You have now decided to set you your own business, you have registered as self employed, you have set up your office or working space and now you are ready to go. One of the most important steps in working for yourself is marketing.
Marketing should never be underestimated. It is one of the primary factors that will influence the success or failure of your start up. With the advancement of the internet some people may be overwhelmed with the different marketing channels and can easily lose sight of what is important. Marketing is actually very straightforward. It involves putting the information about a business on something that can be circulated and making sure that this “something” is seen. There are many ways to market your business which can be divided into two main areas: offline and online.
1) Offline marketing and networking
Before the invention of the internet, everything was offline, marketing in advertisements in newspapers, brochures and leaflets all referred under the term called print advertising.
Print advertising is still very important. For local businesses it can help reach their target audience. For example, they may want to run a series of adverts in their local newspaper, hand out leaflets at their local shopping centre to increase brand awareness with their clients.
Networking events are more popular now than ever. One of the most well known events is meetup.com who is now celebrating their 10th anniversary.
Anyone budding entrepreneur or start up should go to meetup.com and find a group in their field. You will meet many potential clients and also other peers with who you can discuss common start up problems you may have. At these events, you should also carry around enough business cards to distribute. If you are hosting the event, you may even want to get some brochures designed which contain more information about your products or services.
2) Online marketing
Online marketing which covers any online presence has become increasingly more important since 2000, mainly due to its low overheads. Marketing online includes search engine optimisation (SEO) which assess how well your website can be found on the web, pay per click advertising (otherwise called PPC) and more recently social media,.
Google updates its algorithm regularly which affects how well a website is found on the internet. Having a good SEO and social media presence can help your website appear higher in the search results pages. There is a cross over between SEO and Social media. Both involve writing good content which is then shared by people on the web with links back to your website. Social media however, is more about how active you are on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and Linkedin. Depending on your product or service, you should have a Facebook page where you can interact with your fans. PPC, also known as Google Adwords is a way of having a presence online before you have a natural presence. It can good to use PPC to generate awareness of your brand and drive people to certain page for a specific campaign.
In today’s world, it is important to have both an offline and online presence.
Snap offer printing, available the next time you are traveling within Australia, visit your local Snap business centre to see how they can help you with your business.