Starting a business is an interesting but challenging stage in the flotation of a company. It is necessary to balance between the constant customer engagement for growth and the quality of the product so that your business develops. At the start of a business, you do not have enough money and knowledge; you have to do everything yourself and on a whim.
It is extremely important to invest in the quality of the product (service), marketing will not save a bad product. Focus on the most effective tools that do not require large investments from the start.
Let us discuss the “free” term, which was used in the title of the article and which is relative, promoting the site on your own, you spend time, and it costs money.
Today, we will examine 5 principles and marketing methods that will help you as quickly as possible to go through the valley of death and reach a steady growth.
5 Easy Marketing Methods to Grow your Business
1. Make a Good Product
If you produce a high-quality and sought-after product, the cost of advertising will be minimal, it facilitates its promotion.
You need to make primary knowledge sowings (use social networks and crowd marketing, we will talk about them later) about your product to attract Early-adopter (early followers). If they liked the product, then they will recommend it to friends. No one has repealed the word of mouth.
No matter what you do, dentistry, selling clothes, or roof support. Contacts of reliable specialists, quality companies are always passed from word of mouth, because at the moment when one person recommends a reliable contractor or manufacturer to another, he increases his value.
For you, as a business owner, word of mouth is a free marketing channel that saves you money and increases your margin.
- Will you go to the dentist for an ad or recommendation?
- Do you buy a car at any car dealership or that friend advised you?
- What is the most important thing in the online store window? Of course, its line of goods and convenience of choice.
Online store contributes in every possible way to facilitate the agony of choosing a present or a game for a party. After all, this is what often stop from buying. Not the price, but the complexity of the choice!
Regardless of whether you have a large business or a small one, a focus on product quality and marketing built on displaying the benefits of the product will definitely give results.
2. Share Your Expertise in Your Own Blog
Write for your target audience. You can create your own blog, or post guest articles in specialized publishers, or simply maintain a page on social networks.
The purpose of the article is to share expertise with the market. People feel when you do it sincerely. If you set a goal to sell through an article, it will give a much smaller result.
Share your expertise, help make a choice and you will get a lot of advantages:
- Building of brand awareness;
- Following a link to your site;
- Orders;
- The formation of a loyal core audience.
Content must be:
- Unique: 90-100%, no one likes plagiarism, neither people nor search engines;
- Expert: share your work strategies, reveal your secrets, do not be afraid – no one will steal them and copy;
- Useful: create an interesting guide, or instructions for choosing a supplier. Analyze your market and understand what is missing;
- Structured: the submission and layout of the material is very important, even the best material may not be perceived by the reader due to poor design. The perception of the site depends on where and how the headings, tables, charts, graphs, pictures are located.
We also recommend creating a blog on your site. It will show that your site is developing and living; even this fact will set you apart from many competitors.
In addition, a corporate blog helps to increase traffic to the site from search engines and serves as a constant reminder to the audience about you: if it was you who helped the reader make a choice or decide a question, then he will be more likely to use your services.
In addition to developing your own blog, we also recommend to engage in guest publications:
- place your materials on other sites (specialized publishing houses, media, blogs) on your subject. By this you will not only develop the market, but also draw attention to your company;
- post publications of other companies, bloggers on your site, this will complement your content and expand the audience.
3. Develop a Personal Brand
The company itself is an inanimate object that does not have personal characteristics. The qualities of a person, his manners, behavior, appearance, voice, by themselves, carry certain information necessary for the audience to compose an image. Sympathy for the head of the company will affect the choice of its product among others in the niche.
Today there is a big trend for openness. And for a start-up company, the openness and publicity of its leader can be decisive.
To start developing a personal brand, select social networks. For different businesses, different social networks are suitable. If you have a predominantly female audience, then this is definitely Instagram. Although it is suitable not only for this niche. Facebook is suitable if your product is targeted at a fairly adult audience of 25+. For children and adolescents – Twitch, YouTube.
Do not try to keep all social networks at once. Focus on a maximum of two.
Post regularly and match formats. Determine the main formats of your posts for social networks and the frequency of their publications. In fact, you will have a small content plan.
For example:
- 2-3 posts about work;
- 1 about hobby;
- 2 about the family.
Thus, you will consistently leave 1 post per day, which is enough for a start.
Use personal connections and collaborations. As in life, if a person who already has a name introduces you to the social networks, you will be able to gain the loyalty of the audience much faster.
Find a leader with an opinion in your niche, make an appointment with him and try to interest him in your product so that he will tell about it. Here we return to the first point of our article – a quality product is easier to promote.
If you have a mediocre product, it will be very difficult to interest the opinion leader for free.
How to meet opinion leaders:
- At conferences;
- Through private messages on social networks;
- With the help of mutual friends;
- Leave meaningful comments under their articles and posts to engage in the conversation.
Organize interactive. Conferences, online courses and other events that will bring people together in the industry will give you more value in the eyes of the market and consumers.
Examples of simple online events that are available to everyone:
- Online lesson on papier-mâché doll handles, this is a good additional sales channel for a shop with goods for needlework;
- Cosmetology course – for a cosmetics store;
- Style course – for a clothing store.
These methods will be enough for a start, and then you will feel the need of the audience and be able to develop.
4. Increase Your Presence on Social Networks
Social networks are the main tool for building relationships between a company and its customers.
Where to begin:
- register and place your page on social networks;
- select post formats and communication style and stick to them, for example:
- Useful life hacking;
- Interesting Facts;
- Themed memes;
- Industry news;
- Reviews of new products in the world in your niche; etc.
Content should not be about your business all the time, it should relate to your industry and your consumer, be interesting for the reader. The task of social networks is to remind about your company, engage, increase loyalty, and not try to sell point black through posts in social networks. The person involved in your project will use your services when s/he has a need.
- be sincere with people;
- communicate with the audience and quickly answer their questions;
- do not blindly repeat what competitors do. Build a strategy that will distinguish and highlight you;
- post regularly, it is very important that people are accustomed to getting content from you and remember.
In addition, social networks can additionally attract customers for you from search engines.
5. Use Crowd Marketing
Crowd marketing is a communication with the audience in thematic communities (forums, question / answer sites, comments).
The main task of crowd marketing is to help a person deal with a question, demonstrate expertise and indirectly refer to your product.
Crowd marketing helps to solve SEO problems:
- The constant appearance of backlinks to your site;
- Minimizing the risk of a site falling under search engine filters;
- Increase in the TOP of search engines when ranking.
So are marketing:
- Receiving targeted traffic: attracting relevant audience from thematic sources;
- Creation of viral content;
- Reputation management;
- Building up against competitors: mentioning your product on thematic sites where competitors were already located.
Crowd-marketing campaign can be implemented by different forces:
- Completely independently;
- Form a team;
- To outsource to specialized services.
Implementing a crowd marketing campaign yourself:
- find the latest topical discussions;
- register an account;
- answer the user’s question, give useful recommendations and, if appropriate, give a link to your site; remember the most important thing – the main thing is to help a person to solve it.
- question, link is just an addition;
- scale up this experience.
About the author
Melisa Marzett is a young marketing specialist and a writer of guest posts who is currently traveling and working as a freelancer for smartessayrewriter.com enjoying life, work and travel. She is positive thinking, curious by nature and independent by spirit always keeping an eye on what is going on.
