When it comes to marketing your small business to consumers, promoting business to business to get clients or using social media marketing to advance engagement; there are seven critical steps you need to keep in mind when launching a startup or new venture.
Back in 1983, I had the opportunity to start a new publishing business called Christendom Publishing.
I recruited my brother to assist as we put together a new product called Listen & Color Bible Stories for Children.
We felt there was a clear market for 110 Bible stories 3-5 minutes in length and re-created with coloring pictures and over 22 actor voices on stereo cassette tapes.
As a Bible teacher at my church–and coming from a radio background–I remembered my mother reading me Bible stories as a child–and knew that combining the audio with tactile functions was a great way to help children learn the Bible stories.
We began from scratch and wrote the scripts, recruited the talent and secured a recording facility.
Next up was getting the funding.
Today’s Digital Marketing Update
In today’s Digital Marketing Update, Video Podcast #81, host John D. Verlin discusses Seven Critical Steps To Achieving A Successful Startup Or New Venture.
As an original startup, this venture was originally narrated by William Conrad (the actor who played TV’s Cannon).
On Demand Advertising Solutions Three-Part Strategy
It’s all a part of our services and three-part strategy to drive SEO and web traffic so your business exceeds the profile and exposure of the competition!
The Extended Marketing Platform
We do this through an extended marketing platform–the perfect compliment to current advertising campaigns.
Got a great bit of information here. From Entrepreneur magazine, a post by Derek Miller, about Eight Digital Marketing Tips for Boosting a Startup.
A lot of people who are starting new businesses…micro businesses, mom and pop type. Let’s face it—we’re on a shoestring.
He has some good points I’d like to elaborate on…using inexpensive ways to get your brand out—to get your name out there.
I have several clients that don’t even have websites. They have a Facebook business page—but we started with a blog linked to that. We build it out—and that’s why I call it a marketing platform. But he basically talks about utilizing social media.
It’s a great way to get your brand out there on a consistent basis. He talks about frequency and consistency. That goes back to my radio days, where we would tell advertisers, you don’t need thirty ads a week. Just to ten—maybe every other week. But do it all year long.
But keep consistency, because that will build repetition. Over and over and over that repetition—and that will build, however you want to do that.
Just be consistent with it—because it’s perception. Perception forms that reality. And keep in mind, it’s the customer you’re focused on—not you! A lot of brands use social media just to promote themselves.
My personal Twitter account that I use for my business—I actually just started because I knew I would be starting On Demand Advertising Solutions here in a couple of months.
I just started putting out content off of the web. Just things small businesses would like. I didn’t even have a website yet. I just started building that engine so to speak.
I just kept posting to Twitter and more than doubled the followers in a bout a month.
By the time I launched the website and started actually putting content on my blog—the podcasts, the cartoon video’s things like that, then I had people who were engaging because they became aware of me over time.
So, focus on the customer, their content—what their interests are. Gradually build in your brand.
It’s a gradual thing. Otherwise, you’ll turn people off. Engage with them. I’m talking even if they give you a negative comment, talk to them.
There’s a reason they’re doing it. Unless…and I’ve seen this happen. Somebody posts a comment on say your Facebook page…your business page. You respond and they come back with something more bland or mean.
I found that if you check out their Facebook page and find out who they are—if they don’t have it filled out, it could be, like I’ve seen some peoples—they’re just fraudulent so to speak.
They are just harassing you or are a competitor.
But at the minimum—get back with them please call this number—we’ll be glad to talk with you. If they don’t follow up on that or you have a chat option and they don’t follow up—they could be fraudulent.
Just trying to get face-time on your Facebook page! But do engage with them. When you do start testing. I test Facebook business ads on their platform. It’s frustrating I know. But once you have your platform build—your marketing platform, you’ve got something there with content and image that you can have grow organically.
When you do advertising investments—whatever it is…start out in baby steps and test—don’t just unload.
Do these little baby steps and gradually test different ads and different methods. Try a cartoon video, experiment with a still image of some sort linked to your website.
But once you test it and do it in baby steps…gradually and keep it consistent. You’ll find something that pulls those numbers, because we now have those platforms. We didn’t used to have them but we have them now.
I think on Facebook they call it pay to play. At any rate, do it in baby steps…with Linkedin, I believe they have premium services…Twitter, they do well with organic content—you can test on Twitter too.
And speaking of content…that’s still the main thing. You here that content is king—and that has been around for a long time. But that’s one reason I started doing podcasting for my clients and cartoon videos.
Because I told them that most people write long, boring pieces of content…and they cut and paste other peoples content. Which actually can get negatively scored by Google if you do to much of it.
I like doing podcasts like this—giving my take on the news , in this case on the web for small business. I like doing that and that’s why I like doing it for my clients. Because I get to interview them and we have fun doing this.
And then I transcribe this audio content and it’s unique, it’s our version of it. We put our own take on it, our own spin. There’s nothing new under the sun—ideas are there, it’s just how we use them and create content.
Think about your message…think about how is this going to help. I thought about this of how is this going to help people—particularly on a shoestring or a startup?
You may take one or two things away from this podcast, and suddenly you thought—oh, I didn’t know I could do that. That’s interesting. And then you can find cheap, creative content. There are sites like Elance, Craigslist or Fivver.
He talks about on Fivver you can do animated explainer videos. That’s pretty much the cartoon videos I talk about.
I love them because they’re short, memorable, something that you can create. There’s a learning curve. You gotta kind of get the hang of it and test them. But people can get what you’re all about in thirty to forty seconds.
They’re very effective I think. And he finally talks about optimizing internal pages for conversions. Like using free plugins to capture emails, you can use free tools like Google analytics to monitor visitor paths and referrals to your site. Optimizing forms on your site. I use a three part strategy page with a form on the bottom to have people sign up for a free newsletter. Of course, I also have my email and phone number so they can get in touch with me.
So, that’s pretty much what I wanted to talk about. Oh, and do outreach yourself. Start promoting it. Once you get this content developed, it’s all about self promotion through the social media or any channel you want.
You really have to take this thing by the horns and be consistent with it, be frequent with it and provide good content creatively.
