Marketing a new business is often times very different from marketing an established business. One of the big differences is a new business doesn’t know what marketing works for this industry just yet, where as an established business has hopefully found the methods of marketing that work. Another difference is that I find people that have started a new business have less of a marketing budget that an established business has. And one other difference is referral or word of mouth marketing is almost non existent with a new business.
Marketing a New Business No Money
Whatever type of business you have started will require clients for you to thrive and become successful. Whether you are marketing a plumbing business, catering business, automotive business or oilfield business or marketing any other type of business when you first start marketing you need to pay attention to the amount of cash you are spending.
The only way that I know of to market a new business with no money is getting yourself in front of as many people as you can. You are basically a one person sales team that will be getting your message out there. This can be achieved in two ways. Cold calling and networking. Cold calling can also be done in two ways, using the telephone or going door to door.
Cold Calling
Whether you are going door to door or phoning potential clients you will need something to say. A lot of telemarketers will use a script, and to be successful with a script you need you need to read this many times and make sure you are well rehearsed before making any calls. This will be easier for you than a telemarketer as you should know your product or service inside out. Before calling anybody check to see what the regulations are about telemarketing in your area. In many cases calling businesses is ok, but you had better find out from your lawyer or another source before proceeding.
If you are going to go door to door then you should be carrying brochures and a sales book that can show potential clients what your services have done for others or what your products are and what they can do for them.
Networking
There are many networking clubs that you can join. I have belonged to a website called meetup.com for quite sometime. On this website you can join different networking clubs, you can also join all sorts of other meetings on there, but I stick to the business meetings. If by some chance there is nothing in your location then for a mere $75 you can start your own and then you can message anybody that has shown an interest in networking.
Marketing a New Business With a Little Money
Instead of cold calling you can hire someone to make the calls for you. In most cases this won’t cost you that much money.
Also if you want to enhance your networking then you can join paid networking clubs that normally cost about $300 to $400 per year. BNI is one club, the Chamber of Commerce can work as well, I have also had luck with the Better Business Bureau and the networking events that have been put on by them.
Another way to market a new business with just a little money is through the use of postcards or flyers. A low cost flyer or postcard through a print shop will only cost you about 5 cents per piece and the mailing is around 9 and a half cents per piece where I am from. Or a delivery service is only 5 and a half cents per piece. This can be very low cost providing you are getting your message across to the end user. To do this you need to create a compelling ad that will get you results. This is called copywriting.
Marketing a New Business Through Other Methods
Other ways for you to market a new business is through methods such as the yellow pages, coupons, coupon books, online marketing, newspaper, magazines, business directories, search engines, direct mail, and much more. As a new business these are the most common ways for you to get your business of the ground. Once you have started to get clients calling you on a regular basis then you need to start a referral marketing plan. Unless you are in an industry like insurance, then you should start using referral marketing right from your first client.
Other businesses can choose to collect the email addresses of their clients (getting their permission, in writing, to contact them once in awhile) and contact them from time to time. And each time you get in front of their eyes you can ask for referrals, do make sure you are giving them a good reason to open the email or after just two or three emails they will stop opening them and you will be wasting your time.
Marketing a New Business Through the Yellow Pages
Yes, in some cases you can still have a successful ad in the yellow pages. As time goes on more and more people search online instead of looking through the yellow pages. Just check to see if anyone else in your industry is advertising there. If so then one of two things is happening.
Those that are advertising are still getting results or those that are advertising are not paying attention to where they are getting their clients from. If they are not tracking their marketing then they will spend money in the yellow pages forever. Most people will get a free listing in the yellow pages as a one line, if there are 50 businesses listed in the yellow pages and only 5% of those are advertising then most likely you should not put a lot of your money in this. If on the other hand 25% or more are advertising then most likely this method is still working for your industry in your area.
I am not sure how long the yellow pages will keep on working for. The one thing I do know is if I am looking for a pizza place or a Chinese food restaurant or even a plumber, I still go to the yellow pages. Do you? And if you do then maybe others are too?
Marketing a New Business With Coupons and Coupon Books
The only type of coupons I have used for marketing a new business is the coupon books or Val-Pak type of advertising. The cost of what I was doing was $750 per month, which was a little steep and did not give a great ROI. But if you have a great service and the lifetime value of a client or your margins are high then this can work. The one thing about this method is you get in front of a lot of people in a very short period of time.
Marketing a New business Online
This is now my favorite way to market a new business, next to word of mouth of course. In fact because of the internet and social media we now have a complete new way of creating word of mouth marketing plans.
Today, faster than any other time in history you can get your business name out to hundreds or more people within a very short period of time. One way is to simply create a Facebook fan page and invite all of your friends and ask them to invite as many of their friends as possible.
Once you have a bunch of people that have liked your new page you then have to interact with them on an ongoing basis. Do this by posting to the wall of the page, and putting up any photos of any work that you have done. Then tag people in the photos that you have done the work for. Make sure you have their permission prior to doing this or you will just make people upset. Once you tag someone then the picture will be placed on their own wall for all of their friends to see. This helps brand you as well as might get you more work.
Other ways to market your business online is by putting your business in as many business directories as possible. This gets you exposure with the search engines and the search engines begin to trust your site as a real site and not something that is spammy.
You can also get people to find your website online by advertising through pay per click methods or by doing search engine optimization procedures on your site. Both have their place, and come with different costs that might be out of range for a new business, but this is definitely something to mention here.
Pay per click ads are short ads that are on the right hand side or top of the results in the search engines. You pay whatever the going rate is for each click when someone clicks on your ad. These ads require good copywriting skills to get people to click on your ad.
And unlike other copywriting you have very little space to get your message across. You need to entice people to click on your ad, but not in such a way that once they get to your site they leave right away. This would be very costly very fast. Instead you want to funnel down the searchers so that those that do click through to your site are more likely to take action by buying your products or using your services. This is done through testing and refining your ad. There is no simple way to do this other than testing, tracking, tweaking and testing again.
Facebook PPC
This same method holds true if you are advertising on Facebook with the exception that your ad is not one a page of listings that people have just searched for. Instead your ad is on a page that people are looking at and interacting with, so this is a litte tougher than with the search engines.
This is still a ppc or pay per click system so you only pay if someone clicks through to your site. Another big difference though is if someone clicks through to your site and is not happy with what they find they can go back to your ad and click the X in the top corner. If enough people do this then Facebook will take action and delete your ad. If this happens enough times your account will be deleted completely.
Facebook does have one other way to advertise. Using the same ads you do have a choice to pay on a per impression instead of on a per click basis. Feel free to test this method out.
There are other ways to advertise online, but many of these ways are for global not local businesses. If you are going global or you are a new business that can sell globally then you can look into advertising with banner ads or try out media advertising.
I will stop here as there is nothing worse than a new business owner that gets overwhelmed with ideas and cannot focus on a single one.
Other articles you might find helpful are marketing a business and marketing a small business
Feel free to make any comments or ask any questions below.
Thanks,
Kelly
Marketing a New Business