New entrepreneurs typically have a lot on their plate, ranging from the basic logistics of getting the business off the ground in its early stages, to ensuring that productivity is maximized, contacts are leveraged, and the service or product being offered is robust, and not likely to bring in a mass of complaints, negative reviews, or worse.
One of the most pressing and tricky concerns of a new entrepreneur, however, is always going to be the issue of marketing. That is, grasping its importance, identifying the best ways to do it, getting a sense for what works and what doesn’t, budgeting effectively for marketing campaigns, and so on.
In fact, marketing is one of the most critical components of any business, and makes up a major part of the entire overall mechanism of success. Without good marketing there are no sales, there is no awareness of your product or service, nothing gets off the ground at all.
You need to be especially strategic as an affiliate marketer. You need to understand the details of the affiliate program that you are promoting and find an approach that aligns with it.
Keeping that in mind, here are some marketing tips for new entrepreneurs.
PPC and paid marketing can be invaluable, but need to be handled right
On the surface, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and other forms of paid marketing might seem like a blissfully straightforward avenue for the confused entrepreneur to rely on. After all, with these tools someone else is doing all the real, technical work, and all you have to do is pay them to promote your brand. Great!
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The truth is that PPC and paid marketing can be invaluable tools in successfully marketing your business, and that is true for people of various different professions, in just about all imaginable fields. This website here, for example, underscores some of the benefits of PPC marketing for attorneys.
But, for PPC and other similar paid marketing schemes to work out, they need to be handled right. Ample research needs to be done on things like the best keyword combinations, and a process of trial and error needs to be gone through in some pretty serious and thoughtful detail. Simply throwing money at different companies is not likely to comprise an effective marketing strategy.
Some degree of “marketing” is essential; you have to let people know that your services exist, and give them a good reason to use your services
Some people naturally hate the idea of marketing and want to stay as far away from it as possible. Generally speaking, these people will be influenced by having been exposed to — and disgusted by — lots of duplicitous, overbearing, and sensationalist marketing strategies on behalf of other companies.
It’s important to realize, though, that however you plan to market your company, some degree of “marketing” is essential.
At its core, “marketing” is the art of letting people know that your services exist, and giving them a good reason — or ideally, reasons, plural — to use that service.
For your business to enjoy any degree of success whatsoever, it needs to be brought to people’s attention, and it needs to be presented in a favorable manner. Either you need to do this yourself, or someone else needs to do it for you, but you should by no means expect to be able to escape from marketing and still make a success of your business.
Since marketing is essential, you may as well do it. But by no means does that mean being unscrupulous.
You should always maintain integrity and tact in your marketing; over-the-top hard-selling puts people off
Marketing is essential, as we’ve just touched on, but that doesn’t mean that it’s essential to go with an overboard, hard-sell-to-the-death approach that uses bombastic hyperbole in every sentence and actively and shamelessly seeks to manipulate would-be clients of customers.
On the contrary, you should always maintain integrity and tact in your marketing. Don’t lie, don’t be overbearing. Make your brand visible and attractive, but do so in a way that doesn’t make you hate yourself, or make everyone else hate you, either.
The simple fact of the matter is that people are naturally put off by marketing techniques and campaigns that are completely in-your-face. If you try to use fear and anxiety to sell your product, and your product isn’t something like an anti-anxiety remedy or a self-defense solution, then you will be perceived as a callow huckster.
Good marketing won’t compensate for a bad product, constantly work on providing quality
Good marketing is all about getting your product seen, and highlighting its benefits to prospective clients and customers. But that’s where marketing ends and your product or service has to do the work on its own.
If you combine good marketing with a good product, you’re in a good situation. You can expect to make sales, get good reviews, and begin developing a customer base.
If, on the other hand, you combine good marketing with a poor product, you shouldn’t expect much in the way of success. Combine good marketing with a terrible product will just ensure that your professional reputation is trashed in mere moments.
Good marketing won’t compensate for a bad product. You must constantly work on providing quality and value for your clients or customers.
Get your message clear; know what exact benefits you’re trying to sell, and to who
As the old saying goes, by trying to please everyone, you please no one. For your marketing efforts to be effective, you need clarity. You have to know the exact benefits you’re trying to sell, and who, exactly you’re trying to sell them to.
Advertising and marketing are driven by imagery and evocative writing. So what images are you trying to evoke? Do you want to create a sense of adventure and freedom in connection to your product and pitch that to young go-getters? Or is that the wrong emphasis and demographic?
Get clear on your messaging and understand why people buy products and services. Generally speaking, people don’t make purchases because the product or service itself seems so appealing. They make purchases because they can visualize and identify with a particular benefit that the product or service offers, and can imagine their lives improving as a result.
