Ways to Entice Customers to Your Startup Even if Nobody Knows You Exist

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Starting our own business is a great feat on its own, but merely getting it up and running doesn’t mean that other people know it exists. A very common mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs fall into is thinking that they’ll get customers the moment they hang up the “open” sign. This is rarely the case in real life, but that doesn’t mean you should be discouraged just yet.

While having a strong business development strategy is key to building a strong network of customers, stakeholders, and relationships, there’s a very easy way to get your business into the light from the comfort of your office. The first stepping stone is letting all of your potential customers be aware of your existence. In other words, it’s all about how you use online marketing to your advantage.

In this article, we will explore four ways you can kick-start your business right away.

 

Make good use of SEO tools

Search engine optimization (SEO) tools are a gold mine for any online or offline business. By understanding how potential customers use search engines to look for their inquiries, you can look up their exact needs and learn how to present your products or services right in front of them. Let’s say you’ve just written a book and you want to increase its sales, say, on Amazon. All you need to do is use a book marketing software to know the most researched Kindle keywords, your soon-to-be customers search for. Now that you know what they’re looking for, you can target them using those exact keywords in your product description, your ads, and your keywords—basically everywhere.

Deliver value

Understanding how SEO works will help you with your online presence on all of your platforms. Whether it’s a product on Amazon, a website, a blog, or even social media channels, you’ll be able to place your business right in front of your customers. But merely placing yourself out there isn’t enough. If someone who’s looking for certain information clicks on your link and they don’t find what they’re looking for, that’s it for your online presence. You need to give them value, something that makes them believe they need your business.

Use paid advertising with a strategy

Getting started with SEO tools is a great way to reach those who are searching for you (without really knowing yet that you exist). However, there’s a whole ocean of potential customers out there who aren’t really looking. This is when paid advertising offers you the chance to reach those you won’t be able to reach organically. Depending on the platform you use, you’ll find different paid advertising methods. You can advertise your website on Google using PPC, meanwhile, you can use Facebook or Instagram advertising managers to specifically target segments of your own customization. You can even target customers using the same keyword research you’ve done for SEO purposes using Google AdWords, without having to worry about whether or not your website’s SEO ranks high enough to turn up on the first page of results.

Know your current and potential customers

Lastly, here’s the most important thing you need to keep in mind before targeting your customers. You won’t be able to get into their hearts and minds if you don’t know them. Sure, at first, you’ll need to make a lot of guesses as to the interests and behaviors of the segment you’re targeting. However, over time, you’ll start having real contact with them. Once this contact is established, you’ll need to study your current customers, and understand what drives them to or away from your business. Developing user personas will help you greatly in determining the tone of your identity. It will also give you a solid base to start from when you decide to expand your audience to find new customer segments.

Launching our business rarely means being in contact with the customers we’re targeting. There’s a lot of business development strategies that need to be applied before we can fully establish our startups, but luckily for us, we can use online marketing tools to kick-start our online presence. Every marketing guru knows the role that SEO plays in positioning our online personas in the right place for the right customers, but merely using the correct keywords isn’t enough. Our potential customers need some sort of value to believe in what we offer them. Paid advertising strategies are a great way to expand our reach, but it all comes down to tailoring our tone to fit the right target audience.