OK, Boss, let’s talk marketing. Putting the word out about yourself might be the single most important thing you can do as an entrepreneur. People often seem to forget that no matter what stage you may be at in your business, if you don’t actively try to interact with your audience and reach out to them, you will be at risk of falling off entirely. Even companies as large as Apple or Microsoft would noticeably plummet in popularity if they stopped all of their advertising campaigns. Of course, they wouldn’t die overnight, but they would eventually start losing relevancy and slowly shift over into that uncanny valley of obscurity. As a business owner, that is most probably the last thing you would ever want to happen to your company, therefore in order to prevent this; you should take some time to implement some future-proofing. It might be difficult to get started because there is a lot to consider and a lot of paths you could choose to go about doing this. To make it a bit easier, let’s go through a few methods in which you could spread the word, and hopefully consistently stay in the spotlight.

What It’s All About

Advertising is critical to any business. Companies have been doing it for generations, but over the years the methods have changed more and more, yet the principle remains the same. Of course, you want to target the broadest audience possible, so selecting methods which reach the largest amount of people is preferable, but sadly, that is not always very plausible. Much like anything that’s higher quality or most effective, it usually costs much more, making it not very accessible for smaller businesses and startups. Of course, this all depends on your budget, and if you have enough money which you could allocate towards advertising while still being able to pay the rent for your new office and pay your employees, you’re probably in a good position to move forward aggressively. If you have the resources to rent ad space on a bus or a billboard for example, then go right ahead. However, If you do not, then it would be wise to think of some other ways in which to promote your brand.

Digital Marketing

It’s no secret that all the companies that are dominating the market are fully embracing the virtual world and using it to extend their reach into all sorts of different and global audiences. If you have not yet adapted to this strategy in order to avoid being outclassed and left behind, then it’s about time you picked up the pace. There are several ways in which you could gain some online presence, and some of them can even be utilized for free.

Social Media

Social media is quite noticeably at the forefront of most online communication nowadays, no matter whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Linkedin. If you wish to reach out to a broader audience of various age ranges and places all over the world without spending insane amounts of money on advertising campaigns with huge billboards and prints on blimps, then social media is the way to go. Of course, just because it’s free does not mean it’s easy. You still have to spend the time to actually develop your social media accounts and make sure that the content posted on them is at least somewhat engaging. While the primary purpose of it existing is to advertise your company or your company’s product, if you come off as too pushy with your advertisements, then nobody will willingly follow you. People want short, quick, snappy, humorous and relevant information on their social media; whether it’s their Twitter timeline or Facebook wall, nobody wants to know that your sponges are 2% off the regular price. They want to know what exciting new products you have coming up that they will be interested in, they want to know when the next sale is. Your audience wants to see various casual posts from your account talking about recent events and maybe even a few jokes here and there if you feel confident enough in your social media team to include them. To sum up, yes it’s free in the way that you are not paying a different company to do it, but like anything in this world, it is not completely free. You still have to either spend time on it yourself, or the person you hire to handle it for you. Nothing related to marketing your business is easy. Nada.

Creating A Website

There are a plethora of ways in which you could utilize the internet to have the best chance for exposure to a broader audience, and without the proper know-how, you most probably won’t be able to do it yourself. What’s easier? Teaching yourself a programming language which will help you to build your own website from scratch, as well as learning to use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create appropriate assets which will make the site somewhat appealing? Or hiring one or two people who already have years of experience in the field who will be able to do it much more efficiently, and with much better results? Just a heads up, learning javascript, CSS, HTML and the Adobe suite proficiently enough to create your website in a timely manner is going to take a lot more time and money than you might imagine. The choice is usually clear on this matter, but some people think it’s cheaper to do it themselves than to get a company like Innovative Resource Group LCC to do it for them. Also, keep in mind that once a website is up that’s not the end of it. You have to maintain it, update it with new content, optimize it for new hardware and software as well as different platforms such as tablets and mobile phones, amongst other things. Yes, it is a lot of work, and yet, some people still wonder why graphic designers and people who make websites get paid as well as they do.

Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing

If there ever were one website which most people would classify as the homepage of the internet, it would most probably be a search engine, and no, it probably wouldn’t be AskJeeves.com anymore either. Google is currently the great internet resource, seemingly having a monopoly over searching, maps, video hosting, and some would even say email. Yes, alternatives do indeed exist, but compared to Google they aren’t as popular.

It is, therefore, no surprise that Google gets an insane amount of traffic on a daily basis, usually ending up with around 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year. Yes, those are absolutely astronomical figures, but with numbers like this backing you up it’s hard to go wrong advertising on Google. This is where the difference between SEO and SEM comes in when marketing your business. While search engine optimization focuses on using various techniques such as the right keywords to help your website show up higher in Google searches, search engine marketing puts you right at the top of the page, but for a price. Yes, one seems like a sure-fire deal, instantly taking you to the top of the ladder whenever certain keywords come up, but the truth is that we live in an age where many people ignore anything that might be an advertisement. This is why SEO usually gets a better reputation overall, as it organically allows your website to become more popular, and climb up the ranks. The general public is more likely to click on something which doesn’t say “Ad” in a small box right next to the URL which you are about to click, for the very same reasons why most ignore people handing out leaflets on the street corner. It generally seems somewhat intrusive, and even a bit obnoxious. That does not mean that your paid searches will not be effective, they most definitely will be, as there are a lot of relatively technically illiterate people who probably are not even aware that what they are clicking is a sponsored link. Is this something you should base your main strategy on? Maybe. Maybe not. However, if you feel like you need a bit of a boost in the exposure department, then this is one of the better opportunities you could explore.

Good luck and stay visible!