Ready to Market Your New Business?
Brag About Your Baby
If you have a business, or have even thought about opening a business, you should already be marketing it. From the time you have the idea, "I'm going to open a bagel shop" or "I am going to sell domains online," you better be marketing. Even if marketing means just telling your closest friends. Word of mouth and having friends will do miracles for you. Talk about your business from the moment you conceive of it. Treat it like your baby! You are proud and excited and want to tell the world, right? YES! Believe me, the first year of your business will feel like having a newborn, so it should be handled as such. Pride, bragging, and lots of TLC.
SEO is the Way To Go
So, you have told everyone you know about the new business baby, now you have to tell the world. A great web site is still the most cost effective marketing you will ever have for your business. Indeed, your business may well be a web based business, so all the more important to design it right from the start.
This part of your marketing is so important, I have dedicated a whole page to it. So please see that page on this site.
Read the SEO Tips page, before you hire a web designer. Ask them how they create your site so that it optimized for web search. If they do not say most of the things I have listed, then PLEASE hire someone else. Lots of people learn Dreamweaver, or Joomla, or Wordpress and become a "web designer." They make your site look great, but who cares if no one can ever find it.
Think Constant Contact
Constant Contact (http://www.constantcontact.com/) is actually the name of the email marketing service I use. I love it, and the name says everything. If you want to effectively market your business you need to communicate constantly. Tell people you are here, and here's what's new! See my blog post titled Tips From the Client Attraction Guru.
You should be marketing your services on several channels. Web, businesses cards, print ads (be careful here...read more below), posters, signs, and of course, word of mouth.
