Marketing – a start up guide

by Startacus Admin

Marketing can seem to be very overwhelming at first glance, there is so much to do, where do you start? Creative thinker, Arts Manager & Marketing Consultant Jen Farrant outlines her tips for beginners...

"If you are an entrepreneur then you may be the person who is doing everything at the moment, including marketing.

Well I would argue that the first place to start would be to take a big step back, take a breather and have a think. Marketing doesn't have to be complicated and I would say this is especially true for anyone starting out.

If you go out all guns blazing with a big multi-tier campaign across lots of social media platforms, maybe with some advertising, a weekly newsletter and other things which all sound amazing then you will very quickly burn out and then end up not doing anything, which will do more damage than starting off slow and building up.

I really believe the old fashioned idea that a person requires seven ‘touches’ before they buy – this might be seeing a couple of Facebook posts, a Tweet, someone RT your Tweet, Linked In, a newsletter, an advert, hearing about you from someone else, reading a blog post etc etc. These seven touches are so much easier to gain these days!

I also think that there are three main types of marketing – general keeping of the brand (your website, a newsletter, social media), marketing to customers and marketing to potential customers. Each of these requires a different approach and techniques.

I am going to cover each of these in an article coming up soon. But for now here are some things to think about. Presumably if you have already launched, or are about to launch your company you have done your research and really understand your customer and your business.

You/your product

• What is so unique about your offering?
• Why should someone care about you/your product?
• Why should they buy from you and not X?

Your customer

• Where do they go (online and in the real world)?
• What do they read/watch/listen?
• Who do they talk to?
• Is your target market a single homogenous group?
• Or are there many groups?
• What defines each group?

Once you have all of these answers then we can get going with building your marketing."

About Jen Farrant

Jen Farrant gets things done and makes things happen for companies and individuals. From coaching through to marketing campaigns, projects through to strategic thinking, Jen's wide experience of the arts, education and the business world, combined with her straight talking and no-nonsense approach to things can help you to achieve what you need to. Also feel free to follow on Twitter @JenFarrant

Oh and if you need some affordable but tailored publicity for your startup, the Startacus Startup publicity programme might be for you.

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Published on: 13th February 2013