Kickstart Your Startup with These Highly Effective Promotional Strategies
By Space Coast Daily // January 20, 2020
Startup companies often have constraints in terms of their capital and budget. This is because the business has just been implemented after conceptualization, without profit and revenue as additional budget sources.
To add to this challenge, it is more important for startup companies to advertise because after all, they are the new players in the market, but advertising and marketing strategies prove to come with a hefty price.
Nevertheless, here are some effective promotional strategies to kick start your startup without having to break the bank.
Referrals
One of the most inexpensive, but effective promotional strategies is not actually promoting at all but letting your customers do the promotion for you. While this can prove to be difficult, especially when you are just starting out with your enterprise, it is definitely possible.
Thus, it is necessary to ensure that you offer high-quality products that your initial customers can rave about with the people they know, who can be your potential customers too.
The key is to ensure that your first customers are highly satisfied, not only with your products and services, but also with the support they get from your business because they are the ones who will create the ripple effect of referrals.
Print Media
Ensure that you have an ample supply of promotional materials, such as those in prints that contain pertinent information about your business, most especially during your grand opening.
This may entail the need for you to hand out flyers, brochures, or business cards among others. According to Austin Terrill, founder and CEO of Print Peppermint, refreshingly unique business cards greatly help in promoting your business.
This is particularly true if your business card establishes an incredible first connection with your potential customers. The reason behind this is that not all of your initial visitors will try out your products immediately.
There will always be those who will prefer to research more about your business through the print media you hand over them before trying out your products and services.
Social Media
The technological innovations in the digital world paved the way for advancements in social media platforms. Nowadays, social media is no longer just an avenue to share your personal experiences with your friends, but it can also be used to promote your business.
Thus, more and more startups are leveraging social media platforms to create brand awareness for their business. Apart from this, advertising on social media platforms is considerably more inexpensive compared to other marketing platforms.
In order to effectively promote your business through social media, create a business profile on several platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Ensure that pertinent information regarding your business is included in your profile such as your website if you do have one, the physical address of your business if you are running a brick and mortar shop, as well as details about the products and services you offer.
Ensure that you present the information in a manner that will easily be understood and in a way that will appeal to your target market.
If possible, reach out to your target market and stay connected through the social media platform to be able to build up a significant number of audience that will eventually form your share of the market once your audience becomes your loyal customers.
Email and Digital Marketing
Promotional emails are very popular, and also highly effective, especially for startups. This is because sending out emails is generally free, but a well crafted promotional email can generate instant revenue for a startup company. However, this entails the need for you to have an organically curated list of email addresses of your potential customers.
One way to do this is by having them sign up for promotional email materials physically when they visit your shop, or digitally when they visit your website.
More often than not, people are willing to sign up because it is through promotional emails where they get the best deals. This is the reason why you need to ensure that once you send out emails to your target market, reward them with a certain discount or a freebie that is hard to resist.
The discount and deals don’t necessarily have to render you broke, rather it can be just enough to spark their interest in trying out your products and services.
Apart from emails, you can also leverage the digital world for your promotional strategy. If you already have a business website, use this to upload relevant content about your business with a certain reward to your visitors who stayed for a significant period of time on your site.
If you don’t have a business site yet, this is the perfect time for you to come up with one that will attract your potential customers.
You can even employ SEO techniques to ensure that your site will come on top of the ranks when users search products and services in your niche.
Press Releases
Press releases are timeless and classic when it comes to promoting your business or your brand. This is because people regularly read the news to be updated with what is happening around them.
A press release is a cost-effective way of getting your brand mentioned or promoted in major publications.
However, this may entail the need for you to hunt down journalists if you intend to do all the promotional work yourself. Nevertheless, you still have the option of hiring the services of PR experts in the field to ensure the success of your press release in kick-starting your startup venture.
In conclusion, advertising your business for brand awareness and to reach your target market is necessary, most especially for a startup.
This is because as new players in the market, a startup needs to gain a considerable number of market share to ensure that the business will continue to run.
However, this can prove to be challenging, particularly if the main source of the business budget is its capital, without generating sufficient revenue yet. Rest assured that there are surefire ways on how to promote your business without draining your business budget.
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