Once you’ve created a solid strategy for your brilliant business idea that covers the big picture, the small picture and everything in between, then you can get to the fun part — promoting it.
Here are our top 5 (inexpensive) marketing tips for getting your business out there:
1. Tell everyone you know about it
It’s tempting to be cagey at first: ‘what if I fail?’, ‘what if they think my idea is terrible?’, and so on. But if no one knows about your business, how will you ever sell anything?
You never know what helpful and serendipitous contacts your friends or acquaintances might have. People often love being conduits and sharing their connections.
Listen to feedback from those closest to you. They might be rude and harsh and laugh uncontrollably, but at least you know they genuinely have your best interests at heart.
2. Create a watertight online presence
Before you launch your business, spend time building an attractive website that represents your brand and provides an intuitive user experience for your customers. If someone wants to buy your product but can’t figure out how, they won’t.
You should also make sure you’ve got a shiny fresh presence on the social media platforms relevant to you. It’s worth taking the time to research where your audience lives online. A regularly updated blog is also a must to stay relevant.
3. (Try to) master Google
Now you’ve got your pretty website, snappy Twitter account and hilarious blog, you need to make sure people will see it.
So make Google your friend. It might be time-consuming, it might be confusing, but having a bit of knowledge about SEO, meta tags and link-building could be the difference between success and failure.
4. Become a public speaker
You only need one good, relevant idea to work your industry’s speaker circuit, as long as you know it inside out and are prepared to wheel it out at any moment. Of course if you can stretch your repertoire to a couple of topics, all the better.
The same goes for thought pieces in magazines or event brochures. Know your brand’s point of view and get your name out there. Building a portfolio of external recognition can help when seeking investment or other opportunities.
Be enthusiastic, polish your anecdotes to within an inch of their lives, and practise your ad libs and hand gestures in the mirror and the requests will pour in.
5. Do something quirky
Our design team leader Michelle had a brainwave recently to get some cute and cheap sandwich bags made that we could distribute to the independent cafes of Hammersmith.
Now the workers of West London will have their lunch wrapped in a Clear Books branded paper bag and (hopefully) will think of us if they need accounting software. A unique discount code adds incentive and records success.
This thinking can, of course, be applied beyond sandwich bags The world is your canvas —just don’t resort to flyposting. It costs a lot of money to remove and you don’t want your wonderful new business to be the reason council tax goes up.
Do you have any weird and wonderful marketing ideas to share with the community?
Comment below and let us know what worked for your business!
