How to promote a new business
Promotion Strategies - How to Promote a New Business
If you are about to open an e-commerce and you are thinking about applying promotional strategies to make money with your online business , surely what scares you the most is having to invest a considerable amount to achieve your goals.
Maybe that's why you're hesitant to get started, as you only have the capital to set up your online store, and you don't know how to promote a new business when you don't have a large marketing budget.
So pay attention to this post, because we are going to give you a lot of advice, ideas and promotional strategies to generate the first sales for your business .
What are promotion strategies?
Business promotion strategies are those actions aimed at achieving an increase in sales of your online store .
To achieve this, it is necessary to implement a series of communication messages that serve to make potential customers aware of your e-commerce and feel the impulse to buy from it.
One of the most effective ways to promote your business is through advertising.
But here we are only going to focus on promotion strategies that are free. So let's see how to promote a business with free actions.
On the other hand, we want you to be aware of the importance of promotional strategies in marketing, since they are the only ones capable of generating recurring sales. This is essential for your e-commerce to survive over time.
That is why promoting your business is part of the 4 Ps that are part of any company's marketing mix .
By promoting, you can attract the attention of potential customers so that they get to know you. And once they get to know you, you can generate interest in your products that will ultimately lead to more orders.
8 types of promotion strategies
You're probably wondering: " How can I promote my business online for free?"
Well now we are going to answer this question by offering you what we consider to be the 8 best business promotion strategies without investing hardly any money .
Let's get to it!
1. Promote your business with videos on TikTok
We believe that by 2022 everyone already knows that TikTok is the most successful and popular social network of recent times.
What started out as a network for teenagers – who recorded videos dancing to popular songs – spread to other types of users following the lockdown in 2020. With everyone stuck at home, many discovered the potential of this platform. And they decided to use it to their advantage.
But don't worry: you don't have to go out dancing to promote your business. Just record a video of your products or use images of some customers who have already bought your products and are using them.
You're sure to get a lot of new people to know you and start buying your products.
2. Use Instagram direct messages
Another promotional strategy that works very well is to contact ordinary people who might be interested in your products .
To do this, the first thing you should do is study which users are the most active within your niche market on Instagram, to send them a message with a text similar to this:
Hi!!! I hope everything is going well for you. I love your profile and I see that you post a lot about fashion.
I recently launched my online party clothing store and I would like to know your opinion on the clothes I sell.
You will find that this technique gives very good results, as long as you are not annoying and intrusive. If you become a nuisance, you will most likely be blocked.
So use this marketing promotion strategy with moderation and caution.
3. Maximize the attraction potential of your Facebook page
We already know that maintaining an organic promotion strategy on Facebook is one of the most demanding tasks and one that provides the least results.
But if you don't have money to invest in Facebook Ads , you'll have no choice but to spend a few minutes a day working on your corporate Facebook page.
Therefore, the sales promotion strategy we propose is to create a Facebook page for your online store and ask your friends and family to like your page.
From there, when the people closest to you start clicking on your page, Facebook will suggest it as of interest to the contacts of each new follower who has given you a Like .
This way, you can significantly increase your organic reach without investing money in advertising.
4. Create viral tweets on Twitter
We already know that when it comes to viral content, theory is easier than practice.
Furthermore, no matter how hard you try, many times you don't achieve virality even if you have created exceptional content.
But even so, it's worth your effort to craft tweets that generate some controversy or debate.
In fact, the best way to promote your business on the Internet for free is by responding in an eye-catching and intelligent way to the tweets of relevant people in your sector or niche .
Since many people on Twitter read all the comments on their favorite tweeters' tweets , they may be curious when they read your response.
That's why it's important that your tweet provides valuable content and isn't meaningless spam, because that's useless.
5. Interview influencers
Everyone knows that influencer marketing is a great sales promotion strategy.
But sometimes, when you're just starting out, it can be difficult to establish those first professional relationships.
For that reason, another option is to use the promotional power of influencers to get some free business promotion .
Don't start by offering them a free product trial, as they are very likely to decline your offer if they don't know anything about your online store. Instead, we recommend that you propose an interview where the influencer from your sector talks about their background and work.
If you don't have a podcast or YouTube channel where you can post the interview, you can broadcast the interview directly on your online store's blog or go live on Instagram.
The most common thing is that the influencer will also promote the interview among their audience, so you will be achieving for free what at first seemed impossible.
And then later on, when you know each other and have established a relationship, that's when you can offer them a free trial of your products and things like that.
6. Promote my business on the Internet for free through email marketing
Although it is said from time to time that email is dead, in reality it is more alive than ever and enjoying splendid health.
In fact, it remains the star channel when it comes to promoting any business.
To do good email marketing, it is essential to have a good email list. And to start compiling it, it is a good idea to use a lead magnet that encourages your users to give you their email address in exchange for some benefit (sample products, discounts, premium offers, etc.).
And as soon as you have the first addresses, start sending them emails periodically so that they remember you and strengthen ties. After all, it is easier for someone who knows you and receives information from you to buy from you than someone who has never heard of you.
We are sure that as soon as you start sending emails, your conversion rate will start to increase.
7. Use a public relations strategy to your advantage
Although public relations are usually based on promotional strategies such as sponsoring events and organizing conferences and congresses, there are also other, more affordable strategies.
Among the free actions we find the sending of press releases to the media .
The technique consists of sending a press release about your online store, reflecting some important event or milestone that you want to be publicized.
If the content of the press release is newsworthy enough to generate interest among journalists working in the media, then you will get them to publish the news in their media.
And that free publicity is priceless.
In fact, many large online stores have managed to grow thanks to this type of public relations-based promotion and dissemination strategies.
8. Publish guest posts on authority websites
Another very interesting option would be to contact the people in charge of the most important blogs in your sector, offering them the possibility of collaborating with them by writing a guest post on a topic related to your niche.
These types of actions usually generate good returns because they are based on a win-win scheme : bloggers can publish quality content without great effort and the guest author takes advantage of the dissemination channels of that blog .
On the other hand, this promotion strategy has another added benefit: if you include a link to your online store, you will also be generating a very positive impact at the SEO level (Google always ranks better those websites that have many incoming links from authoritative domains).
Do you already know what kind of promotional strategies to use?
Now that you have seen the main types of business promotion strategies, you have to decide which ones are the most suitable for you .
In any case, we recommend that you try them all, because each business has its own particularities and some may work much better than others.
In any case, if after reading the entire article you still have questions, we would be delighted if you contacted us for more information.
Posted by Marta Ventura, CEO of The Network, Publicist and Shopify Partner Expert Spain.
