Best Marketing Guide for Start-ups
Building a Start-up business from scratch is one of the most exciting and risky things you will ever do. The Two major challenges you will face in the beginning are low budget and building brand awareness. This doesn’t mean that you should ignore marketing on the whole. There are lots of ways to build and engage your target audience without spending too much cash. In this blog post, we will discuss the three best options best options.
Internet has revolutionized the way humans communicate, with social media websites being a important example. In India, the average social media website user spends almost 3.3 hours everyday and this estimate is even higher in other parts of the world.
This social media platforms are not just being used to bring individuals closer, it is also used in bridging the gaps between consumers & businesses. Social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram provides common ground for businesses and gives them a chance to ditch their corporate image in favour of a friendlier face. And the best thing is that it is the most cost effective.
If you have tight budget, you can go with the free option, if you have a little money to spend, you can start by promoting your posts and place your business advertisements in users’ feeds to increase your audience reach. You just be sure to use the provided analytics tools that will hep you to track the performance of your campaign and continuously target the best audience.
Using social media websites is not a rocket science, but you just need to be careful about what how you use it. You can share relevant and top articles published by others in your industry, but if you create your own contents you can get better results. You can also use social media website as customer service channel.
Social media websites might have an army of users, however email has more users. In fact, there’s estimate to be around four billion email accounts at present, and as the internet grows into new areas, this figure’s only likely to increase. There are loads of advantages using email and if you’re on a tight budget, it’s absolutely worth considering.
While the age range of social media website’s user base is gradually expanding, it is still particularly seen as a young person’s game – not exactly covering everybody. Email, on the other hand, is the major communication form for most web users. It’s also widely used in enterprise environments, so if you’re marketing your product and services to other businesses, it can be the best way to go.
Email is best when it comes to promote your products and services directly by using discount coupons or just sending your brand updates. In Email, it’s not ideal for sharing contents of other people unlike social media but you can promote your own articles relevant to your products and services. Just make sure to use the data you have to target your audience properly. In this way, you reach the right people and can address them in person and make the recipient feel valued.
We can’t discuss about low-cost / economical marketing techniques suitable for startup business without covering SMS. According to figures from eMarketer, mobile phone ownership will break the five billion barrier by 2017. This means that over 70 percent of the world population will be able to send and receive text messages instantly. So, if you are after reach, you can’t really beat SMS.
It’s clear that SMS is a powerful marketing tool, and economical too, but its effectiveness depends on how best you use it. A recent study shows that only two percent of customers are happy to receive more than five messages from one business in a month and others only want two messages per month, so be sure when you send. Relevance is just as important, use the data you have to target your audience with deals and information they are actually interested in.
So there you have it, three simple, cheap and effective ways to get your Start-up business off to a colourful start.