When you start a new business, it’s important to set it up correctly from the get-go. From there, launching effectively to secure your first few customers will quickly build momentum. When you fail to take appropriate steps at the beginning, it’s easy to become the business statistic where over half of companies fail to stay alive past the first few years. No one wants that for their new company.
Here are some marketing methods that new businesses can use on a tight budget when not yet fully established.
Look More Professional by Forming a Company at the Beginning
While it certainly makes sense from a business perspective to operate using an LLC (a limited liability company) rather than in your own name, not all the reasons for doing so are as obvious as you’d think.
Yes, it offers legal protection against being personally sued. It’s also reasonably inexpensive to register and get set up too. However, those aren’t the only reasons to use this structure. When marketing a business, operating in your own name doesn’t strike the right chord. It doesn’t say “we’re a business to be taken seriously.”
Operating from an LLC is a useful way to say you’re serious about this venture. You’ve learned how to start an LLC in California and decided to go ahead and do it. To form an LLC in California isn’t all that hard, but there are certain steps that must be followed. Other businesses understand this and respect that your company has done so. You can learn how to do this here.
Scour Your Contact Book for Your First Customers
Strike up conversations with old and new contacts. Talk up your business and what it’s going to offer. This way, when you do launch, there’s a list of people whom you know that you can reach out to. Some will likely order from you if they need what you’re offering and have been impressed with your work in the past. Don’t be offended when you get some rejections. That’s part and parcel of marketing even when it’s to friends or former business colleagues.
Run a Webinar
A webinar is a marketing method that provides initially free information at a basic level and leads to the promotion of a product at the end of the session.
It works particularly well with companies that offer online services, but where customers still perform some of the basic tasks themselves. Because of this, people can attend to learn how to perform the tasks better, but later be offered a product at a discount that will make their life easier. Usually, the discount is only offered during the webinar, possibly with free extras given away, for what is normally sold on the website at a higher price. This creates a sense of artificial scarcity which encourages attendees to make a buying decision while the webinar is still being run.
Market Through a YouTube Channel
A YouTube channel is inexpensive to operate. It is a valid promotional tool where you can share tips that cover the subjects that will be interesting to your company’s likely customers.
The idea here is to provide genuinely useful advice and techniques that viewers can implement. Once you have received assistance in this way, your videos can link to the business website in the video’s description. It’s then possible to lead viewers to an opt-in page for a newsletter to be able to send a series of targeted marketing emails promoting different products and services, while also feeding through other useful articles.
While a YouTube channel can generate Google AdSense revenue, that shouldn’t be the main goal. The goal is to use the video platform to find likely customers at only the cost of producing some videos. Then turn those into a growing list of customers. That’s where the real money is made from the video platform.
Lead a Workshop as a Precursor to Offering Advanced Training
Leading a workshop is a different approach to a webinar. In the workshop, you have a structured lesson where you proceed through a planned step-by-step tutorial. There is more back and forth with a workshop to help attendees better understand the material and finish it with practical knowledge. This compares to a webinar where attendees are asking questions but are not fully involved in the material.
The intention of a workshop is to provide it free of charge. However, there can be the promotion of a more advanced premium course if they liked the teaching method. This works somewhat differently to a separate premium course where it sits on a course site like Skillshare or Teachable but receives little outside promotion by the course creator.
Help a Reporter Out
The Help a Reporter Out (HARO) service is there for journalists that need business sources that they can quote in an article. These are often seen in articles at Forbes, Fortune, and other publications. In the article, they will have the name of the company executive and their quote on a subject matter or piece of news.
With the HARO service, the idea is to position yourself or your company as experts on a particular subject. By registering with the service and providing contact information, reporters can search for contacts to reach out to for comment or opinions. There is then the chance to get a favorable mention in a major publication even though your business is small and new.
There are many ways to market a business on the low budget until it grows sufficiently in size, so don’t let that hold you back. Effective marketing is truly the catalyst for impressive early growth with a new business. Creating positive media stories, getting great word of mouth spreading and doing your very best to market the business at every opportunity will go a long way to developing a sustainable enterprise. It’s only through diligent efforts day in, day out over many months, that newer companies can rise above the din of the marketing from established companies to eventually grab a substantial market share.
