Promoting a new business is more difficult than it sounds, did you know that around 25 percent of new businesses including start-ups will fail within the first year, and just 44 percent will last beyond 4 years in trading, a completely outrageous figure, which through good management, focus, funds and promotion can be averted.
Good Management and focus is core to ensuring the survival of your business without these you will need a lot of capital or a good business partner capable of performing in these areas to breach the 12 month mark.
Let us take a look at the positive aspects of promotion which can help you to avert a potential disaster, the failure of your own business. From a promotional perspective, active marketing and advertising is the key to promoting your business to your potential customers, without a promotional strategy your business is one which has little or no customers. Word of mouth has worked in the past and continues to do so on a local level for many businesses, but to ever expand operations and dominate as a start up promotion is the key.
Who do I promote my product or service to?
Find out who purchase your good and services, those who show an interest in your goods. Once you have identified your core customers you need to look at placing your product in places where the core customers would typically be, this can be both over the Internet in places like niche forums, websites, directories and targeted keyword or demographic advertisements through popular online advertising companies and search engines. Increasingly in recent years social media such as Facebook and Twitter have been used heavily. Offline relies on traditional forms of promotion, national or local newspapers, flyers etc.
Branding
You need to establish an image for your start up, a brand builds confidence in your product and trust from your customers. Consider standardising your stationary, letter heads, business cards, uniforms with identifiable colour schemes and logo.
Make them aware of the advantages
Let the customer know why they should buy from you, why you are not just another business, rather than constantly try to sell them your product provide a service which helps them to overcome hurdles.
Free Promotional Items
Everyone, and I mean everyone wants something free. Give away ‘freebies’ and promotional items at shows, at your office and when ever you spot a potential future customer, promotional items hold your brand and if used by the new or existing customer may well prompt an enquiry which may lead to a conversion.
Online
The Internet and social media have become a massive force in the last 5 years, shifting much of the focus away from traditional advertising, marketing and promotion, knowing this and keeping on top of trending online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter will provide a free or inexpensive means of connecting with hundreds or thousands of potential and existing customers as well as fans of your product or service.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is a means of helping you to gain visibility in the search engine results pages, Google is the number one search engine in the world, attracting in 2008 some 200 million searches per day, from queries which are both very specific and generic, their refined algorithm has built trust amongst the Internet community for quality results. Picking up just a couple ‘hits’ a day could yield massive benefits. An SEO specialist would be able to give you advise in this area, and it is highly recommended to reap the benefits of SEO.
Resources
https://searchenginewatch.com/2156431
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