Are you a start-up without dedicated people for marketing? Inability to afford a marketing team should not really stop your efforts to market your business. There are a lot of marketing action points that small business owners and entrepreneurs can take to. Instead of waiting for resources and wasting time, you can easily start marketing with these simple strategies.
Start a Blog
Starting a blog is an effective way to show your expertise. Regular blog posting can earn you good readership, favorable search ranking and increased number of visitors to your site.
Start a Facebook page
With more than 700 million users Facebook is an excellent platform to show case your business. Use your Facebook page to attract fans, post videos/photos, promote events/special offers, etc.
Begin Tweeting
Use Twitter to engage, to follow experts, to share information, to build your network and to meet your target audience.
Connect on LinkedIn
A LinkedIn profile can help you put up a public company profile, build a personal industry network, share content, integrate with Twitter and Facebook, boost word-of-mouth, earn recommendations and find new customers.
Write Articles
Bring out the writer in you by writing articles. Post these articles on your website or blog to add to your library of resources. You can also submit them to article directories to get additional visibility.
Guest Blog
Guest blogging can help you showcase your domain expertise and experience to a new and large audience. This can also spread awareness about you and your company through link backs.
Submit Press Releases
Do not wait for people to get to know about you by themselves. Draft a press release about your business and submit them to online press release directories . This is a highly successful method to spread news about your business.
Join forums
Look around for your industry related online forums and join them. Actively participate in the discussions and offer genuine help to those who need. This will increase your credibility.
Offer free trials
Since you are new to business, allow people to try your product or service for free. Publicize your 14-days free trial or introductory offer through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Press Release and others.
Introduce referral programs
Word-of-mouth is still the best form of marketing for any business. To encourage and initiate this, launch referral programs. Offer discounts, personalized goodies or gadgets for active referrers.
These action points combined gives you a simple but effective marketing plan till you get a marketing team of your own. Do you have more action points to add to this list? Please feel free to share them with us.