Launching a business can be incredibly difficult, but making that business actually stand out from the crowd? That’s even harder. According to figures by GEM Global Report (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor), a study of entrepreneurship around the world, 100 million businesses are launched every single year. This is equivalent to over three businesses being launched every second!
But promoting your business and making a name for yourself in the tough corporate world doesn’t require so much and there are actually several incredibly simple ways for you to market your business.
Utilize Social Media
Source: Pexels
A simple (and free) way to market your business in minutes is by utilizing social media. Facebook has more than a billion users, Twitter has hundreds of millions of users and photo and video platforms Instagram and YouTube also have billions of users between them. A report put together by Hootsuite and We Are Social confirmed that there are over three billion people on social media sites.
With so many people on these sites, it makes sense for you and your business to be there too. There are so many potential customers looking for new products to purchase and services that can help them out in their day-to-day lives.
Give Things Away
Although it may seem counterintuitive to just give away freebies, they can be an incredibly effective way of enticing customers through the door. As the saying goes, you’ll attract more flies with honey than with vinegar – consider freebies the business equivalent of honey.
These freebies may be a piece of free content such as an ebook or a guide that shares some of your knowledge and handy tips, encouraging readers to find out more. Or you can follow a route similar to Oddschecker with its bingo bonuses and free spins. By offering bonuses and rewards, as well as free spins with online slots, users can get a taste of the bingo games on offer, giving them an easy way of testing out a game before they decide to become a long-term player.
Create Your Own Content
Source: Pexels
Speaking of ebooks and guides, creating your own content is widely regarded as a strong and efficient way of getting the word out there about your business and what you do. Your created content doesn’t just have to be ebooks and guides; it may also be highly shareable infographics and images on social media, or informative how-to videos about the niche that you’re in.
As highlighted by this Lyfe Marketing article of the benefits of content marketing, content marketing can drive traffic to your website, build brand awareness, and build trust with your target audience just to name a few.
Engage the Community
It is already advised that you make engaging the community part of what you do in your day-to-day business duties, but did you know that it can also be considered as a way of marketing your business?
When a customer comes to you with a complaint or some feedback – perhaps they have left you a message on one of those social media platforms that we mentioned above – it’s imperative that you reply to it. When the feedback is positive, responding to it can help to amplify that positivity but when it’s negative, nipping that in the bud right away can help to turn that customer’s frown upside down. They may even praise you for replying to them so quickly!
Craft Your USP
USP stands for unique selling point and it is defined as a feature or factor that sets a business apart from its competitors. For example, if you are a restaurant, then the fact that your kitchen is run by an award-winning chef may be your USP. Or, if you are a delivery company, then the speed at which you deliver your goods may be your USP. Knowing your USP is important for marketing campaigns going forward so it’s important to point it out now.
These five points only scratch the surface of the ways that you can market your business; there are other ways such as handing out flyers and just telling your friends! But these methods are among the simplest, making it easy for any business to get started with them.