Article Contributed by Daniel S. Williams

So you are preparing to go after those sought-after customers…or, maybe trying to figure out exactly who those people are? In the world of startups, sales are king. Without sales to showcase the value of your product or create a revenue stream it would be a great difficulty to ever grow a company, that’s for sure.

Where variation arrives is how startups can best go about selecting how to reach potential buyers. With so many channels (online, offline, omni) today, advertising is more prevalent than ever, yet can also be the perpetual black hole forever being fed dollars to little avail. As a startup, the number of e-mails one receives from individuals offering their “marketing and SEO” services is truly impressive. But unless one understands where advertising/marketing spend should be directed, it is not difficult to spend thousands only to end up serving as a costly lesson.

What are some strategies one can implement when considering bootstrapping methods to grow awareness and leads for your venture? Firstly, one should start with performing tasks which are either free to do, or are a very minimal expenditure. And secondly, paid marketing is only as effective as the understanding behind who to market to. This means creating directed campaigns to qualified leads (who have the need for your service and are able to help influence the buying decision).

#1 – Start with the basics.

As a startup, the simplest marketing and optimization techniques to carry out rest with social presence and organic search results. Today’s buyers and audience is largely connected online, so it is only natural to extend your reach and meet the audience lurking on the web. By creating relevant social media profiles for your business, not only is it easier to share content to viewers across several platforms, but these items can help play a role in your startup’s appearance organically when one searches for keywords and your business. Social media platforms for your startup should not be a personal sounding board; they should contain succinct, engaging messages designed to increase user interaction and promote the mission your startup is trying to carry out.

A great example of this is through crafting relevant content for posting to your startup’s social media pages focusing on the “pain points” and current state of the problem you are attempting to conquer. Creating awareness about the problem your venture is aiming to solve can better position your startup to attract those interested in your content and relevant postings. Moreover, these forums for posting relevant content can also assist in establishing an interactive community around your product or service—giving potential users a stake in asking questions and learning more.

Another free way to create relevant content and assist in organic ranking is by creating a company blog that promotes content regarding the market you are trying to help and white papers about the state of the pain points. Using this tool strategically can be a good outlet to build awareness as well. A rule of 90/10 is useful, suggesting 90% of content should be problem/market relevant, and 10% mentioning your specific startup.

#2 – Paid advertising options.

There are many firms and even individuals who sell marketing and SEO services to startups especially. More often than not, the principles they deploy can be learned and practiced by yourself with some education and personal learning around common tactics and strategies.

HubSpot

I recommend taking advantage ofHubSpot’s online Academy program, where one can enroll in earning an inbound marketing certificate upon learning the lessons offered through materials and videos posted on the HubSpot website. Not only will you become “Inbound Certified” upon completing the online exam, but the content taught in the course is valuable material regarding attracting leads, enabling proper focus to qualification, and ensuring customer retention and delighting. The basic tenets of the inbound marketing methodology are very relevant for many startups today, especially considering the shift away from merely traditional marketing techniques of pushing content towards the inbound focus on drawing them in with engaging content and a more personal approach.

Google AdWords

Additionally, Google offers its own certification programs online across several categories consisting of AdWords and Analytics examinations. By taking the AdWords course, the lessons offer a focused look into the significance of AdWords and how campaigns can be structured to maximize the particular outcomes desired. As a complement to this, the Analytics course provides an in-depth look at some methods of assessing performance through site traffic and methods necessary to optimize the collection and use of gathered user data from your startup’s website as it obtains more traction and potential customers.

By holding oneself accountable for learning the principles at work behind the world of SEO and ad campaigns across many of the online channels, dollars can be better directed to areas with the highest likelihood of contributing the best return on investment (ROI) per dollar spent. Some of these firms may charge several hundred to thousand dollars each month for services quite possibly able to be mastered with some effort and focus.

Trial-and-error is sometimes needed, but marketing is vital to growing a business and quite interdisciplinary. Even if your startup is on a college campus simply running ads on Facebook to local students, knowing what the analytics and performance is telling you adds a world of value beyond the numbers. Knowing your cost-per-click (CPC) through AdWords is a good thing, but understanding how to optimize the campaign’s effectiveness and target the right people can be the difference between money well spent and money that falls victim to that aforementioned black hole that so easily consumes a startup’s limited budget.

About the Author:

Daniel S. Williams is an Advanced-Standing Senior in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. He is the CFO of startup Xperii (a SaaS platform) and has worked with several other startups in the past.

To find out exactly what your target market wants, you gotta ask them!

Sounds easy enough, right?

But you’d be surprised at how many business owners don’t do this. They just assume they know what their audience wants.

Or they see someone else having success with a product or program, so offer something similar to their own clients and subscribers (I remember once a mentor telling me that I’ll always have success if I offer list building. Well … guess what?  I offered list building, and it wasn’t a success. It wasn’t right for my audience!)

There is a saying I was taught many years ago …

You have to provide them with what they want so you can give them what they need later.

