Marketing is definitely one of the most important elements that help increase brand awareness and business sales. It helps to create and establish the overall strategy for your business. Effective marketing and Growth Hacks for Startups helps you in identifying your target market, allows you to reach your customers to further connect with them, enables you to highlight the unique strengths of your products or services so that you can sell them effectively and finally, it helps you increase the recall value in the minds of customers.
However when starting a business, it can be quite an ordeal to break into a market without having any knowledge on how to promote your business. There isn’t any “one-size fits all” sort of strategy. What may work for others, may not work for you. But there are quite a few well-known marketing tips that can help your business grow and boost your sales.
And while marketing can cost a business a lot of money, there are also strategies and Growth Hacks for Startups that you can apply to your marketing plan that would not cost you a fortune but still make a big impact.
Take Advantage of Social Media
Technology allows you these days to create social media pages for free for any small business. An example would be creating a Facebook page. Before, you would need to have designers and programmers create an expensive website for you if you want your business to have online exposure. But now, your social media page can function as your online presence where you can engage potential consumers, promote your products or services and even advertise for a minimum starting fee.
If you haven’t maximized social media, this is the best time to create one.
Participate in Forums and Groups
The concept of social media marketing is that you want people to come to your business page, engage and later on do business with you. But as a start, you won’t have that many page followers yet. No matter how much you promote on your page, if nobody is following you, nobody will see your promotions. So one of the best ways is to participate in groups and forums first where your target customers are like at.
You engage in their conversations, answer questions, help and provide value and by doing so, you can softly promote your business page, products and services when you see fit. Just make sure you don’t go overboard and join groups and spam the heck out of it. Not only is that unethical, but it will also make your business look desperate. And nobody might want to do business with a brand like that.
You can actually get started with this hack by joining Facebook groups and the like. There are also other forum sites like Reddit where you can cautiously promote your business, as well as discussion groups like Usenet newsgroups where you can interact with potential customers and possibly even do a bit of market research.
Maximize your Existing Customers
Most entrepreneurs are so focused on acquiring new customers for their business that sometimes they tend to forget to maximize their existing buyers. By nature, for lack of a better term, people are sometimes too lazy to explore more options so they tend to just purchase or do business with just one trusted source.
Thus, marketing and selling more to your existing customer list is a great move. Your business must therefore have what we call an upsell or basically sell more products to your customers.
Again, if your business already has trusted clients and they’ve had great experience with you then most likely they will purchase more from you.
Bank on Referrals
Your existing customers are your best marketing assets. Nothing beats the power of word of mouth. When customers use your products and services and they have good feedback about it then, most likely, they’ll share it to their immediate community and recommend it to other people. However it is not as easy as that. Not everybody will make the effort of bringing in customers for you without getting something in return, unless you ask them for referrals.
Simply ask who do you think can benefit from this product, who do you think can we help when we share this information, can you refer someone who you think might need this.
People generally want to help others and part of that is being able to share what they’ve experienced and if customers have positive feedback with your business then, most likely, they will talk about your product or service to their network and possibly refer someone to your brand without getting anything in return. But of course, if you can, incentivize those who are willing to give referrals.
Pay It Forward
Part of your earnings should be put aside to give back to the community, in any capacity. It can be through charity works, environmental efforts or other socially-relevant activities that shows that your business cares. The ultimate reason for having a business is to be able to help others, even the less fortunate ones by giving back. Thus by giving back, sponsoring events or doing charity work, you’re not only exposing your brand or company but you are also giving the impression that your business is a genuine and a good brand.
The biggest takeaway with all of this is that business should project a good and genuine brand image that values customer experience more than anything, and that applies not only through the products or services a business offers but through the whole customer journey from brand exposure, consumer engagement to post product usage.
