Marketing Your Business Idea

The 101 Avenues to Marketing (well, it feels like that many)

There are so many ways to market your thing and doing this right can mean the difference between a successful launch and launching to crickets.

This is day 5 of your Rapid Startup on the 7 Day Startup. So much here to go through, so we will dive into each one in specific upcoming posts. Let us know in the comments which one you want to see first.

Content Marketing

If you’re searching for something, then other people probably are as well. Scratching your own itch may not work for business ideas, but it can work for developing a marketing plan. Find a gap in what you are searching for and produce detailed blog posts devoted to those topics.

• Topic ideas – the simplest way to find topic ideas? Go to Google, right now, and start typing something in your area of interest- what does the autocomplete bring up? Boom. Topic ideas
• In-depth content based around customer problems that your solution solves
• Make actionable and useful content that will help your audience take action or achieve something
• Make sure it’s interesting to the audience. This can be as simple as including something personal about yourself or even sharing your journey. People want to relate, so let them
• While doing this, make sure to:
  • Capture e-mails
  • Focus on valuable content, don’t worry about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) at this point

Try different mediums

The platform or format of the content you create can (and should) vary based on your target market and whatever makes sense for the content itself, for example:

• blog post – typically longer form, the more actionable, the more chance or readers coming back
• infographic – great for conveying stats or numbers, graphs, or timelines
• video – creates personal connection with your audience
• podcasts – similar to video, for those who are on the go and can’t “watch” you, they still get personable connection through listening to your voice
• ebooks – tangible and have perceived value. If you have ever sat through (or better created) an educational or walkthrough powerpoint deck, chances are that can be tweaked into an ebook in next to no time
• whitepapers – this one suits things like B2B products and consulting

One important thing to stress is that you must create LOTS of content. Also, consider doing guest posts and interviews on other people’s blogs, and start Sending Emails. Try to build a list before launch day.

Building a List

• Add people you already know early on
• Have a landing page
• Send out high quality relevant information
• Give away something relevant and valuable to get people on the list
  • software
  • plugins
  • templates
  • ebooks
  • training courses
  • Create good blog posts and create content relevant to the post that you can give away
  • Even if it’s something kind of trivial (like a simple checklist or template) having something for the reader to download adds to the perceived value
  • A lot of people download things just to see what it is, and in those cases you’ll probably leave a longer lasting impression in their mind (and you get their email address too!)
  • Keep your emails personal and encourage people to reply
• Get feedback

Other things to try:

• Podcasting
• Forums and Online Groups
  • Join a forum, be an active member, build trust
  • Consider joining a paid group in your niche
• Guest blogging is amazing for building traffic using someone else’s audience
• Webinars
  • John Lee Dumas’ strategy
    • Built up a large audience
    • Gave away an eBook as a freebie, got your e-mail, then told you about a free webinar
    • Webinars were super helpful
    • For those who are interested in more info, he has a special deal for membership in the community
• Presenting at local, in-person events
• Doing free work
• Media Coverage
  • Pull lists of relevant journalists to contact
  • See who covered other entrepreneurs
  • Pay attention to parts of your own business that could be newsworthy; look for stories
  • Drop everything to be featured in the media
  • Talk about yourselves all the time, be transparent
  • Send your own best articles to other sites

Action: Put together a rough plan for the first week or two of launch.

If you want more specific notes or tips on any of the above outreach or marketing techniques, leave a comment below or send us a note using the contact us page.