Marketing done right can be an incredible boon for your business’s net income. Done wrong, however, it can feel like throwing money into a raging bonfire. Because small business owners have to be whatever their small business needs -- all the time -- it can be difficult to master all the nuances that go into sales or marketing. If you’re not a natural salesperson, it can be even more difficult. Fear not, the following nine marketing tips for startups can help you make more sales, market better and waste less money.
1. Sell the benefit, not a comparison.
How you market yourself is all about highlighting what makes you different. There are three major ways to do that.
• Cost (you know how to price a product better than the competition)
• Quality (you’re better)
• A combination thereof (you offer the better value)
But how you sell yourself is different than how you market yourself. You can tell someone that you provide a product or service that is cheaper or more effective than that of another business, but that doesn’t say how much better you are going to make the customer’s life.
2. Listen to your customer.
Sam Walton, WalMart's famed mass retail titan, started his empire in rural America. This was despite the prevailing business logic saying a mass retailer anywhere but in a city with a concentrated population would fail. The logic was, if you wanted to move mass quantities of goods, you needed mass quantities of people.
3. Market your product before it’s ready.
Some businesses wait until their product is perfect before they do any marketing or awareness campaigning. That can be a costly mistake. Many businesses expect to sell their product as soon as it’s ready. But if no one knows about it, then demand will start at zero until you undergo a marketing campaign to build brand awareness for potential customers.
4. Think outside the box.
The marketing landscape has dramatically changed since I started my first business more than 30 years ago. Back then, there were no search engines or social media platforms. There was no internet as we know it. Now, startups can utilize a bevy of free, online marketing techniques that are both creative and effective. For example, you can use online video marketing, social media, blog influencers, crowdsourcing, competitions, content marketing, thought leadership and more.
5. Test fast. Fail fast.
Marketing that you can’t measure is failed marketing. Sure, you may spend money to do some advertisement, and you may even see an uptick in sales around the same time you ran the ads. But how can you be sure what you spent on ads correlates with sales? Maybe it was something else altogether. Maybe there is a natural, seasonal uptick for what you sell that will go away in a month.
6. We look forward to seeing you again.
Reward loyalty or interest. I tell my employees at Patriot Software, my online accounting and payroll company, that our customers are our sales department. Word-of-mouth testimonials and customers who are brand advocates are better than any sales team you could put together. So, I continuously reward customers with competitive pricing, incredible customer support and automatic updates to enhance the software.
Raj Isaac Abraham
Entrepreneur
https://www.facebook.com/Raj-Isaac-Abraham-765159050257036/
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