In other words, if you’re a weight loss coach and you’re trying to teach your audience the importance of changing their eating habits for life in order to lose weight, but all your audience are interested in are low-calorie recipes to lose weight quickly, then this is where you need to start.

Even though you know they need to learn how to change their eating habits for life, you have to start with what your audience wants right now, today, and then give them what they need (i.e. teaching them how to maintain a healthy eating lifestyle) later.

So, if your products, programs, and/or services are not selling as well as you thought they would it could be there’s a mismatch between what your market wants and what you’re providing them with.

Ask yourself… are you providing the solutions based on what YOU think the problems are rather than what your target market wants?  And how do you find out?

The answer is simple… ASK!

Or in marketing terms, it’s called market research!

What do you think when you think of ‘market research’?

I bet it conjures up all sorts of images of telephone surveys, sending out questionnaires, and standing in the street accosting people to ask them questions (yes – I used to do this type of market research many years ago when I worked for a management consultancy practice).

And as a solo business owner it is crucial that you do your own ‘market research’ to find out what makes your target market tick, what keeps them awake at night, and what they’re really struggling with.

The good news is, it doesn’t have to involve picking up the telephone or standing on street corners.

But this process does need to be done on a continual basis – never stop asking your target market what they want – so that you can constantly provide the solutions to their problems.

Today, I’d like to share with you three simple strategies for conducting your own market research (that doesn’t involve standing around on street corners!), and how you can put these strategies onto autopilot so that you’re constantly gathering information from your market.  All of these have worked very well for me over the past few years!

1.       Ask via your sign-up page.  When someone signs up to your list, don’t just get their name and email address, ask them what their biggest challenge is too.  This is something I’ve done for many years, and in fact you would have seen this yourself when you signed up for this newsletter.  I have a specific question that asks:  What is YOUR biggest office headache?  Feel free to adapt this question for your own needs, i.e. what is your biggest [fill in the blank] when it comes to [fill in the blank].

2.       Follow-up with an autoresponder.  Once someone has signed up to your list, create an autoresponder that goes out a few days later and asks the same question again.  Very often people may not have answered the question when they signed up to your list, and sending them an email a few days later will elicit a reply from them.

3.       Create an annual or semi annual survey.  At least once a year it’s a good idea to survey your readers and ask them several more in-depth questions.  You’ll want to find out what their biggest problems are, what it is they want to learn more about, plus how they want to learn, or how they want their problem solved.  For example, you might find your readers prefer home study courses to teleclasses, or would like more interactive programs from you.  Putting together a survey is really simple, especially if you use a service such as Survey Monkey.  They do the analysis for you, so you get really valuable data.

However, for the data you get through steps 1 and 2 above, analysis isn’t as automatic.  Simply gather together all of your data and go through it periodically (at least twice a year) to see what your reader’s problems are.  You don’t even need to be a statistician to figure it all out.  Just print off all the responses and read through them, noting any common themes as you go along.

By combining all of this data, and implementing your market research strategy so that it runs on autopilot, you can then use this information to put your products and services together so that you’re providing solutions to your target market’s problems in the way that they want and need.

Remember, you are providing your market with what they want and need, not what you think they want and need.

Considering ditching offline marketing tactics completely? Unsure what you get back from all the hours spent on social media?

Offline and online marketing can be two distinct promotional channels however, dovetailing your marketing activities can increase rewards for your business.

Advertising has changed. Online advertising is not just about selling, but connecting and engaging with your audience. Offline promotion is just as important for building trust.

Choosing where you spend you marketing budget is important and thus understanding where your customers are at is essential if any of your promotional material is going to succeed.

Taking data and information from a variety of source, the infographic highlights where companies and businesses of all sizes are spending their marketing budget. It highlights were money is being spent but more importantly, the return of investment on these offline and online channels.

Effectively, the device that potential customers use to surf the web and what influences their buying decisions will vary – but there may be a few surprises in the statistics too.

Understanding how and why you need your online and offline promotional activities to synch together is important too. By not doing one, dropping it in favour of another, you could be alienating a whole a whole raft of customers.

What also may surprise you is the popularity of some of the offline channels that some businesses are no longer using – again, effectively by-passing a large chunk of potential customers. Trust is a key ingredient in the recipe of marketing success: what offline medium do you think customers trust the most?

Copyright-Free Image: https://pixabay.com/en/magazine-newspaper-open-opened-791046/

Article Contributed by Jemima Meyers

You might think that with all the e-commerce going on print catalogs would be better suited to holding up that wobbly table leg than being used as a product marketing tool – well, think again. Catalog marketing is most definitely not dead and, in fact, the print catalog industry continues to see steady growth every year.

Printing plays a substantial role in the U.S. and worldwide economies, and while print marketing and mail order catalogs hit a lull during the recession of the late 2000s, there has been a resurgence of this type of marketing in recent years.

Print is here to stay as an effective and important marketing tool and it can be utilized in a variety of ways, most notably in the arena of niche print catalogs that drive business to well-designed e-commerce websites.

