5 Basic Marketing Tools for Your Start-Up Business
A business, no matter how big or small of an entity it is, is always in the need of good marketing plans, strategies on how to build an audience, a group of followers, a fan base and most importantly on how to convert those into business prospects and potential customers. There are practically numerous ways one can implement different strategies and channels to market one’s business, and that includes the traditional ways plus the modern ways. In today’s blog post we will look into 5 basic marketing tools for your start-up business.
The below list of tools takes into consideration the Social Media channels and are quite generic. Different approaches could be mastered and implemented depending upon what kind of business your company is involved with. But the approach suggested here is to give your start-up business a head start, reach out to millions of online users and gain traction so as to direct your marketing plans for future implementation.
1. FACEBOOK
The big daddy of all social media channels currently, with over a billion users, Facebook is a vital tool for your business to get engaged with. To begin with, set up a user account, and further set up a Facebook Page. A page would let you reach out to potential users who, would go ahead and like and promote your page if they like your company, business or your products.
A Facebook page opens up endless possibilities of how you can market your business through offers, product listings, ad campaigns, contests and many more. In order to have a successful page and drive more traffic, you need to engage and interact with your fans. Further, you need to create a really interesting landing page which is attractive enough for users to get curious and explore your page further.
Hubspot back in 2011, listed the Top 15 Facebook Pages that were successful in driving customers, increasing their online reach to millions of users and most importantly get real customer feedback and comments. Once you have your facebook page up and running, you can start connecting to users, promote your page to get Page Likes, build your fan base through Facebook Advertising.
Facebook Ads are a powerful way of promoting your campaign since it’s engineered in such a fashion to reach out a targeted audience which you define based on your business preferences. With Facebook you can potentially unleash a powerful reach connecting with millions of users world-wide.
Like My Facebook Page At: facebook.com/thewisdompearl
2. TWITTER
140 characters and the world of micro-blogging. Twitter with its 140 million users is just yet another powerful social media tool for businesses and individuals. Concepts which are vastly different from Facebook, this social media entity let’s you reach out to people world wide with different strategies like the Hashtags (#), Promoted Tweets and Cards.
A Twitter handle is the next big step for your business to have and through which you can communicate, interact and exchange information with potential customers. A user can follow your company/business by actually “following” your twitter handle that starts with the “@” symbol. What’s more important is that as a business owner you can follow them back too. A user can tweet by mentioning your @twitter_handle and you can interact back too. Twitter also gives you and your customers to re-tweet your promotions, offers and products thus allowing for a mass reach out to other potential customers. Check this link from Mashable that lists some of the successful Twitter campaigns to get ideas from.
You have an offer to promote, or an event to talk about, just tweet about it and if you can add some hashtags to your tweet that’s even better. Hashtags are one such great way of getting on the trend list. Any user who clicks that particular hashtag will find a feed of tweets related to those tags and that would be your targeted audience. Twitter can open the door to endless possibilities of getting your business a rich customer base, a big fan following in the literal sense and help you engage in successful interactions.
Follow Me On Twitter At: twitter.com/thewisdompearls
3. LINKEDIN
Create a LinkedIn profile and you just made your business legit with a professional approach. At LinkedIn you can connect with industry professionals, thought leaders, potential customers and maintain a high level professional interactive channel. Your business can receive recommendations from real customers which can serve as testimonials to grow your business further.
LinkedIn with its strong 175 million professional user base, is one of the most recommended and highly powerful social media tool to engage with for professional networking. You can build and grow your network of users, many of those who would convert to potential customers.
LinkedIn lets you establish relationships, a 1-to-1 correspondence, build connections that can help you spread the word about your company in a professional setup. You can find your employees on LinkedIn, have them connect with your business and thus promote your business to their connections and so on and so forth. You can also join different groups pertaining to your expertise to promote your business. With LinkedIn there are endless possibilities of how you can build real customer relationships.
Connect With Me On LinkedIn At: linkedin.com/in/thewisdompearls
4. PINTEREST
If you are in the business that involves lot of images, or if photos are the USP of your products, it would be a crime if you are not on Pinterest. The best visual and image sharing social media channel out there, Pinterest, had close to 12 million unique visitors in recent times. The growth of Pinterest has been astounding.
Pinterest lets you organize and collect all your products in different boards for users and customers to share, re-pin and help you promote your campaigns. Pinterest can help you drive lot of traffic based out of the images you pin and the boards you create. Users can pin your product images to their boards and share it with their friends. These images have a link back to your own Pinterest account or you can also have it redirected to your company website.
Pinterest can really solidify your marketing campaign especially if your products have a visual appeal. With its 20 million strong users and growing, it can take your creativity to the next level to help you grow your business and spread the word. You can literally pin your entire company/business’s overall working – staff photos, product videos, blog images, customer testimonials and much more on Pinterest and open it up for your fans to re-pin and thus help you connect with more people.
Find Me On Pinterest At: www.pinterest.com/thewisdompearls
5. GOOGLE+
World’s most powerful search combined with a social network of it’s own, what more can a business owner ask for, in this crowded web space of networking tools and social media channels. Google+ with its 250 million users is yet another strong social media tool that you can use to grow and market your business and products.
Google+ has a lot of different features unlike the other social media applications, wherein, you can create and organize hangouts which enables you to reach out to your customers on a 1:1 basis in real time video and chat. You can create different circles and promote those. At the end of the day, it’s Google who controls the search market. And what more can your business ask for if you can end up using one of the most powerful search providers’ social networking tool.
With Google+ your business also gets the additional advantage of integration with Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Maps etc. You can provide a fast customer service through hangouts. Last but not the least, Google+ can help you increase your search engine ranking which is a major factor for your business being found on the web.
Add Me To Your Circle At: gplus.to/thewisdompearls
These were the 5 basic marketing tools you can get started with to promote and grow your start-up business. How successful have you been in implementing these strategies? Are there any other tools or applications out there which you think can help your particular business? Which tools do you use? I would like to hear from you, thus feel free to post your valuable inputs in the comments section below.