Starting a new business is exciting and it is also a very demanding venture. It consumes a lot of time and resources and not many entrepreneurs are aware of this. Once you decide to open for business to the public, you are probably not going to have an army of buyers waiting to buy your products. Research has shown us that the gross part of the market waits to try a product for themselves until some other people have already done it and they can obtain some feedback about the quality of the products.
What you should expect and plan for is some months of low traffic and red figures. This won’t last forever, but you should have planned for it and have enough money to keep on going until the situation improves. This is where marketing is needed the most. Having a marketing plan will give you the boost each month to get close to an even month, where your costs will be the same as your profit – and from there you can keep on growing.
At Twelve12 we always recommend that you seek the advice of an expert, but sometimes the money is low and it’s almost impossible to outsource to the services of marketing companies in Orange County. What you can do in the meantime is to plan some more and find out ways to make it happen without the intervention of a third party at the beginning and until you have enough money to outsource the service – which is ultimately the ideal option.
If you are already open for business, I am going to assume that you did your homework and by now you know the needs and desires of your customers: you know their behavior, their occupation, where they go or what they do when they have free time, the type of things they like, their search behavior online, if they use social media or any other digital media, or any other particular channel you can use to establish a contact with them. Knowing all this information is vital, and once you have it, you can proceed to communicate with your client. Local clients must know that you exist, so find a way to get in touch with them and get busy. Social media will help you expand your client database, so look and plan for appealing offers and information so they stay motivated to come back to your online content.
Your customers will help you spread the word if you help them to, so plan some kind of promotion where they can win something if they manage to bring the message to others and create sales for you. Don’t forget that you live within a community; get engaged with organizations like the little league, sports teams, local activities that include your target audience. If you help your community, your community will help you back.
These are just a few things that you can do to start up while you find yourself in a better financial position to outsource to one of the marketing companies in Orange County. No matter what you decide, give us a call today, at Twelve12 and we’ll be glad to help you out and explain all the options that we have available for you. And the cost? You might be in for a nice surprise…