Product placement

According to Statista IKEA printed catalogs topped 213 million copies in 2015. Their catalog printing has steadily increased since the 1950s and that figure is a nearly 53 million increase in printed catalogs per year in just the last decade alone. As someone who has been personally roped into visiting my nearest IKEA outlet after leafing through their printed catalog, I can say, with all sincerity, that this kind of marketing strategy still works.

Not only does IKEA use the catalog to organize their products in a way that we can understand, it helps us visualize the products in our own home better than browsing digital marketplaces. When we’re sitting on our couch or in bed leafing thought a catalog, it becomes easier to visualize wanting to bring those products or items into our own houses: the products are, in a way, already in our own homes.

Print catalogs are also easier to share with others in offline situations – think parties, meetups, religious gatherings, office break rooms, and other places where crowding around a computer tor hand-held device is just not practical.

Multi-channel marketing strategy

Retailers need to understand the complex relationship between stores, internet, and catalogs. With multichannel marketing you push and pull customers from all sides to the point of sale. This is especially true for niche companies that want to help people identify with a brand.

While the internet does offer unlimited space for promoting products and services, the catalog is still an integral part of a comprehensive marketing strategy and, according to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), catalog mailings reached 11.9 billion in 2013.

Catalogs tend to stick around with a current or potential customer long after the products may be discontinued or refreshed. Having that physical presence in their lives is a constant reminder that the company exists – and customers are more likely to seek out the products again when they need them.

Even prosperous and diverse companies like Amazon are working with catalog-on-demand partners to bring PDF print catalogs of seller products back to the masses. Many businesses are interested in using the catalogs with their local mailing lists and sales reps. Other companies like Dell, and those that started off on the internet, like eBay, are also working along similar lines.

Niche-oriented catalogs

The more in-tune you are with your customers, the more likely they are to buy from you. That means not only offering them quality products, but quality content as well. Successful boutique brands are now branching into the world of magazine creation, where they give their clients more tips, help, and inspiration – the things they need in their day-to-day life – all while selectively marketing their products.

This works especially well when breaking up a large company catalog into smaller niche catalogs that specifically address certain customer segments. The more that you can prove that you understand your target customers, the better your sales figures will be.

Driving traffic to a website

While the mail order call center model may have migrated online, revenue from catalogs is still constant. Print catalogs now help drive customers to the internet and the two media have a very symbiotic relationship. Understanding this relationship and creating complementary content on both types of platforms will ensure that you see a massive return on your investment.

As much as big companies like Google are pushing for a digital revolution (with a vested interest in a growing digital economy) printed media is here to stay. Not only is it better for us, from a health perspective, to take breaks from our screens, but the sales potential for integrating print and other platforms means that these “old-school” catalogs will be a mainstay in retailer’s toolboxes, and customer mailboxes, for years to come.

Article Contributed by Ifan Kaldain

Image by epSos

Multichannel retail is all the rage these days. It seems that even the smallest ventures are now selling on multiple channels across the globe. While there are many benefits, there are also challenges; the most salient being the managing of your sales channels – ensuring that they work in unison for effective e-commerce. In this article, we will explore the ways in which you can balance your business so that it can become global without losing one’s attention to detail.

1. Amazon Vs eBay

While it’s tempting to simply set up a presence on every popular 3rd party marketplace, it’s important to consider if your business can afford the time, effort and risks involved. It’s important to assess the type of customers and competitors on each platform, to assess where demand and market average price of your products. Perhaps your products can sell on Amazon, but only if you slash the prices; perhaps those who browse eBay are not interested in your stock at all. The best method of determining feasibility for each marketplace is to investigate your competitors. Variables to consider include:

• Which platforms they are selling on?
• If they sell on multiple platforms, are they only selling specific types of products on each platform?
• Are their prices different from the prices offered on their website?
• Are they offering product bundles?

Taking note of the above can help you decide whether customers will likely buy your products via a 3rd party marketplace. It can also help you decide whether you can compete with the other sellers.

2. Order Process Consolidation

Using a multichannel retail management system can allow you to view and manage orders across all your sales channels – such as Amazon, eBay, your website and physical store(s). This can not only cut down on admin time, but can provide you with valuable customer data that will help you understand current and future shopping trends.

Perhaps your cheaper goods sell better on your Amazon page, whereas customer seeking your high-end goods prefer to purchase on your website, where they can get more help and information. Such data can help you understand which channels work best for each type of customer, allowing you to further tailor your customer service strategy.

3. Connecting Offline & Online

You may be selling online, but that doesn’t mean that you have to ignore your offline operation – if anything, you can connect the two together. For example, setting up a click-and-collect service, in which customers can buy online and then pick up later from your nearest store, is a convenient method for customers who have full time jobs. Another service you can provide is the ability to return defective or unwanted products bought online at a physical store. The little things can really make a big difference for your local customers, and makes them feel that they are still valued in the face of your online expansion.

More tips for balancing your sales channels can be found in this handy guide to multichannel retail, which also includes a breakdown of the differences between Amazon and eBay.