Building a great product is one thing, but actually marketing it effectively is quite another. Many startups have great products. But, for whatever reason, they’re unable to convince people out there in the real world that they’ve got a product worth buying.
A lot of this comes down to marketing. Marketing isn’t something that’s one-shot. It’s something that takes a lot of time, especially if you’re building a business from scratch. Not everybody will trust you straight away.
Of course, if you’re just starting out, you’re not going to have a lot of money lying around to spend on advertising. So what can entrepreneurs do to get their message across on the cheap?
Start Focusing On Reviews
User-generated content is the fastest growing content on the web. According to estimates, about 80 percent of all content on the web is now generated by people doing things like writing blog posts, sending messages and creating reviews.
Google has cottoned onto this and has recently changed its algorithm to prioritize reviews. For businesses, this is a blessing and a curse. If you’ve been diligently collecting reviews since you first set up shop hoping that they would be useful one day, you’re now cashing in. On the other hand, if you’ve been neglecting to collect reviews, then you’re likely to see your ranking and exposure fall.
Only a few businesses are aware of the changes that search engines have been making over the last year, so if you haven’t yet updated your digital priorities to incorporate reviews, now’s the time to do it.
Leverage Your Apps
If you’ve got your own business app, you’ve got a captive audience. People only interact with your business app when they want to deal with your company which makes it a great place to do app advertising. App advertising is free, and it’s also intelligent. Suppose, for instance, that you run a local chain of coffee shops. You could use your app to remind your customers that one of your locations is nearby and that they can come, show a coupon code on their app, and get a free toasted cheese sandwich to go with their coffee. It’s little things like this that can make a big difference to the success of a business.
Don’t Just Spend: Be Unique
Spending lots of money on generic advertising is actually the slow way to grow a business, not the fast way. A better approach is to be unique, spending money on penetrating markets where you know you’re going to have success.
Elon Musk, the man behind Tesla Motors, is keen on this approach. He doesn’t believe in advertising at all. Instead, he says that great products speak for themselves and don’t need advertising. To say that he doesn’t advertise at all is a bit of a fib. He does advertise: he just does it in a very different way to most companies. His approach is to leverage the media by making something that is unique. Practically every day, a new story comes out about his business, keeping people interested in what he’s doing.