Section Five: How to Market A New Business

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LMB BLOG BUSINESS ADVICE, TIPS AND SUPPORT

15 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR STARTUP USING A DIGITAL STRATEGY

Friday January 28th, 2022.

Jamieson Lee Hill, LMB Content and Copywriting Manager & Videogame Storywriter

As an International Sales Manager once said to me, if you’re not selling, you need to be marketing. Marketing is the key to the kingdom. People need to know your business and products/services are there. To do that you need to ‘shout’ above the rooftops, so that people notice.

Right, now let’s have a look at 15 top tips for a small business startup and how to tackle marketing.

Customer Value Journey (CVJ)

This is a concept put forward by the leading US organization DigitalMarketer. They describe the relationship between a business and its customers or prospects as a journey or relationship that needs to be built.

The CVJ goes in stages and it is important not to be salesy early on in the relationship with a new prospect. DigitalMarketer uses the analogy that if you go on a first date with someone and ask them to marry you and name your future kids, the other person will probably run away never to be seen again.

So like dating, it is important to build relationships with prospects. One main approach is through free, valuable content that gives solutions to the problems customers have. The Value First approach is a tried and tested way to build an audience and customer base. As the prospect gets to know your company through useful content on your website and social media, a relationship of trust and familiarity will be formed. This will lead to some prospects becoming paying customers.

For more information about the Customer Value Journey you can visit the DigitalMarketer website. I can’t highlight the importance of learning this idea. It underpins the whole marketing journey for a small business.

Content Ideas

Potential customers love excellent content and Google does too. Blogging, making videos, doing audio and video podcasts, creating memes and infographics, and writing articles to send to well known websites in your sector are all effective ways to get your content out there.

Other suggestions:

Plan a campaign of social media posts on a theme related to your business.
Do 1 minute videos everyday about your business, brand and related items to build a relationship with prospects.
Contact other websites about being a guest blogger or to appear on their podcast and offer to do the same for them.
Remember that content build your authority as an expert and strengthens your brand. It is also excellent for SEO purposes because quality content will bring users to your website and social media. This in turn increases your ranking on Google.
If you don’t have the time or ability to create content, then hire freelancers that do. The emphasis should be on quality. You should avoid buying in cheap, poor quality content which has spelling and grammar mistakes and low quality graphic design. This will damage your brand and make it look unprofessional.
Refresh old content by giving it a rewrite or edit. This helps your ranking on Google too.
Also, you can Repurpose old content e.g. take a podcast interview and use the audio script to create an article or splinter a large video into smaller chunks. Think of ways you can repurpose content into other forms. It saves time and it is always wise to reuse popular content.
Evergreen content is content which has lasting appeal over a long period of time. Your best content that doesn’t age should be reposted but you should always refresh it with an edit or rewrite to help your Google ranking.

Customer Avatar/Persona Template

Understanding your target audience is massively important in Marketing. It is this research that should underpin your Digital Marketing Strategy.

Look at this Customer Avatar Worksheet and fill it out for your typical customer type. You may have more than one. Before you create content always refer to the Customer Avatar to influence your writing. Write in the voice of the target audience and consider their challenges, needs, aspirations, background etc so the content is relevant and targeted at them.

Before and After State

The before and after state is a term used in marketing to refer to the transformation that the marketer shows the prospective customer in a piece of content. To give an example if you were a company selling warm and stylish winter jackets you could focus on the before state of a prospect as follows:

Before:

Before buying a jacket the prospect feels cold in Winter and hates the rain.

After:

After the buying the customer is warm, cosy and dry. Also, they feel very confident with their stylish new jacket.

The point of the Before - After State is that people buy products and services based on emotions/feelings and not just because of the product features. Effective marketing and advertising appeals to the emotions of the target audience.

The Four Ps of Marketing or The Marketing Mix

The 4 Ps are a classic concept in marketing. Let’s look at the basics of what they mean for your business startup.

Price

You are entering the market and you want to sell as many units as possible. To gain market penetration you need to decide whether to go for a price lower than your competitors or to aim for the high end of the market. Charging a high price is called market skimming as you skim off the top of the luxury end of the market.

Do your market research about pricing by looking at your competitors and see how they are approaching it. Remember that it is okay to make a loss in the short term, but long term you need to be making a profit and covering all your costs while generating revenue. Remember that the amount you charge will affect customers’ perception of your brand i.e. either low or high quality or mid-range.

Promotion

How will you promote your products and services? Will you use social media platforms? Which ones are best for your target market? Will you use paid advertising? If so, on which platforms and how much will you spend per day, per week, month etc?

Will you do contests and giveaways to build up new audiences?

