Most marketing for start-up efforts center on creating a buzz or attracting the attention and arousing the curiosity of the target customers. The key to marketing success is not just building a good product but ensuring that people talk about the product.
Hiring the services of an advertising agency for the marketing efforts is a costly option, especially for start-ups. Some ways by which the entrepreneur himself or herself can create a buzz include:
- Traditional forms of advertisement such as newspaper, television, banner ads, and flyers.
- Approaching local community centers and non-competing businesses and providing special pre-launch awareness sessions and offers. Even if the business model and client base are not local, building goodwill and face-to-face interaction with the local community goes a long way in spreading the word and providing leverage for further marketing efforts.
- Creating a strong online presence through various avenues such as participating as an expert in relevant discussion forums, starting blogs, writing articles in popular sites such as Ezine, and setting up videos in YouTube and other websites. Submitting such efforts to start-up listing sites such as TechCrunch, Mashable, CenterNetworks KillerStartups and others helps increase viewers.
- Remaining in the news through press releases, interviews, and articles. Hiring a professional public relations agency helps in this regard, especially to cover a large geographical area beyond one’s individual reach.
- Partnering with non-competing businesses to market each other’s businesses through their respective outlets and marketing channels.
Most of the ways mentioned above are various forms of guerilla marketing, an unconventional form of low-cost promotion that relies on time, energy, and imagination to attract maximum attention.
All the marketing efforts invariably generate response. Following up on such responses and keeping promises are two basic requirements to sustain the buzz and ensure that the buzz translates to sales.
