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8 Smart Marketing Ideas to Make Your Startup Known

Some of these marketing ideas worked for us. They worked so well that they resulted in you reading this blog post. What do we know about smart marketing ideas?

We know that the only smart marketing ideas are ones that have a lasting impact. Even simple ideas such as paying somebody to share links to your page on Instagram will help get your newest pages crawled by Google and ergo will benefit your business in the long run. Here are a few smart marketing ideas every startup should try.

1- Pay for Social Media Recognition

If you were to grade creative marketing ideas out of ten, then this idea would score very poorly. Most people do not think of paying for social media recognition when they begin their startup. Yet, despite it not being creative, it is smart, and here is why.

Setting up and maintaining a social media profile on any platform is more time consuming and fruitless than most people assume. Most people are misled by their personal success on social media, but starting new profiles, maintaining them, and keeping people interested takes a lot of thankless hours. Paying people who already maintain their social media accounts regularly will help drive those first trickles of traffic to your website and your new social media profiles.

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Getting your content and your links shared is also one of the fastest ways to get Google and Bing to recognize your web pages. In the good old days, you could share your newest pages on Google+ and they would appear on the search engine results the next day. These days you need to have your links shared two or three times between maintained social media accounts before Google crawls your pages.

2- Local Marketing

Most startups are so eager to get their ads online and are so eager to build a social media following that they forget people are usually only online for as many as 3 hours per day. This is because the time spent on the internet has largely replaced the time people used to spend watching their TV.

Not only are advertisers spending $40 billion more on internet advertising than they are on TV advertising, but internet advertising is also projected to exceed half of global ad spend in 2021. Yet, people spend most of their time away from the internet. Where else are people looking besides on their phones and desktop devices?

With the clever use of promotional print services, you can engage your target audience when they are walking through the mall, on a bus, or even when they are sitting in a public lavatory. Advertising in public lavatories may seem like one of the more out-there promotional ideas, but women will sit in stalls with their phones in hand, and all it takes is a small poster and a QR code to give them something to look at.

3- Ask Your Customers for Marketing Ideas

We all know that asking customers where they heard about you is a good idea, but you can take it a step further. People seem to enjoy polls and quizzes on social media, so why not prod your target audience for a few marketing ideas.

You will be surprised just how many fantastic ideas will be produced. For example, your users will tell you about YouTube video bloggers who would be ideal ambassadors for your brand. They will tell you about niche websites that you would have never found on Google because of their esoteric nature. Do not underestimate the power of other people’s knowledge and ideas.

4- Direct Mail

When it comes to marketing ideas for small business, there is still a lot to be said for a direct mail campaign. Local businesses can still benefit from direct mail, especially if they are startups. We all hate junk mail, but the fact is that we have to look at it in order to throw it away. You can use those few seconds to sell to a potential customer.

In addition, the announcement of a new business opening doesn’t often feel like junk mail. It feels more like an announcement, and if you can snag some cheap printing and cheap delivery services, your name will spread easier than warm marmalade on crusty bread.

5- Ask for Help

Sounds like weak advice, right? But, as cheap advertising ideas go, this is a doozy. You will be surprised how many people will help you if you simply tell them you need help. Plus, as a startup, you are in an ideal position when it comes to credibility. You can tell people that you are struggling to “Get the word out” or how you need help “Getting the message out there.”

As you can tell from the phrasing, you shouldn’t make out that you are struggling. Especially avoid any language that suggests you are struggling for money because they will assume that asking for help is the groundwork for online money begging. Simply explain your situation. You will be surprised how many people will link to your website, will talk about your business, and will even share details of your startups in WhatsApp groups.

6- Business Cards with QR Codes

If you are serious about getting your startup known, then its name needs to be the second thing you say to everybody you meet. If you are not handing out business cards with QR codes on them, then you should be talking to people and having them scan your business card as you hold it so they can save your website.

If you are doing a little mall business marketing, then create simple, cheap business cards with your latest discount and a QR code. Hand them out with every purchase or put them in the bags as you bag up their purchases.

7- Blanket Social Media Saturation Is Important

Firstly, stop relying on Facebook. Stop investing all your time and resources into Facebook. The Facebook social media network is mostly made up of very young people. As they grow into adults, they are starting to move away from Facebook and concentrate on other social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and TikTok.

When you issue messages, issue them to all the social media networks (except maybe LinkedIn). Issue the same message to different networks, but do not duplicate on the same network. For example, if you have six Twitter accounts and you post the same message on each, they will be ranked down and/or ignored.

You can try social media posting programs such as Buffer or Hootsuite if you wish to save time when posting, but they are often too expensive for smaller startups.

8- What Are Your Competitors Doing?

If you want marketing ideas, then find out what your competitors are doing. If they have managed to stay in business, then they must have learned a few things. What they are doing may seem wasteful, but you should test it for yourself to see if it makes an impact.

There is nothing with a little trial and error testing so long as you do not over-invest, (which is common with eager new startups). Tempered and measurable testing will enable you to hone your marketing process so that it generates a good ROI.

Conclusion – A Ready Mix of New and Old Ideas

As you can see by the marketing ideas listed in this article, it is not enough to use online marketing exclusively. As a new startup, your voice will not be heard over the internet until you have a following and a fair amount of online weight to throw around. That is why your strategy should be a mix of modern online marketing and traditional offline marketing.

The ideas in this article have probably inspired you and offered a few things to think about in the coming months.

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