Does your business need a boost? Are you looking for smarter, more efficient ways to advertise in an overcrowded market? Whether you run a small smart-up company or a national brand looking to reinvent itself, here are just nine techniques for making a splash in your industry.
1. Define Your Goals
This may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised at the number of entrepreneurs who go into business with only an idea instead of an objective. If an investor asked you for an elevator pitch right this minute, what would you say? If the IRS demanded a three-word description of your company, how would you classify it?
2. Embrace Social Media
If you want to have any kind of lasting Web presence, you’ll need to be comfortable working with social media. Facebook and Twitter are essential. Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn are good ideas if you have the time. Wherever you go, make sure all of your content is easily linked, liked, retweeted and reblogged for maximum exposure.
3. Host Contests and Giveaways
Everyone loves a freebie. If you’re looking to put your business in the news, offer a special promotion or sweepstakes for a limited number of people. Not only will users fight over the chance to be one of the lucky few, but the people who do win will turn into loyal customers for life.
4. Experiment
Don’t be afraid to color outside the lines during your launch. All new businesses have an adjustment period when they first open their doors, so this is the perfect time to play around with ads, sales and marketing strategies. You won’t hurt your image with a failure this early in the game.
5. Network With Other Professionals
Customers aren’t the only ones who can make or break your business. You’ll find it much harder to stay afloat without connections in the industry, so start attending conventions, putting up a stall at expos and joining mastermind groups and professional associations within your field. The bigger your Rolodex, the more support you’ll enjoy as a new company.
6. Engage Your Employees
Good business starts at home. Happy, motivated employees can do wonders for efficiency. If your company has been struggling to meet its quotas or retain its customers, go back to the roots of your workplace and figure out what can be done to improve them.
7. Understand Accessibility
It’s the 21st century, and customers will expect your brand to be accessible on all platforms. Have you made a mobile version of your site for those browsing on their smartphones? Are your navigational buttons easy to use with both a mouse and a finger?
8. Court Viral Content
One of the quickest ways to spread the word about your business is through an ad or promotion that goes viral. However, there’s no universal consensus on how to make that happen, so you’ll need to study all the tricks and choose the ones that best suit your brand.
9. Hire the Experts
If you need a little extra help in boosting your brand, look for an advertising agency devoted exclusively to launches, start-ups and grand openings. People like Lindsey Stone can help you effectively market your products or sell your services as an emerging business.
These are just a few ways to break into the industry and hit the ground running. If you’re serious about a successful launch, keep these strategies in mind.
Dana Davis
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Everything is brand. When you view it from this lens, you can start to see the significance brand plays not just to your marketing, but to your entire business. The intent of this guide is to provide readers with a strong understanding of what brand is and why it’s important. Thank you for sharing this article.
#1 is so important! I feel like the day I actually sat down and wrote out a business plan was an important step on the road to transitioning from an individual chasing work to a person running a business (albeit a one-person freelance one).
I hear people recommend over and over again: write down your goals. Something about getting them outside of your head and onto paper (or a computer screen) makes a big psychological difference that helps drive you to achieve them.
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Great post.
The action or business of promoting and selling product or services.
Thanks for sharing this post.
Great tips. if only they were so easy to follow.
Engaging with social profiles and getting benefit from them is seems easy but on the other hand one wrong step can make you profile go worst.
Hi Gary,
You can’t please all the people all the time, so don’t be afraid to interact in social media. Anyone who treats others with respect should do fine. People who don’t – well, they may show their colors publicly and that may haunt them.
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Thanks for this informative post. In my opinion, networking is the key to success. Interacting with other bloggers and involving employees in day to day activities can do wonders for you.
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Hi
In my personal experience, engaging with other bloggers and hiring the right employees is key to success. If you don’t have right employees working for you, you can never achieve your goals. Networking with other bloggers really helps when you got stuck up some where.
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Hi Gail,
Totally agreed with your points, Freebies or Giveaways are great strategy to increase your exposure and then your content can work wonders to enforce those people to convert into your loyal readers/audience.
These are basic rules, but almost everyone is forgetting them. I most like the idea with freebie 🙂 Everybody loves something for free, so why not do that? It can be almost everything, people will still like it (it’s free!).
Thank you for interesting article 🙂 This site is really helpful for me, I’ll add you on social media to stay in touch with your articles 🙂
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Hello Gail,
The brand needs t speak itself if one needs to be at every possible place the business can be. For this a proper strategy is needed and an expert in this can help a business grow. And social media is just a step to the world where one can get exposure to the right people the business wants. And rest is upto what you provide to them.
Hey Gail,
Some solid techniques here. I’ve tried a few of these myself and will think about how to incorporate the others.
Thanks again,
Dave at NinjaOutreach
i like the blog it has good tips for marketing!
i will book mark it for future reference.
All is that rise connectivity and publish exclusive high quality content regularly.
Your blog is good and post informations is very usefull.
Nice tips to prompt business. Really helpful to all.
I have been trying for YEARS to make social media work for me, I get a small amount of traffic from it, but it is nowhere near what it could be and what others are getting for doing 1/10 of the work I put in!
Also I hosted a contest once with prizes and cash worth a total of £1500 (about $3000) and despite THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of people visiting the page to check out the info not a single person stayed to enter the contest! :O
I have a sinking feeling that this promoting lark isn’t for me. Maybe I should hire someone to do it for me while I focus on producing the content.
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Hi Dean,
I caution people against doing contests unless they are really established or plan to do them regularly. It is not unusual for what happened with you to happen in most contests. That is why mom blogs incentivize entries and use linkies which attract people used to entering in a particular way. You almost have to or people don’t enter.
Blogging and social media are tougher today than they were 6 years ago. If you want to connect on Skype I have an idea I’ve been playing with that could work for you, too.
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