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5 Strategies for an Effective Startup Marketing Plan

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Successfully marketing your startup will require employing several techniques so that your small business will grow. Effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is just one of the many methods available for you to get your company off the ground. What follows are the necessary steps you must take to give your business the best chance at reaching out to potential customers.

1 – Understand Your Target Audience

For your marketing efforts to be successful, you will need to find and understand your target audience. A marketing campaign that is aimed at everyone will get no one, so you will need to find the group of people most likely to purchase your products or services and direct your campaign at them.

2 – Building Up Your Brand

Branding is everything today, from impressing your business name, logo, and website so that you separate yourself from the competition and reach out to potential customers. You will need to build a proper website, create an attractive, identifiable logo, and come up with a name that will help you build up the brand of your business.

3 – Increase Presence on the Internet

The good news is that social media has made it easier than ever to create a strong web presence for your business. You will need a website that is functional, attractive, and easy to navigate so that your customers will feel comfortable in shopping for products or services. This is where your SEO efforts will start to bring benefits as your website improves in search rankings. Building your social media presence means reaching out to potential customers, engaging with them, and creating more sales.

4 – Developing Your Blog

In addition to your social media strategies, do not forget to build up your blog. This means having regular scheduled articles that provide information to your customers while creating more leads for your business. You may need to hire additional writers so an aggressive schedule can be set. You should also consider getting material from other sites and writing on occasion for those sites to broaden out your reach.

5 – Create Videos

Videos have been the hottest type of internet marketing for years and their dominance shows no sign of diminishing. You will want to create interesting, informative videos about what you do, the industry that you are in, and to reach out to new audiences so that they stand a better chance of going viral.

+ BONUS! Additional Marketing Methods

Adding to your efforts is guerrilla marketing techniques which gain more attention to your business while costing very little to produce. You will want to incorporate an effective PR campaign that oversees your marketing efforts which should include online advertising, crowdfunding campaigns, and making public appearances that help bolster your brand.

Your startup will need all the help it can get so your small business can get off the ground. You will need to focus on effective SEO, blogging, and creating an effective social media presence while still using tried-and-true methods that include online advertising and guerrilla marketing techniques to reach your audience while keeping costs down.

How to Make More Online Sales

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If you are running an e-commerce or online shop, improving your online sales is a top priority. The good news is that you can increase your sales through several different methods, many of them will not cost you a dime. By getting the most out of each sale, you can increase your bottom line while adding relatively little to your expenses.

Here are ten ways to increase sales for your e-commerce business and provide additional cash flow for your future marketing campaigns.

1 – Add Urgency to the Sale: This is an effective advertising technique where you place a time-limit on sales or special offerings. Because it encourages the customer to act quickly, they are more likely to pull the trigger because they don’t want to miss the offer.

2 – Ad Extension: Online sales are fueled by ad extensions that are available on Bing and AdWords for no extra cost. This allows you to make your advertisements bigger and more pronounced which means that more people will see what you are offering.

3 – Boost Product Images: The better your products look, the more they will sell. Professional product photography provides high-quality images that help sell your products.

4 – Focus on a Few Products: If you are trying to grow your online business, focus on selling a few products or services first. Remember, you cannot compete with large department stores, but you can offer good deals on specific items or services that boost your business. So, pick two or three products and focus on them.

5 – Identify Your Customer Base: You need to know who to target for your sales efforts. One way is to examine lookalike audiences that you’ll find on Facebook with your competitors. Basically, by identifying the customers of your competitors, you can then target them more effectively on social media.

6 – Increase Payment Options: The more ways a customer can pay, the better off your business will be. For online sales, PayPal is a must along with the major credit cards.

7 – Money-Back Guarantee: This tried and true technique alleviates the fear that many potential customers have about making the purchase. Relatively few will use the money-back guarantee if you are selling a high-quality product, so the risk to you is small.

8 – Streamline the Checkout Process: You’d be surprised how many potential customers back out at the last minute because they didn’t understand the checkout process. Clean your checkout system so that anyone can use it without confusion.

9 – Testimonials: Testimonials help you build customer trust which in turn increases your sales. Find a few customers who have enjoyed the products or services you provide, ask them for their testimonials, and put them on your website and in your advertising.

10 – Truth in Advertising: It may seem rather obvious, but too many businesses do not have honest sales copy which only creates distrust from otherwise potential customers. So, go over every sales copy you create to ensure that it is accurate and does not mislead the customer.

By following these tips, you can boost your online shop profits and expand your e-commerce business through better online sales.

– The SB Marketing Team