19 Feb Marketing tips for new businesses
Congratulations! You’ve taken the plunge to leave behind your old job and buy a business of your own. You’re now the boss, and of your many new concerns, you have to figure out how to maximize marketing, or at least locate a marketing specialist. How much focus the previous owner put on marketing, will determine how much time and money you’ll need to spend on your new marketing plan. If the previous owners didn’t put much time and effort into digital marketing, you may have to account for a few extra marketing projects ahead.
As a mergers and acquisitions group that helps people find the right business for their lifestyle, we can give you first-hand knowledge about the marketing strategies the business you purchased previously had in place. Your first step is to understand what is already being done in their marketing department. Perhaps some newspaper advertising is running, or there is already a relationship with a radio or tv sales rep. This will at least save you the headache of having to start from scratch with ads, if you choose to run those. Beyond those specific marketing strategies lies digital marketing.
First of all, if you know you’re too busy to take on the digital marketing of your business, we suggest you hire someone. There are many freelancers out there with plenty of reviews and recommendations, who can help you with your digital marketing needs. Talk to other business owners and see if they are currently using anyone or have someone that they can recommend.
Next, sit down with your potential new hire and go through all of your social media pages. If you know don’t know what they are and how to access them then you may have to, start by Googling your business to see what pops up. Is there a Google business page? What about a website? A Facebook page? Chances are you’ll already know some of this, but do it anyway just to make sure. Make a list of what needs to be updated, cancelled, etc.
After completing these tasks, look at the reviews left on these pages. If there are some recent ones with no responses, respond to those with an appropriate comment, depending on if the review was good or bad. If it was a bad review, make sure to let the customer know that the business is now under new management.
It can additionally be helpful to send out a press release and post your “now under new ownership” message to your social media accounts and website. Have your new hire do this and also update the “About Us” section of your website and your Facebook “Our Story”section as well.
Also, plan out your calendar year from a marketing perspective. This planning doesn’t have to be extensive, but make a list of holidays, seasons, and those random “national” days (ie: National Black Cat day) that may pertain to your business. For example, if you’ve purchased an auto service shop, you may want to make note of AC service for summer, winter tire installation for late fall, etc. Knowing these things in advance can help you plan when to put specific products on sale as well. In addition, if you implement calendar related tasks, this will keep you from scrambling at the last minute such as put together a Valentine’s Day menu for your new restaurant weeks before the holiday actually occurs.
Finally, talk with your new digital marketing person about consistency such as having the same filter on your Instagram photos, the same font and colors on images that are created for social media. The images and colors on your social media outlets should be consistent with your logo and website colors. Perhaps your company is a fun themed restaurant, so you would want to use language that fits that specific atmosphere. On the flip side, if you’re clientele is a highly educated group, your tone in advertising should reflect that target population.
Getting started with providing digital marketing for your new business doesn’t have to be overly complicated. You can do all of these things yourself, without the help of a digital marketing expert. However, we think you’ll save yourself time and energy if you have someone else who can take care of the social media and website management aspects, while you start ramping up your new business.