely to get. Make sure that you are consistent in all of your marketing efforts.