The 3 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Get Right in Your First Year of Business

When you’re starting a business, chances are every aspect of your budget is lean. From office expenses to marketing, you want to ensure you get the greatest return on investment for every dollar you spend. Even well-established small businesses can struggle to identify the marketing strategies that will give them the most bang for their buck. However, during your first year of business, three marketing strategies should take priority.

Establishing your brand, website, and email list are fundamental requirements. If you can do all three well, you’ll be laying a solid foundation on which you can base other marketing tactics in the future. It’s essential to get these three strategies right in the first 12 months of your business.

Building your brand identity

What is brand identity and why is it important to your startup? Everything customers or prospects know — or think they know — about your business adds up to your brand identity. It’s a national coffee-chain writing your name on the paper cup in which they deliver your order. It’s a fast-food chain logo that’s so iconic even toddlers know what it stands for. It’s a signature color that’s tied to a cause that it appears everywhere during that cause’s national month, from construction trucks to football players’ footwear.

In today’s digital world, where consumers can communicate with and about a brand in the blink of an eye, establishing a recognizable, shareable identity is vital. You probably don’t need research to convince you that brand awareness can affect buying behaviors (although there’s plenty of it out there). You experience the power of brand identity in your own life when you choose a particular type of car, eat at a well-known restaurant chain or buy a certain brand of clothing.

Of course, many complex nuances go into a business’ brand identity, but for a small business, branding begins with a good logo. An eye-catching, memorable logo delivers many branding benefits, including:

• Establishes and communicates your corporate identity.
• Creates a lasting association between the image and your products/services. A strong logo creates an association with something greater. Consider Nike, Coca-Cola, and Apple. These brands all have logos that are immediately recognizable and consumers seeking those logos automatically think of athletic shoes, soft drinks, and technology.
• Differentiates your brand from competitors. Auto manufacturers have long used their logos to differentiate their products, even though models from different makers may have very similar features and performance.
• Keeps your brand visible even through business downturns. A good logo will remain recognizable to consumers even during business downturns. For example, when Apple went through a rough patch in the 1990s, its logo was still widely recognizable throughout the world.
• Evokes a specific emotional response in consumers. Color and shapes within a logo can inspire emotion in viewers, and good logo designers know how to manipulate the graphics of the design to achieve a specific response. Think of the Amazon logo with its upward-pointing arrow that resembles a smile. Does it make you want to smile, too? Or consider the number of fast-food brands that incorporate red into their logos; the color is thought to stimulate hunger.
• Affords merchandising opportunities to further build your brand. Nike, Apple, Reebok and a host of other iconic brands offer a line of merchandise with their logos on it. While your business may not yet be ready to make money off logo merchandise, giving away simple items like T-shirts and pens that bear your logo is the best kind of advertising.

• • • Creating an effective, exciting website

  

• • Multiple studies show that consumers use online information to make decisions about purchases. Consider these statistics:
    • 81 percent of consumers look for information online before going to a store to shop, according to a study by GE Capital Retail Bank.
    • Nearly a third of business-to-business buyers research at least 90 percent of their purchases online before buying, according to research by Acuity Group.
    • 42 percent of people shopping in stores use their smartphones to conduct research while they’re shopping, according to a study by Google.
    More consumers than ever are finding businesses, products and services through the Web. A good website is essential to any business’ success, and that’s especially true for startups. A quality website provides consumers with information about your company, products and services, hours of operation, location, special offers and programs, and more. It can also be a portal to drive sales. Your website should be the one-stop-spot where customers can learn everything they could possibly want to know about your business.
    It’s vital to have your website designed by a professional who will understand how to achieve critical goals, including:
    • Visually appealing format
    • Easy for consumers to navigate
    • Responsive for users accessing the site through mobile devices
    • Optimized for search engines
    • Aligned with your brand identity
    • Functions smoothly without technical errors

    Establishing a vibrant email list

    

    For startups on a tight budget, email marketing is an effective and relatively low-cost way to market to targeted groups. A majority of businesses now use email marketing, and a majority of consumers say they have bought something because of an email marketing message. A good email marketing campaign will result in increased brand awareness and sales, and it can also help inform your future marketing decisions if you use performance data such as open and click-through rates to track consumer response.
    Effective email marketing starts with a quality email list, and there are many ways for you to build your list. You can capture emails through your website by asking for email addresses when customers make purchases through your Web portal, or through social media. You can also request email information when customers make in-store purchases, or pay their bill via your website.
    As you grow your list, it’s also important to segment it to target relevant products and services to specific groups. When a customer provides his or her email for your list, implement automated welcome and follow-up emails to inform new customers about special offers, new products or services, company happenings and more.
    The best email marketing campaigns meet certain benchmarks, including:
    • Mobile responsive design – More consumers are accessing the Internet through smartphones and tablets. It’s imperative they be able to open, easily view and respond to your email no matter what device they use to open it.
    • Clean, professional design – Emails that are visually overwhelming (or underwhelming) will turn off users at worst and fail to communicate key information at best.
    • Shareability – If your email is really great, users should want to share it with others. Emails that are easily shareable expand their reach and open opportunities to connect with new customers.
    • Automated follow-up – Automating your follow-up emails can help boost open and click rates by 30 to 40 percent.
    During your business’ first year of operation, your marketing budget needs to be as effective as possible. Focusing your spending and attention on these three key areas will help ensure your marketing money is well spent, and that your efforts drive sales and build your brand identity.

    
    

    
    

     

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