Will you send out Press Releases and harness the power of the media? (See later sections on HARO and Media)

Product

Deciding what you are selling is crucial. Will it be physical products or will you offer services such as consultation?

To determine your products and services, you first need to research the market and identify a real demand for something. It is not about selling what you like yourself; there has to be real world demand enough to sustain your new business. Part of product research involves looking at what your competitors are doing and how you can emulate their success and enter the market as a newcomer.

Place

Traditionally, this would be on the high street in a bricks and mortar shop, but in the 21st century online shopping is huge. Where will you sell? On Amazon? Shopify? Ebay? Your own website? Esty? And so on…

Again, do your research about the different platforms to sell on and decide which are best for you and your products/services. You need to discover where your potential customers go to find out information about your proposed sector. For further information, I recommend you check out Neil Patel’s article on the 4 Ps. Neil is a fantastic source of information for Digital Marketing.

The Rise of Online Shopping

So unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few years, you must have realised that online shopping is now massively popular. E-commerce has been on the rise since the mid-1990s.

With the onset of the pandemic the Digital Boom was immense. Check out these stats:

“With the rise of ecommerce, it’s only natural that the number of online shoppers worldwide rises along with it. As it stands in 2021, the number of digital buyers is at 2.14 billion. That makes 27.6 percent of the 7.74 billion people in the world. In other words, more than one out of every four people you see around you is an online shopper.”

Oberlo.co.uk, 2021

In 2021 the number of online shoppers worldwide rose by 900 million:

“The number of online shoppers has been growing over the past few years. In 2021, there were 900 million more digital buyers than there were in 2020—a 4.4 percent year-over-year increase.”

Oberlo.co.uk, 2021

At that rate of increase, online shopping is set to become even more important in the world. This is why you must take digital marketing seriously because ecommerce is here to stay. Plus, the pandemic has shown the world market that it is vital to have digital sales to survive in these times.

Social Media

A basic rule of thumb for social media marketing is to choose 2 or 3 social media platforms that are relevant to your sector. Then put out your best content and have a really effective social media strategy that is tailored to your audience. To make sure your content is appealing to your audience you need to do some social listening and listen for what people are saying in your industry, their problems and challenges, their wish lists etc and then you can design your content to offer solutions to their issues.

Paid Ads

There is sometimes a reluctance for small businesses to spend money on digital advertising. This may be in part due to the horror stories of people getting it all wrong and literally burning money on PPC ads. However, advertising done correctly can provide an immediate hit for your sales trajectory. Here are a few basics that you need to Google and learn about:

Paid Ads vs Organic SEO
PPC Ads
Google Analytics
Facebook Analytics
Cookies
Retargeting ads
Boosting your posts

A note of caution - it is very easy to burn money on Ads in Facebook, Google etc. Therefore, do your research first. Both Facebook and Google offer free training which will help you. Check out Google’s Digital Garage and Facebook’s Blueprint. If you don’t have the time or inclination to learn these skills, you can always hire a freelancer or agency to create and run paid ads for you.

SEO Organic Search

The holy grail of SEO still seems to be a mystery for a lot of businesses.

SEO means Search Engine Optimization. It is all about understanding how to rank highly on Google and other search engines. By understanding customers’ search intent you can optimize your website and social media to be picked up in search engines.

The ultimate goal is to be on the first page because for a large company that can mean millions of dollars in sales and for a small company it can mean sustainable growth and expansion.

Be warned - there is a worldwide pool infested with Shark SEO companies who promise the world and deliver very little. SEO done properly is a very involved business which needs to go through systematic steps. It doesn't happen overnight, SEO is the long game approach but it brings sustainable results and growth. You don’t usually see real results for about 3 months. That doesn't mean that you won't get lucky and get on the first page of Google for a certain set of keyword phrases sooner than that. But staying there is another matter!

A combination of SEO and Paid Ads can be very effective. Again, you will need to learn the skills of both or hire freelancers to do it for you. If you do fancy learning SEO yourself, Hubspot offer free training.

Blogging

Blogging is still a serious way to market your business and brand. Conventional wisdom was that blogs should be short and no longer than 500 words. That was because people tend to have short attention spans in the digital age. However, this way of thinking has created a shortage of longer content.

In a nutshell, if you can write some articles 1000 to 2000 words packed with really useful content, you could find yourself making your way to the first page of Google. Yippee! The Promised Land of the first page. So get writing people! You don’t have to write all of your blog posts this length but a few big articles on key topics for your business will give you a great chance of ranking high on Google if it is quality content.

For your blog, plan ahead and outline the topics you will write about with a Content Plan. Again write about relevant topics for your industry and target audience. Practise ‘Social Listening’ before you write your blog articles i.e. go online to social media and see what prospective customers are talking about in terms of their problems, needs and their view of competitor brands, products and services.

