How to market your new business (2 of 3)

A good marketing strategy will set you up for success, but the lack of a plan could sink you. A good marketing strategy will set you up for success, but the lack of a plan could sink you.     Hi   In the first part of "How To Market Your Business?" we discussed a customers lifetime value and how much you should pay to acquire a customer.   Today, we decide how to allocate those dollars. It's likely you'll want to split them up between inbound marketing and outbound marketing.   Inbound marketing   Inbound marketing is marketing that brings customers to you via content that they want to consume. It's offering something of value to customers, and using that value to draw them to your product or service.   Content marketing   A lot of inbound marketing could easily fall under the umbrella of content marketing. For our purposes, though, we'll discuss content marketing as it relates to content that lives on your website's blog.   You are planning on a blog, aren't you? If not, you absolutely should. A blog gives you the opportunity to set yourself apart as an industry expert, a voice of authority in your field.    Click here for more about why you need a blog and how to create a great one.    Social media marketing   With more than 3.5 billion active users, social media platforms are an enormous opportunity for businesses. Each social platform has its own unique character, and different types of content perform best on different platforms. Here's a rundown of some of the top platforms:   Facebook: Facebook is tough for organic results. Unless people follow your company's page, it's difficult to appear organically in their newsfeed. However, a good business page should include your contact info, an eye-catching cover photo, a profile photo of your logo and a call-to-action button leading people to your website.    Visual content does best on Facebook, and video performs well. Consider offering your followers glimpses behind the scenes at your business. Interactive content like quizzes also perform well.   Twitter: Twitter users are very active, with 46% using the platform daily . Again, visual content performs well. Use your Twitter to link to useful content. You should also capitalize on its strength as a customer service platform. Just remember to respond to all customer service queries promptly.   LinkedIn: LinkedIn is all about business. This is the platform to connect with other influencers in your industry, and position yourself as an authority. You can use LinkedIn to post original long-form content that offers business insight. List-based articles perform well, as does video.   LinkedIn is a great platform for your business if your product or service is in the B2B market. For B2C companies, LinkedIn is less effective.   Instagram: Instagram is all about the visuals. While around 80% of Instagram's users follow at least one business, you won't achieve success by pushing sales.   Instagram users want to engage with beautiful imagery, particularly aspirational lifestyle imagery. This is also a great platform to offer a behind the scenes look at your business.   Pinterest: While Pinterest might not have the largest audience among the social media platforms, it has the audience with the highest buying intent. Pinterest users are there to get purchasing ideas. If you have a product or service that lends itself to a visual medium, Pinterest is a great platform for you. For more esoteric services, think about creating infographic content that links back to your site. Hi   In the first part of "How To Market Your Business?" we discussed a customers lifetime value and how much you should pay to acquire a customer.   Today, we decide how to allocate those dollars. It's likely you'll want to split them up between inbound marketing and outbound marketing.   Inbound marketing   Inbound marketing is marketing that brings customers to you via content that they want to consume. It's offering something of value to customers, and using that value to draw them to your product or service.   Content marketing   A lot of inbound marketing could easily fall under the umbrella of content marketing. For our purposes, though, we'll discuss content marketing as it relates to content that lives on your website's blog.   You are planning on a blog, aren't you? If not, you absolutely should. A blog gives you the opportunity to set yourself apart as an industry expert, a voice of authority in your field.    Click here for more about why you need a blog and how to create a great one.    Social media marketing   With more than 3.5 billion active users, social media platforms are an enormous opportunity for businesses. Each social platform has its own unique character, and different types of content perform best on different platforms. Here's a rundown of some of the top platforms:   Facebook: Facebook is tough for organic results. Unless people follow your company's page, it's difficult to appear organically in their newsfeed. However, a good business page should include your contact info, an eye-catching cover photo, a profile photo of your logo and a call-to-action button leading people to your website.    Visual content does best on Facebook, and video performs well. Consider offering your followers glimpses behind the scenes at your business. Interactive content like quizzes also perform well.   Twitter: Twitter users are very active, with 46% using the platform daily . Again, visual content performs well. Use your Twitter to link to useful content. You should also capitalize on its strength as a customer service platform. Just remember to respond to all customer service queries promptly.   LinkedIn: LinkedIn is all about business. This is the platform to connect with other influencers in your industry, and position yourself as an authority. You can use LinkedIn to post original long-form content that offers business insight. List-based articles perform well, as does video.   LinkedIn is a great platform for your business if your product or service is in the B2B market. For B2C companies, LinkedIn is less effective.   Instagram: Instagram is all about the visuals. While around 80% of Instagram's users follow at least one business, you won't achieve success by pushing sales.   Instagram users want to engage with beautiful imagery, particularly aspirational lifestyle imagery. This is also a great platform to offer a behind the scenes look at your business.   Pinterest: While Pinterest might not have the largest audience among the social media platforms, it has the audience with the highest buying intent. Pinterest users are there to get purchasing ideas. If you have a product or service that lends itself to a visual medium, Pinterest is a great platform for you. For more esoteric services, think about creating infographic content that links back to your site. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)   Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your content to be found through search on platforms like Google and Bing. It's ensuring that people searching for certain terms find your website in the search results. If you don't know anything about SEO, we suggest your read our comprehensive guide to SEO marketing.    Earned media   Everything we've discussed so far is what's known as owned media. They're the media sources you control, such as your own website and your social media presence. To promote your business, you should also look at earned media, or coverage from outside the channels you own.   Guest posting   Guest posting can be a great way to raise the profile of your business. This goes hand-in-hand with link building. When you find other blogs in your industry (that aren't directly competing with you), try to build a relationship with the webmaster. Offer them the opportunity to guest post on your site, and seek out the opportunity to write guest posts for them.    