7 Marketing Ideas to Grow a New Business
Creating a new business is both exciting and daunting. You want everything to go according to plan, and this can be difficult if you don’t implement the right marketing techniques. Eight in every 10 businesses will fail within their first year of operation, making the act of being an entrepreneur very risky. Fortunately, there are a plethora of marketing ideas you can utilize in order to get your brand name out there and gain the flow of clientele that you need to stay afloat.
1. Form Alliances with Other Businesses
The last thing you want to do is make enemies out of other businesses either locally or online. Even if another company provides the same products or services that you do, you need to form an alliance with them. Once you begin making enemies out of a company, they will turn potential customers off of using your business. This can have devastating results as you’ll find that fewer and fewer people make use of your company because people are essentially bad-mouthing you to the public.
Forming an alliance doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re giving another company all of your business, but it does mean that you need to work together to gain a following and promote each other’s services.
2. Create an Interactive Website Complete with SEO
We’re living in a time now when the majority of people who are looking for a new company will start their search on the internet. If you haven’t already established a website, you need to first buy a domain name and choose a host to publish the site for you. While it can be a bit pricey to pay for a domain name and monthly hosting, it’s well worth the cost considering the number of customers who will find out about your business just by visiting its site.
Web design is not an area where you want to rely on your DIY talent, or your brother in law taking web design at community college. You need a custom website design that is specifically built for your business.
Another important factor to integrate into your site is great quality SEO. SEO, which is short for search engine optimization, helps your site to rank higher on popular search engines on the web. This allows people to find you more easily using a variety of keywords in their search bar. While large companies often prefer to have in-house marketing teams handle their SEO, smaller companies should strongly consider hiring an experienced SEO Consultant to form-fit their digital marketing strategy to the unique features of that business.
3. Keep in Touch with Customers
Your customers are king when it comes to running a successful business. If you aren’t keeping in touch with your clients, you’re doing them a disservice that will ultimately backfire on you and your company. Keeping in touch with customers can be as simple as asking them how their experience was, allowing them to sign up for email alerts or giving them the opportunity to take a short survey explaining their views on your company. Another way to keep in touch with customers is to offer superior customer service no matter what the client wants.
Let’s say that one of your customers sends you an email asking a question. It’s not necessarily a good idea to ignore that email and only remember to reply to them a week or two later. Good customer service is at the forefront of every new business.
4. Utilize Social Media
The world of social media is continually growing day after day, and billions of people use these sites regularly. Because of this, it makes sense to set up your own business page on any one of the major social media networks. This enables people to engage with you and send you comments and concerns that are easily monitored. Also, people who might not know about your company could find out about you just by visiting your social media page.
5. Use Direct Mail Advertising
Direct mail advertising is essentially a lost art that could help you run a successful business. It involves sending out a flyer, brochure or informational packet by mail that gives people the incentive to utilize your company. While it can be a little pricey to send out these business flyers to hundreds or even thousands of people locally, it’s guaranteed that a good majority of them will actually read the flyer and be interested in your services. This is a great marketing idea for those who want to grow locally and need to expand foot traffic into their business.
6. Hand Out Brochures and Cards
Brochures and business cards are great for marketing a new business. You will find that a majority of restaurants and stores in your area have brochure stands that hold local business’ brochures. If you would like to add your own here, you’ll need to talk with the business owner to see if they’ll take your brochures and display them in their establishment. Brochure design should be done by an expert, as this will give a more seasoned and professional look.
Sure, you can save money by designing and printing your own brochures, but they may not come out looking the way they should, and this can actually deter people from wanting to make use of your business. Business cards are also a great option for people who want to expand their new and budding company. Just hand them out whenever you see fit and get the word out that you’re open and waiting to take on new customers.
7. Offer Deals, Sales and Promotions
Deals, sales and promotions are ideal for getting your business noticed. Whether you want to run a promotion on your social media page or you have a loyalty program that members can sign up for, these options will attract customers and get them wanting to come back for more. This isn’t to say that you should be running sales and deals all the time, as this can lose you quite a bit of money, but you should consider putting a little bit of effort into running different promotions throughout the year to keep clientele interested in coming back to your company in order to make use of it.
There are so many ways for you to market your new company successfully and without spending a small fortune doing it. In fact, it helps for entrepreneurs to establish a budget they’re willing to spend on marketing and to stick to it. This prevents you from spending too much on marketing alone, which can be the downfall to an otherwise promising enterprise.
Keep in mind that marketing needs to be done regularly in order for it to be a true success. You shouldn’t expect to open a new company, send out one direct mail flyer and create a non-updated social media page in order to attract customers for a lifetime. You need to keep at it and continually advertise your company so that new people know that you’re open and are waiting for their business.
Final Thoughts
Marketing is something that almost every new business needs in order to stay afloat in a world of ever-growing competition. Even if your business is solely based on the internet, there are a myriad of techniques you can use to keep that company chugging along and growing to meet its full potential. If you are confused as to which marketing idea is right for you or which is the first option to choose, go with something that won’t cost you a lot of money and see if it helps to bring in more people who will be the ones making use of your business.
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Geno is the Owner/Creative Director at Monterey Premier, a web design agency that specializes in Divi and is based out of Monterey, Ca. He is a Divi expert and is known for his Divi tutorials & tips on Quiroz.co and is an excellent source of knowledge for anything related to Divi. Geno is also a Canva expert and helps other Canva users with his tutorials and tips here on the Monterey Premier blog. He has been designing websites since 1996 and enjoys all things design, traveling, hanging out with friends, encouraging other believers, and experimenting with new technologies.