For blogging, write about relevant topics with authority and give value first i.e free valuable content which helps solve customer problems. Then you will build trust with your audience and some of them will become paying customers.

Remember - to save yourself time and money, see what your competition is putting out there and emulate the best performing content that they are creating. This requires you to be an Analytics Detective! Which of their posts have the most engagement and why? Is it the headline? The photos? The keywords? The topics? Etc.

Avoid Half-finished Bridges

Ryan Deiss of DigitalMarketer advises against this pitfall. It basically means you shouldn’t try and do everything all at once. It is better to choose a few digital marketing strategies that suit your target audience and do them well. In doing your research you will decide what works best for your startup.

E.g. Choose 3 Social Media platforms where your target audience hangs out e.g. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or just two if you prefer. The main thing is to put out great content.

Then develop a Content strategy for your social media centred around those 3 platforms. Create valuable and free content for your audience to build your brand authority and trust.

Review what you are doing each month and get into analytics i.e. analysing which posts get the most engagement - likes, shares, comments etc. Then you can repeat and emulate the posts that perform the best. But remember likes, shares and comments mean nothing without sales. In fact, we call them ‘vanity metrics’ because the real proof in the pudding is sales conversions! Remember that. It is a vital lesson to learn. Lots of followers does not always mean lots of revenue if people in that audience are not buying from you.

Email Marketing

Still a big hitter in terms of income generated. Although you hear people complain about being spammed and having information overload via email, if you share valuable content with an engaged audience you can convert a good percentage of that audience into buyers. What is a good percentage? Well, for 1000 email recipients, if you manage to convert 2% to 5% into paying customers, then those are pretty good numbers.

The key to success in email marketing is to:

Email people who are interested in your brand
Don’t leave big gaps of months between emails
Don’t email every day
Create a sales funnel where the emails build a relationship with prospects first - Nurture. Don’t be salesy at first, build a relationship.
But later send emails that are selling products and services to them - Promotion.
You can also write emails to re-engage previous customers who haven’t bought for a while.

Read this fab article about Email Marketing to get fully conversant with the process.

Community Action and Media

Connecting with your local community or creating online communities through setting up Facebook groups or groups on other social media, is a great way to connect with your target audience.

A PR approach of sending out press releases to local, national and international media outlets helps keep your brand at the forefront of prospects’ minds and is also good for your search engine ranking (SEO).

Featuring in the media is a form of free advertising that you should tap into. Consider ways that you can hold publicity stunts or hold events that will capture the attention of people.

Here are some examples:

Run a community event and send out a press release before it happens to media outlets e.g. give free products to a charity, support a local school with your skills, do a charity sponsored run or similar event etc.
Sponsor a local charity or non-profit organisation to be featured in their advertising e.g. sponsor a local charity concert.
Put your business forward or yourself for a business contest. Winning such an event will put your business out there in the media.

Help a Reporter Out - HARO

This is an effective way to get free publicity. The blurb on the website states:

“HARO connects journalists seeking expertise to include in their content with sources who have that expertise.”

You sign up via email and each day you will get various emails asking for expert sources regarding a range of topics and fields. If your skills or knowledge align with any of these, you can write and offer to contribute. If you are chosen you will be mentioned in the article or whatever the form of publication is used and your business will be listed. This can be extremely profitable if your business details end up in a national media platform.

The downside is that you do get sent a lot of emails and it is a bit of a lottery as there is no guarantee that you will be chosen. Yet if you are chosen the stakes are high and a listing for your business could lead to new customers. Check it out on the HARO website.

Agile Marketing is the Way of the Web!

In the modern digital age, it is important to practise what is called ‘Agile Marketing’. This means that you listen and adapt your marketing and sales strategies to keep up with the changes in the market. Innovation and change are the keys to survival in the digital economy.

Watch out for trending content that is performing very well that your competitors are using. Analyse why it is working so well and getting excellent engagement. Then emulate the content by creating your own.

To read more about an Agile Marketing Strategy check out articles by the organisation Copyblogger. They have tonnes of great content and run a course on the Strategy of Content Marketing which is definitely worthwhile to make your business a success.

Finally, don’t forget to focus on ways to market your brand and products/services to the local market. Of course, you can also pitch to the national and international communities but start local. Here is a fabulous blog post to get you started on Local Marketing.

Onwards and Upwards! You can do this. Become the Marketer you never knew you were. If you are not selling, you have to be marketing as my great friend and mentor Edward Van Der Kleijn once said!

PS Read more below from this fantastic list of articles on marketing....

READING LIST FOR MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS