Deciding to strike out on your own as an entrepreneur can be an insanely rewarding and ultimately profitable experience. It is however much more difficult and requires a lot more personal drive and motivation than more conventional lines of work.
All entrepreneurs are selling something, whether it be directly or indirectly. You could be selling a physical product, an idea, an app, or even yourself as a consultant or a coach. Since you’re selling, you’re also going to do some marketing. At its most simple, marketing is publicly displaying what you have to offer in a way that hopefully compels people to investigate more. Thanks to the internet marketing has taken on many different shapes and forms and there’s thousands if not millions of ways to get some attention focused on you.
Here’s just a few tips to get yourself started:
Subtlety Is NOT Key
While marketing yourself in a clever or abstract fashion can be effective, your marketing strategies should never be vague. Someone should be able to figure out what you offer and why it is helpful as quickly as possible, preferably instantly. Don’t expect your customers to be able to fill in the blanks themselves and leave any cheekiness out of your marketing. Clarity is what you need to be shooting for. Prospective customers shouldn’t be confused, as nobody enjoys a confusing product.
Pick Your Platform Carefully
Most entrepreneurs don’t advertise the old way of radio ads or newspaper spots anymore, but instead choose to advertise on a social media platform like Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit. When launching a TV channel, Maxine Mawhinney from Celebro says that it’s helpful to use a professional media service to help produce programming. The same applies to launching a social media account, it is so complex that influencers who know the game sometimes must be called in to help. Different types of people go on each individual platform and each platform is used differently. For instance, on Twitter you have a limit of 280 characters per tweet, meaning that you either need to drum up enough interest to get them to check out your profile & website in 280 characters or completely sell your product. On Facebook, people tend to quickly scroll through their feed so it is important that your copy stand out in both title and visuals. Depending on how you’d like to advertise, pick a platform that’ll play to its strengths.
Don’t Overdo It
You’re going to be new for some time and extremely eager to get people buying your product. You need to manage your expectations and giddiness accordingly and not go gung-ho with marketing. This means both not marketing too aggressively as well as not having too much marketing material in a single place. People don’t enjoy having ideas or products forcibly shoved down their throats, people like to feel like they’ve made the choice to buy your product themselves and not because of flashy advertising. If your marketing is too lengthy, people will disengage as they lose interest trying to figure out what the point of it all is.
A good product won’t go anywhere without good marketing. People need to be convinced, that’s just the straight dope of the situation. If you keep things concise and know your target demographic inside and out, you’ll have a lot more success than people who don’t do their due diligence.