Writing a press release   You'll also want to build up your presence in the media. Again, this helps position you as an industry expert. If you're producing original research, as we discussed earlier, you can use this original research in a press release.   Pitching to journalists   Journalists are busy people, and they're actively looking for stories to cover and sources to quote. Making yourself available as an expert source is providing a service to them.   If you're a local business, reach out to your local newspaper to update them on business developments, promotions and events.   Virality   Venture capitalist Fred Wilson once colorfully stated, "Marketing is for companies that have sucky products." While we wouldn't go quite that far, we agree that having a great product does a lot of your marketing for you.   The quality of your product can lead to viral growth, which means you can scale back some of your marketing efforts. A great example of this is DropBox. DropBox did almost no marketing in its initial stages, instead relying on a great product to inspire word-of-mouth recommendations and viral growth. And it worked.   Viral marketing for innovative technology solutions   Business solutions involving an innovative product require a unique marketing strategy.   For an in-depth analysis of viral marketing solutions click here. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)   Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your content to be found through search on platforms like Google and Bing. It's ensuring that people searching for certain terms find your website in the search results. If you don't know anything about SEO, we suggest your read our comprehensive guide to SEO marketing.    Earned media   Everything we've discussed so far is what's known as owned media. They're the media sources you control, such as your own website and your social media presence. To promote your business, you should also look at earned media, or coverage from outside the channels you own.   Guest posting   Guest posting can be a great way to raise the profile of your business. This goes hand-in-hand with link building. When you find other blogs in your industry (that aren't directly competing with you), try to build a relationship with the webmaster. Offer them the opportunity to guest post on your site, and seek out the opportunity to write guest posts for them.    Writing a press release   You'll also want to build up your presence in the media. Again, this helps position you as an industry expert. If you're producing original research, as we discussed earlier, you can use this original research in a press release.   Pitching to journalists   Journalists are busy people, and they're actively looking for stories to cover and sources to quote. Making yourself available as an expert source is providing a service to them.   If you're a local business, reach out to your local newspaper to update them on business developments, promotions and events.   Virality   Venture capitalist Fred Wilson once colorfully stated, "Marketing is for companies that have sucky products." While we wouldn't go quite that far, we agree that having a great product does a lot of your marketing for you.   The quality of your product can lead to viral growth, which means you can scale back some of your marketing efforts. A great example of this is DropBox. DropBox did almost no marketing in its initial stages, instead relying on a great product to inspire word-of-mouth recommendations and viral growth. And it worked.   Viral marketing for innovative technology solutions   Business solutions involving an innovative product require a unique marketing strategy.   For an in-depth analysis of viral marketing solutions click here. Strategic Partnerships   Developing strategic partnerships is a very effective method of marketing your solution.   The benefit of strategic partnerships is that you're forming an alliance with organizations that already have a large audience they could market your solution to.   Strategic partnerships also give your venture credibility. If other organizations with more established reputations are willing to partner with you, it's a very good sign that your proposition is highly trustworthy.   LinkedIn   The benefit to using LinkedIn is that you will be able to directly contact the appropriate decision maker rather than having to plead your case to a receptionist first.   Google   Google is a great place to start to give you an idea of all the prospective partners. Once you have an idea of who would like to contact you can then transition onto LinkedIn.   Meetup   Meetups are a great way of gathering with like minded individuals that are striving towards the same goal.   There are meetups for almost anything, so you shouldn't have any issues finding the right group to mingle with in order to form strategic partnerships.   Measuring the ROI of inbound marketing   Measuring the return on investment of your inbound marketing strategy can be tricky. Inbound marketing doesn't always generate the same immediate, measurable return of many outbound marketing channels. In fact, inbound marketing can be a bit of a long game.   Pros of inbound marketing A fraction of the cost of paid marketing Generates more leads Offers your customers valuable content   Cons of inbound marketing Hard to measure ROI Takes longer to reach monetization Next time we take a look at outbound marketing, different ways to grab the attention of potential customers and turn them into paying customers.    Stay tuned! Strategic Partnerships   Developing strategic partnerships is a very effective method of marketing your solution.   The benefit of strategic partnerships is that you're forming an alliance with organizations that already have a large audience they could market your solution to.   Strategic partnerships also give your venture credibility. If other organizations with more established reputations are willing to partner with you, it's a very good sign that your proposition is highly trustworthy.   LinkedIn   The benefit to using LinkedIn is that you will be able to directly contact the appropriate decision maker rather than having to plead your case to a receptionist first.   Google   Google is a great place to start to give you an idea of all the prospective partners. Once you have an idea of who would like to contact you can then transition onto LinkedIn.   Meetup   Meetups are a great way of gathering with like minded individuals that are striving towards the same goal.   There are meetups for almost anything, so you shouldn't have any issues finding the right group to mingle with in order to form strategic partnerships.   Measuring the ROI of inbound marketing   Measuring the return on investment of your inbound marketing strategy can be tricky. Inbound marketing doesn't always generate the same immediate, measurable return of many outbound marketing channels. In fact, inbound marketing can be a bit of a long game.   Pros of inbound marketing A fraction of the cost of paid marketing Generates more leads Offers your customers valuable content   Cons of inbound marketing Hard to measure ROI Takes longer to reach monetization Next time we take a look at outbound marketing, different ways to grab the attention of potential customers and turn them into paying customers.    Stay tuned!     Need help with your internet marketing strategy? Then hire a marketing expert from Freelancer!     Need help with your internet marketing strategy? Then hire a marketing expert from Freelancer!   Hire a Marketer   © 2022 Freelancer Technology Pty Limited. All Rights Reserved. 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