16 Marketing Tips for Start Ups

Here’s a laundry list of 16 marketing ideas that start ups involved in the BBIC might want to think about.

E-mail: From a marketing perspective it’s inexpensive and highly effective. Too often, marketers are tempted to broadcast a message to their entire database. I suggest you’ll generate more revenue when you focus on the 20% of your database that produces 80% of your sales. Prospects at the top of your lead-generation pipeline who are poised to buy within the next 30 - 90 days should also be hit. A lot of marketers are keen to e-mail key decision makers but too often ill-informed PAs get in the way and delete your all important message. Then why don’t you ping the CEOs at the weekend - when their PAs aren't screening correspondence - and they’re checking their own mail.

New Clients: I know this one is utterly obvious but when we think about marketing and sales we tend to think of new clients. Why don’t you focus on selling more of your products/services to existing clients? It generally produces better results.

Emotions: Consider the emotions you want associated with your product/service and the impact those emotions and related activities would have on your firm. Which emotions and activities do you want to use? Do you want to be funny, controversial, topical, clever, mysterious, or a trend setter? You may also want to consider associating your product/service with a current trend, fashion or sports celebrity.

Communities of Interest: Establish a marketing and public relations advisory and referral team composed of your colleagues and/or neighbouring business owners to share ideas and referrals and to discuss community business issues. You could meet quarterly for breakfast or dinner.

Inform Clients: Photocopy interesting articles and send them to your clients and prospects with a hand-written ‘for your information’ note and attach your business card.

Ask Clients: How do you know which features of your product/service are most useful to your clients? Let your clients suggest new features and then let them vote (or bid) for those features they would most like to see incorporated into the new product/service.

Pay Clients: Pay your clients if they use your product/service a lot. Sounds suicidal, doesn’t it? However, this might encourage people to use your product/service more. This in turn could certainly stimulate demand to use your product/service more often. It could also encourage more new clients to come on board if they think they stand a chance of getting paid. This is certainly a bold move and one that could deliver lots of PR coverage.

Free CD: Many Oman-based magazines and newspapers are now willing to carry CDs. Choose the magazines and newspapers appropriate to your target audience and offer to provide something worth including on a CD. This’ll be circulated to thousands of people, worth considering, don’t you think?

Key Words: Search engines will index the content (text) of your website and use that to find matches against the queries typed by those googling. Nothing new there I know, but instead of just describing what you do, include extra words that describe the benefits to the end user and include words that represent the language of your potential client - rather than your own product/service jargon.

Benefits: This is standard marketing practice - promote the benefits, not the features of your product/service. Although not innovative, I think it’s a marketing issue worth considering.

Competition: You have a product/service that you want to promote, so why don’t you get your existing clients to enter a competition that tells you how they use your product/service. The best application of your product/service wins a prize. This not only provides you with great PR but gives you a superb list of the applications and benefits of your product/service. Promote these ideas on your website or blog.

Outrageous: So you want to be noticed, and you’ve got a three figure annual marketing budget? Here’s what you do. You do something outrageous! This will get you plenty of free publicity and lots of word-of-mouth marketing coverage about your firm and product/service. However, be careful there’s a fine line between what’s outrageous and acceptable and what’s outrageous and totally not acceptable. Get it right and everybody will know you – get it wrong and you may as well pack your bags and head for the Airport. If this frightens you a bit too much, try an alternative, do something good, a good deed. Though this won’t generate the same amount of press coverage or marketing buzz.

Advice: This is a marketing classic - provide advice, training and support to your existing clients. Folk appreciate the after sales touch – it shows them you haven’t taken the money and run. Start a free tip line. Offer a free daily, weekly, or monthly tip recorded on your voice mail or answer service. The tips you give should be related to your line of business. Include an ad for your website or business at the beginning or end of your message.

Cred: People usually like to see a demonstration of your credibility and abilities - either through a live demonstration, or via association with known and respected organisations. Think about how you can demonstrate your credibility. The ideas mapped out in this article should go some way to helping you in this regard.

Media Support: Identify media channels - print, web, TV and radio - that can help you promote your product/service, you can always provide journalists with a free trial in exchange for free exposure in their medium. Another possibility is to start a blog.

Business Card: Everybody has a business card and so many of them are badly designed and utterly forgettable. Try giving out business cards that offer a chance to win a competition, enter a prize draw, reveal a must know business secret or get a free trial. Create a different form of business card - something memorable. This is one way of demonstrating your firm’s creativity. Printing business cards cost just a few Rials so this is an idea you can experiment with.