If you’ve only just managed to get your start-up off the ground, then you may think that using tech to promote your business is limited to designing and maintaining an attractive website. This is wrong! While it’s true that there are certain tech tools which are only really useful in certain, specific niches, there are various others which are much more universal, and can be applied to businesses of all models and sizes. International business is only becoming more and more defined by modern technological capabilities, and if you’re not using everything you have at your disposal, you’re pretty much giving business to the competition. Here are some of the ways to apply tech in your marketing…
Milk LinkedIn for All It Has!
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LinkedIn is a quick, easy, and mostly free way for you to establish a professional online presence. When you’re in the start-up phase, it represents a much smaller investment compared to setting up and maintaining a professional website. Like most professionals in 2017, you’re probably already set up on LinkedIn. Again, like most modern professionals, you may have simply pasted in your CV and left it at that. Make sure you’re milking this great social network for all it has! Get onto your profile and use it as a platform to really show your passion for your business. Post updates and articles with some relation to your sector, showing off your industry expertise and your company’s assets. Networking is only going to become more important for you in the future, so don’t let this platform go to waste!
Use Analytics to See Where You’re Going Wrong
If there’s one mistake which I see more than any other in start-up’s marketing campaigns, it’s a negligence of analytics. If you take a scattergun approach to your online marketing, you might get some results, and maintain a healthy enough profit margin. However, it’s almost guaranteed that you won’t be maximizing your resources. On the other hand, when you apply an analytics and automation tool such as this: Posirank.com, you’ll be able to see which marketing efforts are getting people to come to your website and convert into customers, and which ones are simply bringing in idle traffic. This, in turn, will allow you to re-organise your marketing strategy in order to give it maximum efficiency, and will make you safe in the knowledge that you’re not wasting a penny of your capital!
Identify the Best Social Media Platform for You
If you’re trying to reach a fairly wide audience, then it would be great to have an email campaign, an active blog, and all the while maintain a presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on, this probably isn’t going to be practical when you’re working with the stretched resources of a start-up. Instead, try to focus your attention on the one social network which your business fits like a glove. This is going to depend on both your target market, and the kind of content you’re going to be using to promote your company. If you’re trying to sell some innovative B2B product, then your target market is probably going to spend more time on LinkedIn than any other social media platform. On the other hand, if you’re selling a smartphone game, then your audience is probably going to spend a lot more time on Instagram. Just make sure you’re adhering to all the little conventions and nuances that are tied to each individual network. Just one update which uses an inappropriate tone for the platform can be enough to completely destroy your reputation.
Leverage Online PR to Get the Word Out About Developments
When you’re planning to bring out a new product or service, obviously you’ll want to get people talking about it. One of the best ways to go about this is leveraging online PR channels. There are a few ways you can go about this, depending on your priorities and means. You can either write features yourself, and pitch them to major online business journals such as Forbes, Entrepreneur and so on. As long as you can present the development at your business as some kind of case study, or link it to a wider issue in your industry, a lot of these sites will be receptive to your pitch. Of course, this means coming up with original content, which can be challenging if you don’t have a natural way with words. Alternatively, you can reach out to a paid PR service, where professional, experienced journalists will craft an article which summarizes the development in a professional, engaging way, and then use their industry contacts to get it in a publication perfectly suited to your audience. Online PR is bigger than ever today, and it’s only expected to swell throughout 2017.
Leverage PPC Advertising
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m sure you’re aware of where those little ads at the top of Google search results come from. PPC is now huge on Google and the lesser search engines, but this is just the start. There are also many advertising opportunities on Facebook and LinkedIn which are structured in more or less the same way, and reaped a lot of businesses similarly impressive results. Like Google, these ads can be placed strategically so that you’ll only pay for them being seen and clicked by people in your target demographic. This is an especially useful tool if you’re setting out in the B2B sector. LinkedIn has a highly sophisticated database, which gives you a lot of flexibility in choosing who will see your ad. This covers things like industry, age, gender and location, as well as the company size and name, and even function. No matter what industry your business occupies, utilizing PPC through some channel is always, always a good idea.
Take this advice, and soon enough you’ll start to realize how much modern tech can benefit your marketing efforts. While these kinds of tools alone won’t guarantee success, they’ll certainly provide great support to you and the other minds behind the company!
