Every day there are billions and millions ideas tossed around from entrepreneurs trying to start a new business, sometimes they are called serial entrepreneurs. Serial entrepreneurs are creative people that keep making additional niche businesses even though they already made a successful business venture before.
Thinking in terms of branding or even marketing your new business conception as a startup in today’s competitive economy is very difficult, but there are some avenues you can take to ensure your startup gets ahead start of the pack, and on the correct track for success.
Niche Concept & Brand Marketing. It’s always more important if you go after a niche market or specialize in one area that you do extremely well, that others haven’t mastered yet in that field or industry. More and more businesses are going after this niche market, Five Guys just does burgers, Crumbs Bake Shop, just does cupcakes. These business focused their efforts on one topic and went out there and said, “hey we are the experts of this,” and through time and experience made a better business model.
Target Brand Audience. The mistake a lot of businesses do immediately out of the gate, is they tend to market to any one and every one. That is the worst thing you can do and you would be spending lots of marketing capital without the desired results. Figure out what you deliver as a niche in your business, and then find out where those customers would be and go for those customers, don’t sit back and wait. If you want customers you need to earn them, not just expect them to come to you because your the best.
Branded Partnerships. Due to this economy it is extremely important to spark branded business-to-business partnerships within your industry, since every company has a very specific talent (even though they don’t want to admit it) is great at specializing in certain aspects of their business. This is how these creative partnerships can be formed to help start your new business. You can have a standard referral fee with both sides of the partnership, along with people knowing your the leader in your field or industry.
Community Outreach For Your Brand. The area where you live in whether it is a major city, or a small town, it’s great place to get featured in local news outlets to create some brand awareness for your organization. Take the initiative and reach out to your local newspaper, radio or non-profit organizations see if you can great a creative partnership or if they would be willing to write a story about your services and your new found business. You could also sponsor local events, by offering to give an article or give a speech on the trending topics or services you specialize in your business.
Branded Custom Content. Being in business is like making a branded machine that is good at executing three to five different services at the same time, it’s a long-term branding strategy. To develop your own “voice” through branded customized content is a exceptional way to market your startup business venture. So how do you do this? You create a blog, write articles showcasing certain niche services that you offer and why the client needs these services in those relevant topics. By doing this through branded content you align your company with services relating to your industry, which establish yourself as expert in your field. This should not be written as promotional content to acclaim your company’s services, write about topics and issues that are going on in your industry through your “voice” of your brand, like how I am doing here.
Social Media Marketing. I hear this all the time, “What about Twitter, how about Facebook, do I really need to be on Instagram for my company in regards to Social Media Marketing?” The answer is yes, you need to be on some of these social media platforms to garner more interest and traffic, but only the ones that are geared towards creating traction from your services, but not all of social media avenues are required. But if you are using social media, then make sure your posting consistently, and that you are engaging with your audience. For instance, with Twitter, make sure you engage any user that mentions your business in their Twitter tweets or articles, and engage with your similar competitors so their followers can see your in the same industry as well.
Marketing strategies are very important in building any business, one of my sayings is, “victory loves preparation.” Look at all avenues of your business, really plan it out, once you’ve done the planning then your ready for branding your company, slow and steady always wins the race.