So you’re starting up your business! Congratulations. While you must be thrilled at what lies ahead for your business, you also are probably a little nervous. I know that there is a lot to think about, but don’t forget the most important part of owning a business: marketing and promotion. While this might not be on the top of your list, you need to make promoting your business a priority. The best thing you can do to promote your business is by creating engagement as well as trust. Here are five advanced methods to promote your new startup.
1. Create A Website That Sparks Conversation
The most successful businesses have websites that are filled with landing pages. Don’t just create one landing page for your website, create many. Each landing page is a source to create new conversions and leads, so create as many as your site allows you to without looking spammy, as the team at Marketing Masterminds explains. Here are more reasons to create (many) landing pages on your business’s website:
- Landing pages help organize a website.
- Landing pages spark conversation.
- Landing pages create an increase in leads.
- Landing pages allow more variety in your website which will lead to more conversions. This can also lead to longer time on site, which helps SEO in several ways.
Overall, creating more landing pages will lead to more conversions as well as a higher rank in Google.
2. Create Valuable Content With An Authoritative Voice
The only reason anyone goes on Google is to search for something. Maybe they want a recipe, or perhaps a personal chef. If your business has a website (which it should), you need a blog that publishes regular content that is valuable to its readers. It needs to have some relativity to your business and needs to have an authoritative voice. If your blog posts are written by experts who have an authoritative voice and lots of valuable insights to share that are backed by statistics, your content will surely rank higher on Google. Not only will you have valuable content, but your trust score will also go up as people trust experts in their field to provide accurate information. 
When reading an informative piece of content, you can always tell if the writer has confidence in their writing or not. You can take an educated guess on if they actually know what they are writing about and if they took their time writing the article for their readers. Look at it this way: When you see a piece of content that is generic, short, and quickly thrown together are you going to waste your time and finish reading it? Probably not. When you have generic content, website visitors will leave your site quickly, which means that bounce rate will skyrocket and your website won’t rank well. Make sure all of your content is valuable and well-written. One more tip when creating content: It’s incredibly important to select the right keywords! Certain keywords are very hard to rank for, especially when you are a startup business just making your way into the online world. Find keywords that are easier to rank for but still relevant to your business.
3. Always Question Your Promotional Ideas
The best marketers go against the grain and come up with fresh, new ideas. Before doing what everyone else does, make sure that your idea right for your business. Don’t be afraid to take (small) risks and be different from everyone else. For Example: If every commercial during the Super Bowl was the same, would people look forward to the Super Bowl commercials? Probably not. Get (a little) risky and you have a bigger chance of getting noticed. Come up with new, fresh ideas to get people to come to your website and stay on there.
4. Develop Genuine Relationships With your Customers and Potential Clients
Trust score, personal touch, and user reviews will still be important in 2019. In fact, being personable will be more important than ever in the business world as people are having a harder time trusting businesses, especially when purchasing online. If potential customers have “trust issues” when they visit your website, or if you aren’t getting personal enough with your current customers, your business could tank fast. To measure your website’s “trust flow”, you can use Monitor Link’s Free Backlink Checker tool Some ways to earn a higher trust score:
- Gain backlinks from websites with a high trust score.
- Make yourself available to your customers by phone, email and social media. Add a chat feature if you can to your website.
- Don’t hesitate to make customer service your #1 priority. Do not use chatbots to answer questions.
- Ask your customers for reviews, testimonials, and suggestions.
- Make sure your emails are professional (This also means that you could send the emails with a professional email client for Windows or Linux).
- Most importantly, be yourself.
5. Choose The Right Social Media Networks and Define When The Best Time To Post Is
Social media is important and will always be important. However, social media trends are constantly changing. This section will help you choose the right social media platforms and advise you on how to use social media to your business’s advantage. Depending on your business, here are the (popular) social networking sites that you should consider marketing your brand on:
- Youtube
Other Sites You Should Consider Branding On:
- Google+
- Google My Business
- TripAdvisor
- SnapChat
- Facebook Messenger
- Yelp
Once you choose which of these websites you would like to create a business page/listing on, the next step is to start creating excellent content to gain new followers. Most of these websites also offer ads for your business to purchase to help build a social media following. Here are some more ideas to build/maintain great social media profiles:
- Offer a free trial/service/small product in an ad.
- Post at the best time of the day for that social media site. You can find the best times to post on social media listed by website on Hubspot.
- Use the correct hashtags to gain followers. You can even use one’s for various days of the week such as #ThursdayThoughts.
- Pick a branded website hashtag.
- Hold a contest to get brand awareness. Make sure they have to participate somehow much as follow your page in order to be entered in.
- Reach out to influencers and like and share their content often. The more you do this, the more likely that eventually, they will return the favor.
- Get a persona! Share pictures of your office, even your pet! The more personal you get, the more people will trust you and “like” your business.
- Link to your social media accounts everywhere such as your website and newsletters.
- Connect with similar businesses and cross-promote each other’s content and products.
- Use humor and share fun games! Ask riddles, share jokes and create fun content like books and crossword puzzles.
Bonus Tip: Don’t Leave any Rock Unturned
No businesses can survive without customers. You probably have all sorts of processes in place to ensure a customer emails are all address in a timely manure but missed phone calls typically don’t have any procedures in place. The Bottom Line: Startups cannot afford to miss any customer. Cross-checking who called from an unknown number is a daily routine for most startup owners.
Summary
Now I want to turn it over to you: Which of these steps from today’s guide are you going to experiment with first? Are you going to develop a relationship with your customer or connect with fellow business owners on social media? Leave a comment below and let us know if you have any advanced startup tips you want to share!
