The most common frustration startup business owners bring up is where to begin marketing their business. There’s many channels you can pour money into and it’s not always obvious (without tracking and analysis) what the return is. This causes many business owners to become frozen in indecision or to begin throwing darts in the dark when it comes to distributing their marketing budget. Further, without knowledge of where to start, contacting a marketing agency seems pointless and/or scary.
The oddballs are here to help you identify where to begin marketing your business and how to allocate your marketing budget while you are still in the startup stage of your business.
Where to begin marketing your business? At the end.
Think about your customer’s journey when deciding where to begin marketing your business. The beginning is where they first find out about your business. The middle is when they become curious enough about your product to begin researching and thinking of purchasing. The end is where they convert and purchase.
We’re assuming you already have a business website. If not, getting one set up is your first step. If not, you can keep reading.
First, think about what the end of your process is: Wherever calls-to-action and conversion pages exist in your marketing. You want to make sure this step of the buying experience is as good as possible before you put marketing budget toward increasing traffic.
Therefore, the first steps to improving your digital marketing is improving your contact page, CTAs wherever they exist on your website, and any landing pages you have.
Then, you want to work on your service/product pages answering your value proposition and answering the top questions potential customers would have. After that, make sure your home page is a good, clear summary of what you have to provide and has easy-to-find and understand navigation.
From there, work on your Google Business Profile as this is what people will see when they search for your business’ name. Completely fill out the profile to the best of your ability.
OK, but what do I actually do?
For most businesses’ websites their call-to-actions exist in the form of buttons that send them to products or to contact forms. The text on these buttons matter. You can improve the click-through rates of these buttons by reducing the perceived cost of clicking the button or increasing the perceived benefit.
For example, if you’re selling a service, don’t simply put “contact us” on the buttons. Make it say something like, “Schedule a call with a ____ expert.” It takes the pressure off of scheduling the call (it costs nothing) and builds your credibility.
As for your contact page, this is something so many businesses overlook and that’s a major mistake. Make double sure you have all of your forms of contact (phone, email, address). Then, consider if you’re able to make your form shorter. If you’re asking for too much info, you might be scaring off some potential conversions. Don’t ask for anything you don’t need right off the bat. You can always get the rest during the sales process.
Then, consider if there’s anything else you can add to the page to build credibility. Add any awards, certifications, logos of other clients, testimonials, or whatever else you can think of to make them give them one last push.
Moving on to the product/service pages…
Make sure the headline is keyword-focused and the top of the page offers quick credibility. Within your text description, provide answers to the top questions you see on Google or routinely get from customers. Provide evidence to all your claims and add existing testimonials you have. Finish it off with a strong CTA.
Finally, your home page has to quickly communicate what business your in, what you do, and why someone would choose you over your competitors. The navigation should be descriptive enough that both website visitors and search engines know what the page contains. For example, a tire shop wouldn’t have a button that says “products.” It would say tires or there might be different buttons for vastly different tires like offroad tires and road tires.
After that, how do I market my business?
Once you’ve solidified the end of your customer’s journey, what’s next kind of depends on how long your business has been around. If you’re a startup, the next step is likely ads and content marketing. You’ll want to start building brand awareness and improving search rankings.
If you’re looking into where to begin marketing your business, we’re guessing you may not have a lot of experience in marketing or understand enough to complete the tasks laid out in this article. But that’s OK! That’s why 2oddballs Creative was established. We take great pride in helping startups get off the ground and accomplish the dreams of their founders.
Fill out the form on this page, our contact page, or give us a call at 417-986-6332 for a non-decision-making call so we can have a friendly chat about where you’re at and where you want to be.
