If they can’t find you they can’t buy you

Seems kind of obvious, but we all make this mistake now and again.

Marketing and sales often feels distasteful, especially for those with a technical or professional background.

However, without marketing and sales your business will soon cease to exist.

The starting place for any business is to go to people you already know and also word of mouth. You need sales coming in the door as soon as you can.

For a bricks and mortar presence or shop you need to be near or at street front with prominent signage. If foot traffic is important take a shop where there is a lot of street traffic, not down some side street just because it is cheaper.

If you just need an office space, then be where most of your customers are.

Make your website great, and make it easy for your customers to buy from you. Make the contact details prominent. Also, think about what it is you want them to do – is it email you for a follow up, register for a quote, call you, or what? Whatever it is you want them to do, make it easy for them to do it.

Make friends with a journalist or two and agree to interviews for their articles. This is a win-win situation – you get quoted in the paper and they get to fill in the inch columns they need to for their job.

Trade magazines are good for a lot of businesses.

Conferences are pretty good too. You can spruik the stand areas for a lot less than paying for a stand yourself. Also, go to a conference of potential customers and go and introduce yourself.

TV ads are expensive and for most startups are a good way to lose a lot of money for almost zero impact.

Google ads or similar will work if you are the kind of business people will search for.

Put stickers/decals on your car so when people are driving they see the message.

A final point to remember is that you should sell the product, then the brand. Again this seems obvious but many advisors put branding ahead of the product, but customers are buying the product not the brand. Brand building is actually the process of supplying customers with the product they want and growing the customer base.

Have fun, get creative, but most of all, let people know you exist.